NatGas Gensets Market Worth $147B Over Next 10 Years
Just when you think you’ve heard all of the various markets where natural gas is used, markets that will sop up the huge increase in supply we have, you hear of a new one. At least, it’s new to us. On MDN you’ve read many times about electric generating plants that burn natural gas to generate electricity (see our list of stories here). There is another, similar, market called natural gas gensets, or generator sets. Essentially gensets are smaller electric generating “plants”, from 15 kilowatts to 20 megawatts in size, used by homes, businesses and utility companies. Many times gensets are used as backup and standby generators (think backup generator at your local hospital where power interruption is literally a life or death situation). Navigant Research has just published a report that estimates the market for natural gas gensets will expand to $147 billion (yes, billion) over the next ten years. Looks like big backup generators are going natgas!…
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If you’re a Big Green group, like THE Delaware Riverkeeper, you have millions of dollars to a) launch lawsuits against the natural gas industry, and b) buy yourself research studies that support your twisted viewpoints. It is the latter that happened yesterday. CNA, a not-for-profit organization once called the Center for Naval Analyses, sells itself to the highest bidder (the oldest profession in the world). Most recently they sold themselves to THE Delaware Riverkeeper (we certainly hope they used protection). CNA and THE Delaware Riverkeeper held a press briefing yesterday to release a “study” by CNA titled “The Potential Environmental Impacts of Fracking in the Delaware River Basin” (full copy below). What did the “researchers” at CNA, which is based in Arlington, VA just outside the DC orbit, find? If the moratorium is lifted and shale drilling is allowed in the Delaware River Basin–essentially Wayne and Pike counties in Pennsylvania–CNA says it will lead to “land cover disturbance” in “core forest areas”, extreme water withdrawals from poor little creeks and streams, nasty wastewater polluting everything, erosion everywhere, multiple compressor stations and untold ill health impacts for 75,000 people who live close to all of this mess. See what $320,444 (the actual cost of this study) can buy you? We hope it felt good for Riverkeeper…
On Friday Baker Hughes, which is being forced into a merger with Halliburton by the end of this year/early next year, issued a summary of rig counts last Friday. At first blush it appears to be good news, but when you dig under the surface, it’s not–at least for the Marcellus/Utica. The international rig count was 1,118, down 28 from the 1,146 counted in June 2015. However, the average U.S. rig count for July 2015 was 866, up 5 from the 861 counted in June 2015. It appears we’ve turned the corner on how low rig counts will go–we’ve bottomed and are either holding steady (in the U.S.), or perhaps every so slightly gaining ground again. But then we ran the numbers for the Marcellus/Utica and found rig counts continue to decline month over month…
What could of been a valuable research project by a Stanford University researcher is, instead, just more “fracking maybe/might/could/possibly affect groundwater” headline grabber. Stanford environmental scientist Dr. Rob Jackson, a seasoned researcher, set out to determine at what depths is fracking safe and does not affect groundwater (“The Depths of Hydraulic Fracturing and Accompanying Water Use Across the United States” — abstract below). The press release describing the research attempts to redefine any shale well drilled and fracked at less than one mile down as a “shallow” well. This is an inaccurate characterization. From the release: “The most recent such study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, finds that at least 6,900 oil and gas wells in the U.S. were fracked less than a mile (5,280 feet) from the surface, and at least 2,600 wells were fracked at depths shallower than 3,000 feet, some as shallow as 100 feet. This occurs despite many reports that describe fracking as safe for drinking water only if it occurs at least thousands of feet to a mile underground, according to Jackson.” If a well was drilled at 3,000 feet down, that’s still 2,000-2,500 feet below water aquifers–a quarter of a mile of solid rock between the two! Not to mention that 2,600 wells out of 44,000 wells Dr. Jackson studied is a puny 6% of the total–a very small percentage. In other words, the vast majority of shale wells drilled are a mile or more under the surface. Interestingly, for all of the talk about “shallow” wells and the potential dangers of fracking, Dr. Jackson’s study “has not found evidence that frack water contaminants seep upward to drinking-water aquifers from deep underground”…
This sounds like something out of a Jules Verne novel. You may recall from school that Verne wrote some of the earliest sci-fi adventures ever, like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth. In Journey, Verne wrote about strange and mysterious critters that live deep in the earth–in rock caverns. Turns out Verne may not have been so far from the truth after all. And there’s a tie-in with the Marcellus Shale and with fracking. In November West Virginia University and Ohio State University received an $11 million grant by the federal government to study the Marcellus and Utica Shale (see 
With all of this talk about CONSOL Energy and Noble Energy and mergers/acquisitions and workforce reductions, we came across an interesting story and analysis by SNL Financial summarizing a Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research report issued last Friday. The Goldman report evaluates 38 exploration and production (E&P) companies on their suitability and desirability as mergers and acquisitions candidates based on asset quality, potential upside returns to the buyer as oil and gas prices improve, and low break-even operations. That is, of all the E&Ps out there, which ones are most likely to be targeted for a takeover, and by whom? The surprising answer is that Cabot Oil & Gas and Range Resources, both huge Marcellus drillers, are among the takeover targets. And the super majors interested in doing the taking over? Exxon Mobil and Statoil…
A new research study appearing in an online “journal” with very low standards, PLOS ONE, claims that hydraulic fracturing leads to an increase in hospitalization rates in the Marcellus Shale region. The research study, titled “Unconventional Gas and Oil Drilling Is Associated with Increased Hospital Utilization Rates” (full copy embedded below) on the surface appears to contain damning evidence. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University looked at hospitalization records for three northeastern Pennsylvania counties from 2007-2011–Bradford, Susquehanna and Wayne. Both Bradford and Susquehanna counties have seen a huge amount of shale drilling over that period. Wayne County, on the other hand, has seen no shale drilling because of the intransigence of the Delaware River Basin Commission and their ongoing frack ban. The researchers say that people in Bradford and Susquehanna counties go to the hospital for serious heart conditions at a rate 27% higher than those in Wayne County. Ergo, there is a connection between fracking and health issues. We are fully in favor of rigorous academic research into issues like this one. But a few things bother us about this latest “fracking kills” study…