Research

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    Penn State Finds Chemical Migration in 3 PA Water Wells from 2010

    Media reaction to research findings that trace amounts of chemicals used in Marcellus fracking were found a mile and a half away in three water wells is nearly orgasmic. “Finally! We can shut down this evil, wicked, nasty drilling for fossil fuels!” That’s the unstated (but very clear) reaction from anti-drilling “reporters” at the Associated Press, Bloomberg, StateImpact Pennsylvania and other assorted mainstream media outlets. They do their best to hide all of the pertinent facts in their “reporting.” So MDN is here to set the record straight. First, researchers at Penn State set out to tackle a particularly thorny problem. Back in 2010 (yes, over five years ago) three (yes, only three) property owners near a shale drilling operation reported problems with their drinking water. The researchers, using breakthrough, new “nontraditional” methods have determined that it’s likely (not 100% sure, but reasonably sure) that flowback water that was stored in an open pit leaked out of that pit and hit some underground fractures that allowed the flowback water to travel up to 2 kilometers (1.6 miles) away and contaminate the water wells of those three nearby neighbors. It happened one time, to three water wells, five years ago and was related to a leaky impoundment. Those are the facts. Here’s some of the headlines you’re reading yesterday and today in over 100 major news outlets coast to coast currently bombarding the population with this earth-shattering “news”…
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    MDN Thinks It’s Time to Divest Your Money from HSBC Bank

    If you still do your banking at HSBC (otherwise known as The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation), perhaps it’s time you didn’t. We think it’s time to “divest” from doing business with, and putting your money in this anti-fossil fuel organization. The so-called Climate Change section of HSBC recently circulated a note to investors (copy below) telling them they should divest from fossil fuel companies and if they don’t, they “may one day be seen to be late movers, on ‘the wrong side of history'”. We’d like to make a little history ourselves. If you have your checking and savings account with HSBC, personal or commercial, why not move it now? Don’t be a “late mover” or you may not get your money once the stampede to divest from HSBC begins…
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    UMD Junk Science Research “Links” Shale Drilling to Air Pollution

    A new anti-drilling “study” (i.e. junk science) has just been released by anti-drillers at the University of Maryland–pretending to be real science when it’s not. The study claims to show that locations hundreds of miles “downwind” from active shale drilling operations end up with higher levels of ethane in the air than other locations. Of course the “researchers” didn’t bother to conduct similar tests and analysis for locations not downwind from drilling. They found a spike in ethane concentrations in the air in Baltimore and immediately jumped to the conclusion it’s from Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale drilling, and then worked hard to connect a bunch of dots that would “prove” just how nasty and vile this whole Marcellus shale drilling thing really is (and consequently why it should be banned in PA, WV and OH). Predictable, and sad that yet another institution like the University of Maryland has prostituted itself on the alter of Big Green…
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    USGS: WV Shale Drilling has No Effect on Mon River Basin Water

    Hey Delaware River Basin Commission–listen up. There’s another river basin not far from you–the Monongahela River Basin in Pennsylvania and West Virginia–that has seen a LOT of Marcellus Shale fracking over the past eight years. Researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) did some water testing, both before fracking began and recently. They compared the results. What do the results show? “No significant difference from historical water samples” between then and now. What about methane in the water. EVERYBODY knows those frackers can’t help themselves and that methane travels like an STD once you start sinking holes all over the place. Methane will spot a surface water source a mile away and make a beeline for it, right? So what about methane levels then and now? “Although methane was detected in samples, the concentrations were similar to those in samples collected prior to intensive shale gas development.” Huh. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that it’s actually SAFE to drill in a watershed like the Monongahela–or the Delaware? The science says it is, but of course that won’t convince anti-drilling nutters…
    Read More “USGS: WV Shale Drilling has No Effect on Mon River Basin Water”

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    Syracuse Prof Targeted in Effort to Discredit Drilling Research

    How’s this for the pot calling the kettle black: A Syracuse anti-drilling attorney says a Syracuse University professor who co-authored a research report published in the peer reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology is ethically challenged because the prof didn’t declare a “financial interest” with Chesapeake Energy. Chesapeake is the company providing years and years of data used as the basis for the study (the only available data of its kind). With advance apologies to our many lawyer subscribers…An attorney accusing a professor of being ethically challenged? If that doesn’t beat all! We highlighted the important Syracuse research study in March (see Syracuse U Study: Fracking Doesn’t Cause Methane in PA Water Wells). The lead author is Syracuse University professor Donald Siegel. Dr. Siegel’s good work comes to the “wrong” conclusion (for anti-drillers), so he instantly became a target. Apparently Siegel “has a contract” with Chesapeake and he makes a little extra coin on the side doing work for private companies like Chesapeake (a common practice among professors). Because Siegel didn’t declare the small fees paid to him by Chesapeake as a conflict of interest when filing his research report, he’s now being targeted for reputation assassination by an anti-drilling squad…
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    IHS CERAWeek Prediction: Marcellus will Produce 30 Bcf/d by 2035

    A useful update and prediction on how much natural gas will be produced in the Marcellus by the early 2020s and eventually, by 2035 at the IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston last week. In addition, another analyst outlined the pipeline/midstream situation in the northeast. You’ll want to read what they had to say about how much gas will be produced in the Marcellus, and where it will get used/sold…
    Read More “IHS CERAWeek Prediction: Marcellus will Produce 30 Bcf/d by 2035”

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    Navigant: US Natgas Output Will Rise to 110 Bcf/d by 2035

    The energy practice for global consulting firm Navigant recently published a new report titled “North American Natural Gas Market Outlook, Year-End 2014” that examines the state of the natural gas industry and provides forecasts for supply and demand through 2035. Among the highlights: Navigant says U.S. natural gas supply will increase from 72 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2015 to nearly 110 Bcf/d by 2035. Navigant says the big users of all that extra production will be LNG export facilities and electric generating plants that will be built new or converted from burning coal…
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    EIA List of Top 100 Oil & Gas Fields – Shale has Changed the Picture

    In 2009 the number one oil producing formation in the United States was Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. Six years later Prudhoe Bay has fallen to #3 in the list, surpassed by both the Eagle Ford (#1) and Permian Basin (#2), both shale plays in Texas. In 2009 the mighty Marcellus was in the bottom half of the list of the top 100 producing formations. Today? It’s #1, thanks to the miracle of fracking shale. Last week the U.S. Energy Information Administration released an updated list of the top 100 U.S. oil and natural gas fields. Below we have that report, showing the top 100 oil fields and the top 100 natural gas fields. Shale has literally changed the landscape of the oil and gas industry in our country…
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    USGS Updates Models for Determining Earthquakes from Injection Wells

    The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) issued an update yesterday into how they evaluate whether or not earthquakes are being caused by deep injection wells–wells that are disposing frack wastewater. USGS says, “Significant strides in science have been made to better understand potential ground shaking from induced earthquakes, which are earthquakes triggered by man-made practices.” And so they’ve issued a report that “outlines a preliminary set of models to forecast how hazardous ground shaking could be in the areas where sharp increases in seismicity have been recorded.” Translation: We’ve updated our best guesses about how this works. The new report is titled “Incorporating Induced Seismicity in the 2014 United States National Seismic Hazard Model–Results of 2014 Workshop and Sensitivity Studies” (full copy below). USGS concludes that it is almost always injection wells–over faults–that are the cause of induced earthquakes, and NOT fracking itself. The USGS says, “Many questions have been raised about whether hydraulic fracturing—commonly referred to as “fracking”—is responsible for the recent increase of earthquakes. USGS’s studies suggest that the actual hydraulic fracturing process is only occasionally the direct cause of felt earthquakes.” The word “occasionally” translates to this: you can count on one hand the number of times fracking (over a fault) has led to an earthquake…
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    New Report Exposes NY’s Fraudulent “Science” Used to Ban Fracking

    A new report just published by the always excellent Energy in Depth (EID) shreds to pieces the so-called science used by anti-driller and still Acting Commissioner of the New York State Health Department Howard Zucker. The report, titled “A Look Inside New York’s Anti-Fracking Echo Chamber” (full copy below) details Zucker’s use of a bunch of anti-driller-backed research reports, compiling them into a document he used as cover to recommend a ban on fracking in the Empire State. Zucker’s corruption is now exposed for the world to see. Simon Lomax from EID presented a copy of the highly damaging report to a House of Representatives committee hearing yesterday, convened to discuss state and local bans on fracking. New York officials are spitting and sputtering and backpedaling. They can’t find a rock big enough to hide under…
    Read More “New Report Exposes NY’s Fraudulent “Science” Used to Ban Fracking”

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    Confirmed: PA Natgas Production Decreased from Jan to Feb 2015

    confirmedAs MDN told you last week, natural gas production in Pennsylvania went DOWN from January to February 2015 (see Exclusive: PA Feb Natgas Production Numbers Show Decrease from Jan). We now have the percentage by which it decreased: 9%. As we said last week, EQT and a few other laggards didn’t file their numbers on time. Those numbers are now in and we have the final summary below showing production for both January and February, and the percentage difference–both by county and by driller. Mainstream and industry publications we’ve read say February natgas production in PA was either flat or slightly up from January. That simply is not the case. We’ve run the numbers–twice. We’ve pulled the raw data from the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection–twice. We’ve checked and rechecked and, as we predicted last week, “we expect production to have decreased somewhere around 8-10% overall.” We nailed it, if we might immodestly say so ourselves. So why does everyone else say production rose slightly?…
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    Poised to Become #1 Exporter of Light Naphtha

    IHSPredictsNaphthaOversupplyThrough2020[1]
    Click image for larger version
    The U.S. is already the number one producer of both natural gas AND oil in the world (see USA is #1 Natgas and #1 Oil Producer in the World in 2014). We dethroned Russia as the #1 natgas producer and Saudi Arabia as the #1 oil producer. According to researchers at IHS, another #1 is fast on the way. IHS says the U.S. is poised to dethrone the Middle East as the #1 exporter of light naphtha, an essential steam-cracker feedstock used for the production of gasoline and numerous chemicals…
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    PA DEP Releases 2013 Air Pollution from Drilling Report

    Each year the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) collects air emissions data for the natural gas industry as required by PA’s Air Pollution Control Act. Yesterday the DEP issued a comprehensive report for calendar year 2013. It’s no surprise that several categories of air pollutants increased–the more wells you drill, the more activity, the more air pollution. What *is* surprising is that two categories of air pollution decreased: carbon monoxide (CO) and methane (CH4). You also need to throw this into the mix: The way the information is collected and reported changed in 2013. The DEP began requiring data from compressor stations supporting coalbed methane wells. That is, they grew the pie–the data is sort of apples and oranges. And still the CO and CH4 numbers went down! Below is the DEP summary of the numbers, broken out by type of air pollution…
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    Bentek: March US Gas Production Up 8% from Year Ago, 1% from Feb

    Researchers at Platts’ Bentek Energy division estimate natural gas production in the lower 48 States increased by 1.8 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) to 73.4 Bcf/d during the month of March. That’s an 8% increase over March of 2014. Production was up only 1% from February 2015, illustrating the coming slow down in production. You can’t lay down all of those rigs (875 rigs idled in the past 6 months) and shut-in production without it having an effect sooner or later…
    Read More “Bentek: March US Gas Production Up 8% from Year Ago, 1% from Feb”

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    Exclusive: PA Feb Natgas Production Numbers Show Decrease from Jan

    exclusiveKudos to the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection. On April 1 they published the very first monthly production numbers for oil and gas production in the state–for the month of January (see PA’s First Monthly O&G Production Report Goes Live). At the time, the DEP said going forward new production numbers would be released 45 days after the end of a calendar month, and that February’s numbers would be released by April 14. Those numbers were released–just before midnight on the 14th! They kept their word and are to be commended for it. MDN has analyzed the numbers from February, comparing them to January. Unfortunately several drillers have failed to file their monthly reports on time–most notable among them is EQT. Because EQT’s numbers are missing for February (one of the larger drillers in PA), it throws off any kind of meaningful analysis. However, we have enough of the picture from other major drillers who did file on time–drillers like Cabot Oil & Gas, Range Resources and Southwestern Energy–that we can tell you this: Production in PA from January to February went down by an appreciable amount. Currently, without EQT’s numbers in the mix, February production decreased 17% from January levels. Once missing numbers are added, we expect production to have decreased somewhere around 8-10% overall. Below we have a couple of charts with the natural gas production data rolled up, something you won’t find anywhere else!…
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