Study Says O&G Should Seek 3rd Party “Green” Certification
Would you feel better if a driller building a shale well pad near your home was “green certified”? Meaning the company has been reviewed and certified by an independent agency for evidence that company adheres to strict environmental standards as it drills. Researchers at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs set out to answer that question–and they found public opinion of shale drilling would greatly improve if such a “green certification” were in place.
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The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) issued fourth quarter 2018 numbers for Utica shale oil and gas production yesterday, and wow! Both natural gas and oil production rocketed upward. Natgas production was up 32% over the same period last year, to a new all-time high of 663.5 billion cubic feet (Bcf), and oil production hit 5.8 million barrels, up 39% over last year’s 4Q.
Every year or two another fraudulent piece of “research” is released supposedly showing a connection between fracking and health issues. Last March Yale released a nonsense study that says fracking causes STDs (see 
Yesterday our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, issued our favorite monthly report, the Drilling Productivity Report. The DPR is a forecast of oil and gas production in the country’s seven major shale plays for the coming month, made by the expert number crunchers at EIA.
We spotted an article based on the research done for a graduate thesis by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate student. The thesis and article look at the reality of our country’s energy supply and concludes that unless we can find a way to reduce our reliance on natural gas (not likely), we need more new pipelines, and we need to repair and upgrade old/existing pipelines. In short, we have a pipeline problem in this country.
UK oil and gas giant BP recently released its 2019 edition of their BP Energy Outlook. As they do each year, BP predicts renewable energy sources will continue to grow. However, the inescapable conclusion you get from this latest report is that LNG (liquefied natural gas) will play a staring role in the energy picture over the next 20 years. Not only that, but LNG coming from the U.S. is will receive the best actor award.
A drilling team with experience drilling more than 1,000 Marcellus shale wells in Pennsylvania with laterals from 1,500 feet to 11,000 feet recently published a research paper looking at best practices and what it will take to routinely drill wells with laterals longer than 18,000 feet.
A partisan left-wing group calling itself the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy along with another partisan left-wing group called the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) released a report last week that claims WV’s shale industry has “fallen short” in delivering on economic promises, and the way to fix it is to boost the severance tax from 5% to 10%! Yeah, they’re out of their collectivist minds.
It’s good to step back every now and again and look at who is drilling, how much they are drilling, and where they are drilling. We have such a list below for the 42 active shale drillers in Pennsylvania.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently published its Annual Energy Outlook for 2019. Among the numbers EIA released are predictions about how much natural gas liquids (NGLs) the U.S. will produce between 2018 and 2050. EIA says production will go up 32% over that period, to 5.8 million barrels per day (b/d). Guess where most of that increase will come?
As we have noted recently in a number of posts, it appears we’re heading into a dip of drilling activity–not only in the oil plays but also here at home in the Marcellus/Utica (see 
Here’s an interesting factoid: Even with our improved fracking technology, the amount of oil and gas that stays in the ground after a well is fracked is around 90%! Yes, even on our best days we’re only extracting maybe 10% of the fossil fuels down there. Can that ratio be improved?