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Law Firm Uses Maryland Health Study to Drum up Business

Below is a classic public relations effort called “newsjacking” in the marketing business. Newsjacking is the use of a story currently in the news–with which your company has zero connection–in an attempt to associate your story and your company name with that other event. Because people will be searching for that other news, your story/name will pop up in search results. A form of spam. Below is an example of what we consider to be the lowest of low lifes–personal injury attorneys playing on people’s fears of the shale drilling industry in order to drum up business. We find it disgusting and loathsome. Since the release below has a tie-in with another MDN story today–the recently released potential health impact study in Maryland–we include the press release below to illustrate how anti-drillers and low lifes operate (hard to tell the difference between the two)…
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New Ormet Aluminum Plant Owner Shops Barge Facility to Shalers

Ormet Facility in Hannibal, OHThree weeks ago MDN highlighted news from NGI’s Shale Daily that Magnum Hunter Resources had purchased the mineral rights for two former Ormet properties in Ohio and West Virginia (see Magnum Hunter Buys Ormet Property in OH/WV, More Wells Coming?). Ormet, you may recall, had a big aluminum plant in Hannibal (Monroe County), OH that sits on the Ohio River (complete with a big barge facility) that was bankrupted because they couldn’t get Ohio to lower the electricity bills long enough for them to convert their own coal-burning electric generation plant into using natural gas mined from under the property (see Final Chapter of Ormet Plant Closing – Utica Could have Saved It). It was a big fail on the part of Gov. John “foreigner hunter” Kasich’s administration and the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO). Magnum now owns the mineral rights, and Niagara Worldwide LLC now owns the real estate and plant itself in OH. Niagara issued a press release today advertising that they’re looking to re-open the Hannibal site for business. The announcement has a big tie-in with the shale drilling industry…
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OGA 6: Panel Discussion – Health & Safety

Panel III: Health and Safety Issues You Can’t Ignore

  • Showcasing job site safety: best practices, the role of training
  • Educating as to the safe handling of frac sand
  • Achieving frac fluid chemical transparency using FracFocus
  • Implementing effective safety plans for drilling sites
  • Coordinating/establishing a relationship with local first responders
  • Assessing the impact of OSHA regulations
  • Detailing the impact of the DOT trucking rule “clarification” – how can your company ensure compliance?
  • Ensuring security in the face of protests, trespassing and other crimes

Moderator: Jim Willis, Editor, Marcellus Drilling News
Speakers: Stefan Hirniak, HSE Recruitment Consultant, Progressive GE
Rob L. Gough, EHS Manager, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation
David Renz, Sr. EHS Coordinator, Noble Energy
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Frack Sand Train Derails Near Allentown, 6 Cars Spill Near Homes

MDN is always a sucker for a good railroad story. We love how the fracking industry has breathed new life into the short line railroad business–especially in Pennsylvania. However, this particular railroad story is not such a happy one (although it could be worse).

Last Saturday a 45-car train for the Delaware-Lackawanna Railroad was pulling a load of frack sand through Northampton County (Allentown area) when six of the cars derailed, spilling sand. Even though the accident happened in a populated area near homes and businesses, because the train was going a very slow 5 miles per hour, no one was hurt and no homes or businesses were damaged. Cleanup of the mess is set to begin today…
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Silica Dust Exposure Topic A at ShaleSafe Conference in Wheeling

The West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association hosted their inaugural ShaleSafe Conference and Expo at Oglebay Park in Wheeling earlier this week (Monday through Wednesday). What makes the conference interesting and unusual is that the entire event was focused on the topic of safety in shale plays–particularly the Marcellus and Utica. If you hang around with oil and gas people for any length of time, the topic of safety comes up. Contrary to the picture anti-drillers try to paint, the oil and gas industry is laser focused on worker and public safety. And that focus showed at the conference.

The highlight of the conference–the main focus–was a panel on silica (sand) exposure, which was held yesterday (Wednesday). That panel featured Michael Breitenstein from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and Dr. Michael McCawley, chairman of the Department of Occupational & Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health at West Virginia University. McCawley, you may remember, has been beating the drum for some time that setbacks for drilling in WV are not enough and that air pollution coming from drilling operations is a serious issue (see WVU Prof Keeps Up Pressure on Improved Air Quality at Drill Sites). Silica dust is a serious issue, and both speakers were there to put the fear of God into the audience about it…
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Penn State Figures Out How to Convert Garbage into Proppants

Shale drilling uses a special kind of sand called silica. It uses a LOT of silica, which is mostly mined in the Midwest, in places like Wisconsin. Sand is called a “proppant” in the industry because it “props open” tiny little holes in fracked shale rock to allow the natural gas (or oil or NGLs) to slip out and up the borehole. There are alternatives to silica as a proppant material–but not many are economic to use. What if you could turn industrial and domestic waste materials into a viable alternative source of raw materials for proppants? That is, what if you could turn garbage into the equivalent of sand? That would be so cool, getting rid of industrial waste on the one hand, creating a cheap source of proppants on the other.

Turning garbage into proppants is exactly what the brains at Penn State have now figured out how to do. Below is the announcement from Penn State that a pair of their materials scientists have published a new paper in a scientific journal (copy of the paper embedded below). The announcement and paper trumpet the discovery that there is a better way to create cheap proppants for shale drilling, and it was discovered right here in Marcellus Shale country…
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Columbiana, OH Frack Sand Operation Continues to Expand

In March MDN told you about an Ohio property management firm in Columbiana County, OH that ended up in the frack sand business (see OH Property Management Firm Plugs into the Shale Supply Chain). A quick check-in finds that business for Buckeye Transfer Realty is booming, because of the Utica Shale.

If the received wisdom for buying real estate is “location, location, location,” we would add a fourth important ingredient, a key ingredient to Buckeye Transfer’s success: timing…
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HalenHardy Wins Ben Franklin EHS Award for Silica Air Shower

Congratulations to HalenHardy, a company that makes a mobile air shower to quickly remove silica dust from workers’ uniforms. HalenHardy is the recipient (yesterday) of the Ben Franklin’s Shale Gas Innovation & Commercialization Center’ first annual Shale Gas Environmental, Health, & Safety Award. MDN editor Jim Willis was in the audience at the Shale Insight conference to witness the award.

Jim later spotted and congratulated co-founder and CEO Donnie Beaver as he sat on the exhibit hall floor up to his neck in booth paraphernalia. The company is building a fully operational demo unit for the exhibition hall available starting Wednesday. (Jim plans to take a turn.) The official announcement from the Ben Franklin Center:

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New Frack Sand Terminal Opens in Fairmont, WV

If there’s one thing beside water that frackers need, it’s sand. A very special kind of sand used in fracking. Last week saw the grand opening of a new frack sand terminal in Fairmont (Marion County), West Virginia. The new facility is owned and operated by TRANSFLO, a subsidiary of CSX Corporation…
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Revamped Trumbull County, OH Rail Yard Coming for Utica Shale

All aboard! The Ohio Commerce Center in Lordstown (Trumbull County), OH, once a World War II train yard, is quickly transforming into a modern rail transloading and warehouse facility to serve the Utica Shale. Using a $2 million grant from Ohio Jobs Ready, the revamped facility is in the process of getting a new 12,000-foot loop track that can handle the longest trains on the tracks today. The upgraded facility will be able to warehouse both sand (for fracking) and oil (from fracking), for shipment along the tracks…
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OH Property Management Firm Plugs into the Shale Supply Chain

More lessons for small businesses that want to plug in to the booming Marcellus and Utica Shale supply chain, this time from a new transloading facility in Columbiana, OH, started by a property management company. What’s a transloading facility? It’s a place where (in this case) railroad cars full of sand are parked and unloaded with special equipment onto waiting trucks that then haul the sand to nearby drilling sites for use in hydraulic fracturing.

The Buckeye Transfer Realty transloading facility accepted their first sand shipment via rail on Jan. 4. In the past three weeks they’ve hired 22 new people, with plans to hire more. Here’s their story, along with some of the things they’ve learned:

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New Utica Frack Sand Terminal Opens Near Canton, OH

Frack sand company Unimin Corporation announced yesterday they have opened a new proppant (or frack sand) distribution terminal in Navarre (Stark County), Ohio—near Canton. Unimin will provide frack sand to Utica Shale drillers from the facility. This is the company’s seventh terminal in the Marcellus and Utica region (see the complete list below).

The company’s announcement:

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