35 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV May 9-15
We’re giving Fridays a shot as the day we will release weekly updates for permits issued for the prior one-week period. Today’s report is for the period of May 9-15 (last week, not this week). It seems as if the various state agencies have the data updated by the end of the week following, so that’s how we’ll release it (for now). Last week, Pennsylvania issued 22 new permits with Seneca Resources taking the lion’s share of 12 permits on two different pads (eight in Lycoming County and four in McKean County). Repsol scored four permits in Bradford County.
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Last week Pennsylvania issued 16 new shale well permits. EQT led the way with ten permits, all of them for wells in Greene County. You just HAVE to read the names of the wells (below). After getting skunked for two weeks in a row, Ohio finally issued permits once again last week–ten of them. Ascent Resources scored six permits, mostly in Belmont County. Encino Energy had four permits, all in Carroll County. Finally, West Virginia had nine permits. Antero Resources scored seven of the nine (six in Wetzel County), and Southwestern took the remaining two permits (both in Marshall County).
JobsOhio, a private nonprofit largely funded by the profits from state liquor sales, is dedicated to attracting new jobs and investments to the state. JobsOhio has been a big part of the plan to get an ethane cracker built in the state, a project currently on hold. JobsOhio still believes there will be an ethane cracker plant built on a site prepared for that purpose in Belmont County, Ohio. PTT Global Chemical is supposed to be the one building the plant. However, a stray comment by the President and CEO of JobsOhio, JP Nauseef, confirms what we’ve thought for a long time…
Last August, PTT Global Chemical finally came clean and admitted there will be no final investment decision (FID) to build a $10 billion ethane cracker plant project in Belmont County, OH, until they secure a partner to help finance the project (see
Last August, PTT Global Chemical finally came clean and admitted there will be no final investment decision (FID) to build a $10 billion ethane cracker plant project in Belmont County, OH, until they secure a partner to help finance the project (see
Holy smokes! What just happened? For months (and months and months) the cumulative number of weekly permits issued to drill new shale wells in the Marcellus/Utica has fluctuated from the low teens to perhaps 30 total on the upper end. Last week, from Jan. 17-23, an amazing 61 permits were issued to drill new shale wells. Double the usual. Wow! Pennsylvania issued 24 new permits, Ohio issued 9, and blow-the-doors-off-we’ve-never-seen-so-many-permits-issued-in-one-week for West Virginia, the Mountain State issued 28 new shale permits.
Economists are still analyzing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic from 2020, let alone assessing impacts from 2021. Cleveland State University researchers have run the numbers and have discovered something interesting. Of Ohio’s 88 counties, only 18 grew their economies in 2020. Of those 18, two counties stood head and shoulders above the rest for increases in economic activity. Both counties have something in common: Utica Shale drilling.
Over the years we’ve covered a number of stories about companies buying future royalty payments from landowners (and rights owners) for an upfront, one lump sum payment now. Back in May, we told you about a relative newcomer to our region doing this, Verde Bio Holdings (see
We have some exciting, and exclusive, news to share with the MDN audience. We previously told you that the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) was behaving like a child, dragging its collective heels to prevent two side-by-side injection wells in Belmont County developed by Omni Energy from beginning operation (see