Chesapeake’s Best Utica Well (Buell 8H) in Legal Trouble
From time to time MDN will tackle a complicated issue and try to, as briefly as possible, break it down for our readers to understand the essence of it. This is one of those issues. It involves property rights, contracts, deeds, a sympathetic landowner, and Chesapeake Energy’s single largest-producing Utica Shale well in Ohio—the Buell Well.
The Buell Well, designated Buell 8H by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, is named after the landowner Kenneth Buell, a 73 year-old farmer. It’s located in Archer Township in Harrison County, OH. It was one of the first Utica Shale wells to be drilled in Ohio and previously yielded 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas in 198 days—2% of the total gas production for the entire state. It’s 300 times more productive than the average vertical well in Ohio, and it has also has produced in excess of 13,000 barrels of oil. By any measure it’s a star performer—the star performer in Ohio. And it’s now in danger of being shut down because of legal disputes over who owns the rights to drill it. That’s where the situation gets messy and complicated.
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Chesapeake Energy is partnering with M3 Midstream and EV Energy Partners to build a new $900 million natural gas processing complex with facilities in Ohio’s Harrison and Columbiana counties by the middle of next year. The facility will be the largest of its kind in eastern Ohio, providing a place for Chesapeake and other drillers to process natural gas and the all-important natural gas liquids. French energy giant Total, a 25 percent joint venture partner with Chesapeake in the Utica Shale, also has an option to participate in the project.