Cabot O&G Considers Drilling in Ashland County, OH
Important Update (12/18/17) – A highly placed source in Cabot Oil & Gas called MDN to let us know Cabot is not looking to drill the Utica Shale in Ashland County, OH, as we first presumed. Instead, Cabot is looking to drill LOWER than the Utica–in a different rock layer. We were not told which layer. This is purely exploratory. Sometimes you hit and sometimes you miss. Something about the area has caught Cabot’s attention–but that doesn’t mean it will pan out. Stay tuned!
This, for us, is HUGE news. Cabot Oil & Gas is sniffing around the possibility of drilling in the Ohio Utica. We suppose it shouldn’t surprise us, but it does. Especially since we haven’t heard or read a word about Cabot’s Utica interest–until now. Put yourself in Cabot’s shoes–what comes next? After all, they’ve been drilling in Susquehanna County, PA for the last 10 years. Sooner or later Cabot will run out of new places to sink wells. Cabot previously fiddled around in the Eagle Ford Shale play in Texas, drilling for oil, but that hasn’t panned out. In May, MDN picked up on a little bit of information slipped into Cabot’s first quarter update–the company is spending $125 million THIS YEAR on buying leases and drilling test wells, in plays they weren’t ready to disclose at that point (see Cabot O&G 1Q17 – Oil Turning Cabot’s Eye Away from Marcellus). The only hint we had about where Cabot may be looking was this statement: “our focus is going to be oil.” We now know where at least some of that $125M is going–to Ashland County, OH. Cabot is looking to drill an exploratory well (or two or three) in Ashland, to see what they find. We think Cabot’s choice of location interesting. Ashland County is located well west (and north) of Ohio counties currently drilled for Utica oil and gas. We’ve checked the statistics in our forthcoming Marcellus & Utica Shale Almanac. Devon Energy got a single permit and spud (began to drill) a single well in Ashland’s Utica Shale back in 2011. Since that time (and through the end of 2016) no other permits were issued, and there’s been zero production from that single Devon well. It’s likely Cabot is shopping for a bargain–go where no one else is going, to see if they can make the magic happen once again that they’ve experienced in northeast PA. The reason we know about Cabot’s dalliance in Ashland is because local antis in the county are up in arms over the prospect of Cabot “fracking” the county…
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An MDN reader recently asked us, “Hey, what’s up with the Belmont County, OH ethane cracker? We haven’t read anything in a while.” You haven’t read anything on MDN, nor anywhere else, because there’s been nothing to read. PTT Global Chemical, based in Thailand, announced in April 2015 they are interested in building a $5 billion ethane cracker plant complex in Belmont County, OH (see 
The legal beagles at the Vorys energy law firm have been keeping a close eye on court cases in Ohio that affect the oil and gas industry. Two of those cases caught our attention as being worthy of mention because they have the potential to affect Utica Shale rights owners, and conversely drillers, in the Buckeye State. In one case, a landowner thought she could terminate a lease by not picking up her mail and depositing royalty checks in the mail. Just ignore the mail and claim the driller wasn’t paying up. Oops. Nice try, but that didn’t fly in court. In another case, a landowner with an old oil & gas lease (dating back to the 1970s) tried to break the lease because the driller is happy as a clam to simply get gas out of conventional/vertical/shallow wells, and not go after (or allow someone else to go after) the deeper shale layers. The landowner tried to get the court to at least agree to free up the deeper layers so he could lease those–but no dice. The court found the existing lease is producing in “paying quantities” and under the terms of the lease, the landowner does not have the right to sever the lower layers from the upper layers. Here’s the details, with copies of the respective court decisions…
In August, Ohio Gov. John Kasich officiated at a ceremony to launch a new Utica gas-fired electric generating plant in Oregon (Lucas County), near Toledo (see 
A Harrison County, OH landowner signed a lease back in 2006 granting a driller “broad rights” to extract oil and gas on and beyond his property. The lease was signed for $1 plus royalty payments. Obviously the landowner (frankly, nobody) at the time had any idea the Utica Shale miracle would happen just a few years later. The lease signed by the landowner was, in retrospect, a bad one. But that doesn’t excuse the landowner from living up to the obligations under that lease, which the landowner has learned the hard way. The lease was sold to Eclipse Resources and Eclipse wanted to, under the terms of the lease, drill new wells which would not only drain that landowner’s property (136 acres), but also drill under neighboring properties where Eclipse also owned the lease rights. That is, the well would be located on the landowner’s property but access gas under other properties–yielding royalties to others but not the landowner. The landowner objected to new wells on his property without a new lease (can’t blame him). However, first a district court and now the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decided for Eclipse against the landowner. Below is a summary of Eclipse Res. Ohio, LLC v. Madzia, followed by a copy of the full decision from the Sixth Circuit…
Summit Midstream Partners was drilling underneath a road and a creek in Belmont County, OH on Oct. 19 to install a pipeline when they experienced an “inadvertent return” (i.e. leak) of drilling mud into the creek. If you’ve read MDN for any length of time, you will have read about other such instances by other companies. Because we constantly have new readers, we post the following explanation, which will sound like a broken record for long-time readers: Drilling mud is bentonite, a form of non-toxic clay also used to make kitty litter, cosmetics and toothpaste–among many, many other consumer products. The only threat posed by a spill of bentonite is that enough of it spills to clog the gills of fish or smother little critters like salamanders. That’s it. Think about taking half a dozen bags of kitty litter to a creek nearby and dumping them all in. It’s nothing. No pollution. We’d certainly rather not have any such accidents–but the reality is, they sometimes happen. That’s why non-toxic bentonite is used. The Ohio EPA stepped in and cited/fined Summit for the spill. Fair enough. But that’s not what this story is about. This story is about a family that lives near the spill. They hated Summit’s “loud” drilling before the spill, and now are using Summit’s spill and cleanup work (some of it happening in their front yard) as an excuse to sue Summit, hoping to score big bucks. Good luck with that…
The mighty Rover Pipeline project marches on toward 100% completion, even though the Ohio EPA is doing its best to stop it (see 
In May 2015, Rover purchased a house in Carroll County, OH, located near where the pipeline, and a compressor station for that pipeline, is due to run. Rover bought the house to use for offices for several Rover affiliate companies. After buying it, Rover determined the house was “ill-suited for its intended purpose” and decided to demolish it. Problem was/is, that house was under consideration to be added to the National Register of Historic Places. The house was not yet on the list of Historic Places, but was on a list of properties under consideration. Their action in demolishing the house landed Rover in hot water with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (see 
A month ago MDN brought you the news that the U.S. District Court in Akron, OH had made a major ruling that affects all Utica landowners and drillers (see 
On Monday MDN brought you the news that Captain Ahab, er, a, Ohio EPA director Craig Butler, had demanded Rover Pipeline stop all horizontal directional drilling (HDD) work now under way in the state because another (tiny, 200 gallon) drilling mud spill happened on November 16th (see 
Each year (for the 11th year running) the Canadian-based Fraser Institute surveys petroleum industry executives and managers (333 of them for 2017) asking them their opinions on the barriers to investing in exploration and production in various geographies across the globe. That is, what makes them more likely or less likely to spend money drilling in a particular location? The Global Petroleum Survey (full copy below), tallies the survey responses and ranks each geography from most desirable place to invest, to least desirable. The rankings for this year are interesting and illustrative that politicians’ words and regulatory environment have a direct bearing on where, and how much, drilling companies are willing to spend. No money spent, no drilling. The barriers to spending in a given geography include: high tax rates, costly regulatory schemes, uncertainty over environmental regulations and the interpretation and administration of regulations governing the petroleum industry, and security threats. Only one state in the Marcellus/Utica ranked in the Top 10 “most attractive” jurisdictions for oil and gas investment–West Virginia…
The ultra-radical group from Pennsylvania called the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is devoted to stirring up anarchy and lawlessness, not only in Pennsylvania but elsewhere, like Ohio. CELDF has launched a campaign to amend the Ohio State Constitution. Two CELDF ballot initiatives (full text below) would amend the Constitution to make it legal for local communities to usurp the state’s role in regulating oil and gas. We’ve written plenty about the CELDF, which is behind a number of bizarre lawsuits like the one claiming that an ecosystem is a “person” with rights (see 
If you are unemployed–particularly if you once worked in the coal industry–and you’re interested in getting your foot in the door of a rewarding job in the Marcellus/Utica industry, LISTEN UP! For those who live in southwestern PA and eastern OH, the Washington Greene County Job Training Agency and the Gas Technology Institute have teamed up to provide a FREE 4-week training program just for you (
Who says you can’t buy a court decision–at least a temporary one? Back in May MDN told you about the antis running the City of Green, Ohio hellbent on stopping the NEXUS Pipeline, all of it (see