OH Court Says Grandkids Can Claim Mineral Ownership Under DMA
MDN has previously highlighted the importance of last year’s Ohio Supreme Court decision with regard to the Ohio Dormant Mineral Act (DMA). In September 2016 the OH Supreme Court ruled in three DMA cases, saying all of the other cases come under those three (see Important: OH Supreme Court Finally Rules on Dormant Mineral Act). Following that ruling, we brought you insights on what it means from international law firm Jones Day (see One More Look at Important OH Supreme Court DMA Decision). We later ran a copy of an analysis done by attorney David Wigham, who said, “[T]he landscape regarding title and ownership to mineral interests in Ohio has significantly changed” (see Expert Says OH DMA Decision “Significantly Changed” Mineral Rights). The ramifications of the Supreme Court’s decision continues–and various aspects of the now-settled law are still, well, getting settled. Under the DMA if a surface landowner advertises his or her intent to reclaim mineral rights (when the rights have been dormant for period of years), the rights owners have a certain amount of time to respond to reassert their ownership. But what if the original rights owners are now dead. Can their heirs, as in grandchildren, claim those rights? Under a case just decided in Ohio’s Seventh District Court of Appeals, the answer to that would be, “Yes”…
Read More “OH Court Says Grandkids Can Claim Mineral Ownership Under DMA”
In January 2016, the Obama Dept. of Interior posted a new rule that will make it all but impossible for oil and gas drillers to drill on federal lands (see 
We are super excited to bring you an exclusive report that has just been released by MDN subscriber 
The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) has just issued production numbers for the fourth quarter of 2016. The bad news is that oil production continued to slide in 4Q16, down 44% from the same quarter in 2015. The good news continues to be natural gas production, which was up 14% over the same period in 2015. The even better news: Natural gas production in Ohio for all of 2016 was 1.37 trillion cubic feet, vs. 955.61 billion cubic feet in 2015. Awesome! Ascent Resources (formerly Aubrey McClendon’s American Energy) continued to dominate in natural gas production. Ascent had the top producing well in 4Q16, as they did in 3Q16. In fact, Ascent had 9 of the top 10 producing natural gas wells in Ohio during 4Q16. Gulfport Energy was the only other producer to break the top 10, with one well. Over on the oil side of the isle, Eclipse Resources once again had the top producing oil well with their Purple Hayes well–currently the longest horizontal well drilled in the United States at 3.5 miles long (located in Guernsey County). Purple Hayes is the gift that keeps on giving, quarter after quarter! Below we have the ODNR’s high level overview of the numbers, along with MDN’s own exclusive analysis showing: the top 25 producing gas wells, the top 25 producing oil wells, and then the top 25 gas and oil wells as ranked by average production per day. There is a difference…
We find it kind of amusing. Anti-drillers and Democrats (usually one and the same) in Pennsylvania bellyache and moan and groan that PA is “the only oil and gas state without a severance tax” and how life would be SO much better if only PA had a severance…blah blah blah. They point out that Ohio has a severance tax. West Virginia has a severance tax. EVERYBODY has a severance tax. Of course they conveniently ignore (or lie about) the fact that PA has an impact fee, or an impact tax, if you will. The impact fee levies a charge on new wells for a number a years on a sliding scale. Think of the impact fee like a property tax, and a severance tax like a sales tax on goods sold. The beauty of the impact fee is that 60% of it stays in the communities where drilling actually happens. Impact fee revenue goes to local municipalities to offset the “impacts” of drilling in those communities, money used for things like fire departments, police, roads, etc. An impact fee is superior to a severance tax in many ways. While OH and WV’s severance tax revenue went over a cliff when the price of natural gas went over a cliff, PA’s impact fee was far less affected. But the point of this post is not in the relative merits in the type of taxation. The point is that legislators in Ohio want to reallocate some of their severance tax revenue to be used in communities where Utica drilling happens. That is, they want to convert some of the OH severance tax into, essentially, an impact fee. So while PA bellyaches about having an impact fee and not a severance tax, states (like OH) that actually have a severance tax, would rather have an impact fee!…
Earlier this month MDN brought you a list of the existing and/or planned natural gas-fired electric generating plants in Ohio (see 
What if a landowner leased his or her land decades ago and a driller drilled a conventional natural gas well on the property, and that well has produced commercial volumes of natural gas for years–and still does. And what if the lease gives that driller the right to drill (or not drill) in any given rock lawyer. And what if that driller is content to simply let that conventional well keep producing and not drill further down, into the now commercially viable Utica (or Marcellus) shale layer? Does the landowner, whose land is located where the Utica/Marcellus exists, have any case for taking back the rights to the deeper shale layers the conventional driller refuses to go after? That’s a case that has now worked its way all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court. The question turns on whether or not “reasonable development” in a lease includes unexplored, deep formations…
A somewhat misguided couple who own land in Harrison County, OH and object to Rover putting a pipeline through their land have decided to break the law. Contractors working for Energy Transfer to clear trees and dig a trench to lay pipeline across their land have been working on their land, on an off, for the past three weeks. Sheila Bittinger and her husband Stanley say they’ve had enough and the couple parked several vehicles across the entrance to their property to prevent any more work on the pipeline. It sounds as if they want to get arrested and that they know this particular bit of “civil disobedience” will result in absolutely nothing. But they’re doing it all the same. If you watch the video (below) you get the impression these are honest, country folks who feel like they’ve gotten a raw deal. We wonder if these landowners have been manipulated by slick lawyers who see a big payday coming from a lawsuit against Rover Pipeline…
A group of approximately 250 Ohio landowners, represented by an Ohio eminent domain law firm, is doing its best to stop Energy Transfer’s Rover Pipeline project dead in its tracks. Rover is playing beat the clock to finish tree clearing following a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) final approval of the project on Feb. 3 (see 
Last week the Ohio Oil & Gas Association (OOGA) held its 70th annual Winter Meeting in Columbus. One of the speakers was Martin Shumway, president of Shumway Resources–an engineering/geophysical consulting firm that specializes in the Appalachian Basin. Shumway shared details from the latest DeBrosse Memorial Report (full copy below). What does the report show for 2016? There were 620 oil and gas wells completed last year, of which 77% were Utica wells. Belmont Count saw the most wells drilled (120) with the most drilled footage (1.94 million vertical+lateral feet). Chesapeake Energy drilled the most wells last year in Ohio (99 wells), although that number is down 31% from 2015. The #2, #3 and #4 drillers last year were close: Ascent Resources, drilled 66 wells; Antero Resources drilled 64 wells; and Gulfport Energy drilled 62 wells. This is one of our favorite Ohio Utica reports each year, have a look…
Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Exterran Corporation (with 5,400 employees) specializes in natural gas compression production equipment and processing facilities. They design, build and operate compressor stations and natural gas processing plants. In 2012 MDN reported on a contract Exterran won to build three natural gas processing plants in West Virginia (see 
The Baker Hughes rig count in the U.S. continued to be on fire in February. Whoops! Poor choice of words. The rig count continued its rocket ride. In January the average number of U.S. rigs was 683. In February, the count zoomed to 744, up 61 rigs in just a month. Each active rig translates into hundreds of jobs, both directly working at the rig and indirectly in services delivered to the rig and its workers. It also means more landowners will soon have royalty payments heading in their direction. When rigs are active, life is good. What about rig counts in the Marcellus/Utica? Total rig count went up another 3 rigs. Two of the rigs were added in WV (now 10), and one in PA (now 34). OH’s rig count remained the same (20 rigs) in February as January. Just 3 added rigs out of 61 means other shale plays (primarily the Permian and other oil plays) are where most of the rig action is happening. Here’s the full set of numbers, along with a pretty MDN chart showing the last 12 months of rig counts in the Marcellus/Utica…
On Feb. 3, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gave its final approval to Energy Transfer’s Rover Pipeline project–a $3.7 billion, 711-mile Marcellus/Utica natural gas pipeline that will run from PA, WV and eastern OH through OH into Michigan and eventually into Canada (see 
Duke Energy Ohio, an LDC or “local distribution company” serves some half a million customers with natural gas in Ohio. The company has a ~12 mile pipeline to flow gas it needs to move from one point to another in Hamilton County (Cincinnati), the southwest corner of the state. The Duke pipeline has been around and in service since the 1950s. Duke needs to replace that pipe or some of the half million Duke customers won’t get natural gas any more. Because anything to do with “fracking” or “pipelines” has been so thoroughly bastardized by the media and anti-fossil fuel protesters, there was, of course, opposition to Duke’s plan. So Duke “listened” and has scaled back their plans. Instead of building a 30-inch gas pipeline running at 600 psi (pounds per square inch), the revised plan calls for a 20-inch pipeline running at 400 psi (see 
One of the people behind the Big Green effort to pass a frack ban in Youngstown, OH (a measure that has now failed six times) has herself been arrested and has plead guilty to 13 felony charges of committing voter fraud. Rebecca Hammonds, a local organizer and employee of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, was sentenced to 180 days in jail this week after pleading guilty to 13 felony counts for false voter registration and election fraud in January. One of the charges had to do with her signing up dead people to vote. Do we need to say anything more about the dishonesty of the anti-drilling movement?…