Halliburton Fracked Eclipse’s 3.5 Mile ‘Purple Hayes’ Utica Well
There’s an old saying that goes like this: “Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.” Not long ago MDN reported that Eclipse Resources had drilled what is believed to be the longest horizontal well (on land) in the world–the 3.5 mile “Purple Hayes” Utica Shale well (see Eclipse Res. 1Q16: Drills Longest Shale Well Ever! “Purple Hayes”). It wasn’t but a day or two and one of the companies that worked on the well to help drill it, Nine Energy, popped up to say they had a hand in that recording-breaking well (see Nine Energy Completed World’s Longest Shale Well – in the Utica). Last week MDN told you that “snubbing” company Deep Well Services, from Pennsylvania, also helped with drilling the well (see PA Firm Helped Drill ‘Purple Hayes’ – World’s Longest Shale Well). Drilling any well is truly a team effort with many companies involved. Yesterday yet another company stepped up to claim they played a major role in drilling the Purple Hayes–Halliburton…
Read More “Halliburton Fracked Eclipse’s 3.5 Mile ‘Purple Hayes’ Utica Well”
Earlier this month MDN told you about the “Purple Hayes”–a Utica Shale well drilled by Eclipse Resources in Guernsey County, OH that is thought to be the longest shale well every drilled, at 3.5 miles (see 
In April MDN brought you the news that Mountaineer NGL Storage launched a non-binding open season for drillers who want to reserve storage capacity in a new underground storage facility to be built in Monroe County, Ohio, near Clarington, along the Ohio River (see 
We love it when we spot a company adopting a contrarian strategy. Received wisdom and prevailing thought says that the oil and gas industry–especially in the Marcellus/Utica–is contracting. Drillers aren’t drilling, and that affects the supply chain (those companies supplying goods and services to the industry) in a big and negative way. Yep–true enough. But the received wisdom also says companies should diversity–look for business outside of the oil and gas industry. What’s contrary is to take advantage of this downturn to expand capacity–to get ready for when the downturn turns again into an upturn. That’s just what Watco Transportation Services is doing with their Kanawha River Railroad short line subsidiary. Kanawha River Railroad has just cut a deal to lease 309 miles of rail lines from Norfolk Southern in Ohio and West Virginia. One of the customers on these short haul lines will be, yep, Marcellus and Utica drillers and sand suppliers and chemical suppliers and equipment suppliers. Nope, there’s not all that much shipping right now, which makes this a step of faith. But the company believes that the future will be here soon and things will turn and the Kanawha River Railroad will be ready to take full advantage of it. We love a railroad story, and we love a contrarian story. This is both…
Last week the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association (OMA), along with several other trade associations, filed a “friend of the court” brief (called an amicus brief, full copy below) in a case pending before the Ohio Seventh District Court of Appeals (in Youngstown). The OMA wants the Court of Appeals to uphold the ruling of a Harrison County trial court in the eminent domain case of Sunoco Pipeline v. Carol A. Teter, Trustee. OMA says eminent domain should be used in rare circumstances, but when no other choices remain, its use is legitimate and necessary. In particular, OMA is supporting Sunoco’s right to use eminent domain for the Mariner East 2 project–a project that will employ a lot of OMA businesses and their employees…
In January 2015 MDN highlighted an ongoing squabble near Cleveland, in Cuyahoga County, OH, between the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) and the Ohio Oil and Gas Commission (OOGC) (see 
Fairmount Santrol is a proppant manufacturer/supplier headquartered in Ohio. Proppants are things like sand and ceramic beads used to “prop open” tiny fractures created in hydraulic fracturing of shale oil and gas wells. In other words, Fairmount Santrol is a regional sand supplier for shale drillers–and a good proxy to understand what’s happening (or not happening) in our neck of the woods when it comes to drilling. If drillers aren’t drilling as much, that will show up first in the balance sheets of companies like Fairmount. And so it does. Fairmount reports in their first quarter 2016 update that revenues in 1Q16 were down 52% from 1Q15. But you can’t automatically assume that means there was half the drilling one year later. Fairmount also reports the volume of sand sold was down just 8% from 1Q15 to 1Q16. Why the discrepancy between revenue and volume? Fairmount doesn’t say, but we think we know: drillers have been putting the squeeze on supply chain companies like Fairmount, forcing them to deeply discount their prices…
Earlier this month MDN brought you the exciting news that Eclipse Resources, a smaller Marcellus/Utica pure play driller headquartered in State College, PA (but drilling mostly in Ohio) has drilled the world’s longest shale well–in the Utica in Guernsey County, OH (see 
Mainstream media and the crazies who blat about ending the use of fossil fuels (stupid gits) have so demonized shale drilling the average citizen might assume shale drilling and all of those businesses that support it are from Satan himself. We spotted a story about an Ohio city (Columbiana) that has taken the unusual action of annexing an extra 94 acres of land next to an existing company located in the city so it can legally extend services like water, sewer and electric lines so the business can expand. That’s not unheard of. What is unheard of is that the business in question is Buckeye Transfer–a company that stores water, sand, chemicals and other materials used in (gasp) fracking of Utica Shale wells. Yes ladies and gentlemen, Columbiana is aiding and abetting a fracking company. It’s such an unusual story, we just had to highlight it…
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 
Yesterday we reported that a group of Ohio landowners calling themselves LEASE (Landowners for Energy Access and Safe Exploration) are encouraging Ohio residents to write in support of drilling in the Wayne National Forest (see 
We’ve written plenty in the past about the PA-based radical anti-drilling group called CELDF–Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (