A cautionary tale for landowners (and governments) looking to lease property. There is a finite window of time when your property is desirable and once that window closes, it may be tough to find a lease.
The village of East Palestine (Columbiana County), OH with 130 acres of village-owned land to lease is finding that out—the hard way:
Read More “Caution: The Timeline for Leasing Your Land is Finite”
It seems that residents of the City of Medina, OH, and indeed residents of Medina County at large, may not have to worry about fracking in the county, regardless of whether they are for or against.
According to ODNR and industry group Energy in Depth Ohio, the shale under Medina is too thin to bother with…
Read More “Will Medina County, OH See Any Fracking? Probably Not”
Chesapeake Energy has won an important appeal before the Ohio Supreme Court that ruled the Ohio Oil and Gas Commission did not have jurisdiction to hear an appeals case from a landowner over a permit issued to Chesapeake from the OH Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management to drill on the property. It was a case of the wrong agency sitting in judgment—the wrong “referee” if you will:
Read More “Chesapeake Wins Permit Case Before OH Supreme Court”
When was the last time local governments, labor unions, businesses, chambers of commerce and construction contractors were all on the same page? Yeah, we can’t remember that time either. Except it’s here—now. And it’s happening in Stark County, Ohio were all of those groups have come together to kick off a new initiative they call Choose Stark—an outreach to encourage Utica Shale drilling and fracking in Stark County.
We say that’s pretty cool and a lesson for other regions to consider:
Read More “Stark County, OH Labor & Business on Same Page: Frack Here”
In the latest dustup over “home rule,” city council members in Brunswick (Medina County), Ohio don’t like the state telling them they can’t regulate oil and gas drilling in their own borders. Unfortunately those same city council members don’t seem to know a thing about the miracle of hydraulic fracturing and they’re certainly not qualified to regulate it—but we digress.
Brunswick city council members were set to vote on a non-binding resolution on Monday telling Columbus to go take a hike, but Brunswick Mayor Gary Werner was the calmer head who prevailed. He talked council members into postponing a vote until the Feb. 11 meeting. Werner’s clear-headed reasoning: Why tell the drilling industry that’s transforming the economic landscape in Ohio that Brunswick isn’t interested in jobs or money from drilling?
Read More “Brunswick, OH (Almost) Thumbs Nose at State over Home Rule”
Wow! Some truly astonishing numbers (if they hold up) for the earnings power from a single Gulfport well in the Utica Shale of Belmont County, Ohio. According to a WVU professor who tracks these things, the Stutzman well, when brought online, will be earning in the neighborhood of $100,000 per day for Gulfport, and a huge royalty check for the landowner.
Here’s the calculations:
Read More “Mind-blowing Earnings from a Single Utica Shale Well”
MDN friend and Akron Beacon Journal reporter, Bob Downing, has just published an excellent piece of investigative journalism about brine dumping in Ohio landfills. Bob has tracked down a change in policy in Ohio that theoretically allows landfills to begin accepting brine from shale drilling. Brine is (mostly) naturally occurring salt water from deep below the earth that comes out of the wellbore after the well is drilled.
Some of the state’s 40 landfills have received permits to accept drill cuttings and other solids from the drilling process, but so far none have received permits to accept liquid brine that’s solidified with fly ash and other materials. That may be about to change…
More evidence of just how much the shale drilling industry impacts local businesses (the “supply chain” effect) comes from the new $400 million natural gas liquids processing plant being built in Columbiana County, OH. We reported in December the plant was on track for an “aggressive” May 2013 start date (see Columbiana County NGL Plant On Track for May Opening). The company building the plant, M3 Midstream (also known as Momentum), has revised the start date slightly to June.
Momentum’s construction coordinator Baron John gives an update on progress in building the plant, and offers a few examples of how far and wide the project has already impacted the local economy:
Read More “Columbiana County NGL Plant Creates Economic Boom”
The regional president for BP North America Gas, Tim Harrington, say’s it’s early days yet for exploiting the Utica Shale for gas, oil and liquids. In a presser on Friday, Harrington used a few words MDN hasn’t heard before—words like “producibility” and “prospectivity.”
The upshot of Harrington’s talk? BP will figure out what their prospects look like in Ohio’s Utica Shale over the next two years…
Read More “BP in OH Utica Shale: The Prospectivity of Producibility”
A Barnesville (Belmont County), OH couple have sued the company they signed a lease with in 2008, Oxford Oil Company, to prevent Oxford from drilling a new well on a hayfield on their property.
The details as we know them:
Read More “Belmont County Landowners with Lease Sue to Stop Well Drilling”
Some more impressive production results have just been reported by Gulfport Energy for two of their Utica wells in Ohio: The Clay-1-4H in Harrison County, and the Stutzman 1-14H well in Belmont County. Recall that the most productive well we’ve heard of anywhere (Utica, Marcellus or any other play) was drilled by Gulfport, the Shugert 1-12H in Belmont County. Looks like Belmont County in particular continues to be a great place to drill.
Here’s the results they reported yesterday:
Read More “More Impressive Production Numbers for Gulfport in OH’s Utica”
The Marcellus Shale is the powerhouse workhorse, but the Utica Shale continues to be white hot for development. Magnum Hunter Resources and its subsidiary Triad Hunter announced yesterday the company will drill a minimum of four Utica “test wells” in 2013. Provided they find a good result, they plan “further development” of their 107,000 gross acres of Utica Shale leases later in 2013—which connotes they’ll drill those test wells early this year. In fact, Triad Hunter is already working on their first Utica well pad in Washington County, OH. A second well pad in Washington County is already in the planning stages, as is a well pad in Noble County.
Magnum Hunter’s press release outlining their plans for Ohio, including references to new OH Marcellus wells just completed and new pipelines on the way for some of their existing OH Marcellus wells:
Read More “Magnum Hunter Ramps up in OH Utica Shale with 4 Test Wells”
In early December, MDN told you about a deal the Fairfield County (Ohio) Airport was contemplating to allow the ATEX Express ethane pipeline to be built under airport property (see ATEX Express Ethane Pipeline Will Pay OH Airport $450K). Fairfield County commissioners signed the deal yesterday and received a check for $450,000.
What do the commissioners plan to spend the money on, and when will construction on the pipeline under airport property begin?…
Read More “OH Airport Receives $450K Check to Allow Ethane Pipeline”
Hydraulic fracturing uses sand—a lot of sand—during the process of drilling for natural gas. The sand is a special kind of very pure sand called silica. It’s used to “prop open” tiny fractures in the shale so gas can drain out—hence it’s referred to as a “proppant.” Most silica is mined in the Midwest, in states like Wisconsin and Minnesota, so getting it from point A to point B for use in drilling can be expensive. Terminals are created to bring in sand by railroad and truck and to store it, making it less expensive.
Santrol, a subsidiary of Fairmount Minerals company, announced today they have just opened a new proppant terminal for Marcellus and Utica Shale drillers. The new terminal is located just south of Youngstown, OH—close the border areas of Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. From the Santrol announcement:
Read More “New Frack Sand Terminal Opens Near Youngstown, OH”
The Akron Beacon Journal has done a great job of cataloging a condensed list of who is actively drilling—or intends to drill—in the Utica Shale. There are 23 companies in the list. No surprise that Chesapeake is #1 with 325 of the 498 permits handed out so far.
Here’s the entire list of 23 companies, along with a rundown of who’s drilled all 48 wells currently in production:
Read More “Utica Drilling in a Nutshell: Permits & Wells Drilled, by Driller”
Anti-drillers in and around Kent, Ohio have some helpful suggestions for elected officials in Kent: ban fracking. And if you can’t ban it, make zoning so onerous that the practical effect would be to ban it. And if you can’t do that, be sure to pass a law that blocks access to all water supplies around Kent so drillers have no way of fracking. And if you can’t do that… See a theme developing here?