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9 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Jul 22 – 28
For the week of July 22 – 28, a total of nine permits were issued to drill new shale wells in Marcellus/Utica. Pennsylvania had the fewest with just two new permits, one each for Seneca Resources and Rice Drilling (i.e., EQT). Ohio had the most with four new permits, all of them for EOG Resources for a single pad in Noble County. West Virginia came in between with three new permits, all three for Antero Resources in Tyler County.
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We’ve written a number of times about the Ohio Utica Shale and its beginnings with gas legend Aubrey McClendon, who, as CEO of Chesapeake Energy, was one of (if not THE) first to recognize the Utica as an oil play. However, it was a successor company, Encino Energy, that figured out how to coax large quantities of oil out of the Utica shale. Encino is one of the big success stories of drilling for oil in the Ohio Utica Shale. Roughly six years ago, Encino, in partnership with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), closed on buying Chesapeake Energy’s Ohio Utica assets for $2 billion (see 
Last week, MDN exclusively brought you the news that the CEO of American Environmental Services, which owns Austin Master Services (AMS), had filed a brief with Belmont County Court to either forgive or reduce a $1.2 million bond needed to keep the CEO, Brad Domitrovitsch, out of jail (see 
Yesterday, the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) opened up the shuttered Austin Master Services (AMS) radiological waste management solutions company in Martins Ferry (Belmont County), Ohio, to begin cleanup work at the facility. One contractor began working at the site, while a bunch of others did a “pre-bid walkthrough” to look at what is there to make bids for cleaning it. AMS is permitted by the ODNR to temporarily store up to 600 tons of fracking waste, like drill cuttings and wastewater. ODNR estimates there are some 10,000 tons of fracking waste at the site. AMS ran out of money, and vendors quit accepting the waste. After failing to meet a court-ordered July 22 deadline, ODNR stepped in to handle the cleanup.
As we have been reporting, Austin Master Services, a radiological waste management solutions company in Martins Ferry (Belmont County), Ohio, that handles fracking waste (trucks it for disposal), ran into trouble when it ran out of money. The facility where waste is temporarily stored went from a permitted maximum of 600 tons of stored waste to over 10,000 tons, in violation of its permit. The Ohio Attorney General’s office filed a lawsuit against the company to force compliance. As is always the case, there are two sides to every story. The side of AMS and its owner, Brad Domitrovitsch, is not getting much media coverage. We have an update on Brad’s side of the story…
Austin Master Services (AMS) is a radiological waste management solutions company in Martins Ferry (Belmont County), Ohio. The Ohio Attorney General lodged charges against AMS in March, accusing the company of storing 16+ times more drill cuttings at the facility than it’s rated for (see 
In the fall of 2021, President Biden signed into law the so-called Infrastructure Bill, some $1.2 trillion in pork barrel spending, passed with the help of turncoat Republicans (see 
In early June, the owner of Austin Master Services (AMS), American Environmental Partners (AEP), sent a press announcement to MDN to announce he had found a buyer for AMS (see 
According to Public News Service (PNS), a Big Green propaganda outfit funded (in part) by the Fresh Water Accountability Project, the CEO of Austin Master Services (AMS), a frack waste storage facility in Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, was supposed to attend a Belmont County court hearing by phone. He faces contempt-of-court charges for failing to clean up 10,000 tons of waste. However, it wasn’t the hearing that caught our attention; it was a comment made by the Mayor of Martins Ferry.
Operators and investors are more concerned than ever about the remaining inventory of drillable locations. Who has it? Where is it? Will it be economic? The North American inventory rankings by shale play are always of interest. Enverus Intelligence Research (EIR), a subsidiary of Enverus, recently issued a report that ranks the plays by the number of economic-to-drill locations each play has left. Unfortunately, Marcellus Shale play is on the list of “losers” in this latest report. Why? A huge jump in Bidenflation — rig day rates were up 25% year-over-year in September in the Marcellus, compared to about 15% across the other plays. Also a factor is dropping productivity in the Marcellus (“productivity degradation”), particularly in northeast PA.
In January 2023, Ohio House Bill (HB) 507 became law with the signature of Gov. Mike DeWine (see 
An anti-drilling Democrat member of the Ohio House of Representatives (representing a Cleveland suburb) would love nothing more than to ban all shale drilling in his state. He has just introduced a bill requiring drillers to disclose any and all chemicals they use for any purpose when drilling a new shale well under state-owned land. State Rep. Sean Patrick Brennan, representing the 14th Ohio House District, claims House Bill (HB) 562 will “improve public safety and transparency.” Will it? Is that its real purpose?