OH Wayne Natl Forest Landowners Tired of Waiting, Take Fight to DC
Bureaucrats deeply embedded in the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) are engaged in denying private property owners with property in the Ohio Wayne National Forest (WNF) their property rights. That’s the very serious (and true) charge being levied by members of the National Association of Royalty Owners (NARO). After “seven years of inaction,” property owners in WNF have taken their case to Washington, D.C.–to elected representatives from Ohio, along with federal agencies–in hopes of getting Utica drilling under way in WNF. After 10 long years, the BLM finally auctioned 719 acres in WNF in December 2016 (see BLM Auction Leases 17 Parcels, 719 Acres in OH Wayne Natl Forest). Since then BLM has held three more auctions. Ultimately there are some 18,000 acres under consideration for leasing by the BLM in WNF, a “patchwork” of public land scattered among private land. Some 60% of the mineral rights below WNF are privately owned! Those mineral rights owners have been denied the use of their property rights for more than a decade. It was thought with the beginning of auctions the situation would be remedied. Not so. Not a single drilling permit has been issued following the auctions. BLM bureaucrats are threatening private landowners that their property, if it belongs to a drilling unit along with BLM auctioned land, will be subject to a full National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review. Enough! It’s time to put an end to unelected DC swamp dwellers blocking Utica drilling in WNF…
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In what is perhaps the second biggest thing to hit Ohio since maybe the plow (the first being the Utica Shale, borrowing a phrase from Aubrey McClendon), Chesapeake Energy announced yesterday it is selling ALL of its 933,000 Ohio acres (including 320,000 net Utica acres) and 920 operated and non-operated Ohio Utica wells to Encino Acquisition Partners for $2 billion. This is truly big news! Encino Energy is a young company, founded in 2011, headquartered in Houston, TX. Last year Encino formed a partnership with Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to form Encino Acquisition Partners. It is the Encino subsidiary that is buying Chessy’s Ohio Utica assets. The burning question is, Will Encino drill more wells? Or just sit on its new acquisition? Based on how they describe themselves, we think Encino is going to pursue an active drilling program in the Ohio Utica. According to their own boilerplate, the company’s mission is to, “focus on driving long-term investor returns by acquiring and developing high-quality assets with an established base of production and a large, low-cost development inventory across the lower 48 states of the United States.” They’ve certainly acquired a high-quality asset with an established base of production and it has a large, low-cost development inventory. All the boxes are checked in buying Chesapeake’s Utica assets. So we’ll hold Encino to their word that they will “develop” it–meaning drill new wells. Chesapeake plans to use the $2 billion to pay down some of their ginormous debt…
There is an ongoing legal squabble in Trumbull County, OH over a proposed second Utica gas-fired electric plant in Lordstown. Clean Energy Future (CEF) is currently building the Lordstown Energy Center, and has been since June 2016 (see 
In late June Ascent Resources, a company founded by Aubrey McClendon after he left Chesapeake Energy, announced it is buying 113,400 Utica Shale acres along with 93 operating wells located in eastern Ohio for $1.5 billion (see 
The outspoken Bill Siderewicz, builder of a string of gas-fired electric generating plants in Ohio and elsewhere, is (surprise!) speaking out. Siderewicz, president of Boston-based Clean Energy Future, is the builder of the Lordstown Energy Center in Trumbull County, a project begun in 2016 and now nearing completion (see 
The NEXUS Pipeline project, owned by DTE Energy and Spectra Energy (Enbridge), is being sued by a farmer in Stark County, OH. NEXUS is a $2 billion, 255-mile interstate pipeline that runs from Ohio through Michigan and eventually to the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada. The Stark County farmer signed an easement with NEXUS in 2016. Construction began earlier this year. In late March, a lawyer hired by the farmer sent NEXUS a letter telling the company of erosion at the farm, due to their digging activities. The farmer estimated about $23,000 of damage at the time. But, according to the lawsuit, NEXUS didn’t fix the problem and that led to more damage–now up to $55,000 worth. The problem is that topsoil on the farm has been washed away. The farmer wants it replaced. If true, it certainly seems like a reasonable request to us. The farmer isn’t demanding millions of dollars, just the cost to replace soil swept away by NEXUS-related digging…
As MDN reports in today’s lead story, Ohio has just achieved a new milestone by producing more natural gas than the state has ever produced during the first three months of this year (see Top 25 Producing Gas & Oil Wells in Ohio Utica for 1Q18). The best performing individual wells are located in the southern part of the Utica play–in Belmont, Jefferson, Monroe, and Guernsey counties. However, don’t overlook the wells and overall performance of counties in the northern part of the play–places like Columbiana, Mahoning and Trumbull counties. Particularly Columbiana County. The Youngstown Business Journal does a deep dive into the numbers for the northern tier counties and finds that wells drilled by Hilcorp in Columbiana produced “strong results” in 1Q18. Here’s a closer look at the northern Utica counties and the drillers who work there…
Just a few days ago we told you about a group of anti-fossil fuel nutters, backed by the Big Green group CELDF, making yet another run at an illegal frack ban in Columbus, OH (see 
Natural gas production in the U.S. has rocketed skyward in just the past few weeks. According to the experts at RBN Energy, “the abruptness and sheer strength with which production has surged” has “taken the market by surprise.” Gas production rose in every region of the country, but it rocketed in one region in particular. Yep, in the Marcellus/Utica. When you look at how much our region was producing on June 7, and then again on June 28, the difference in just those three weeks is astonishing. Production of natgas soared and was 600 million cubic feet per day higher on June 28 than three weeks prior. Amazing! But production did not increase in every area of the Marcellus/Utica region. In one area, production decreased. Below you’ll find out where production went up, and where it went down in the M-U in June…
The spirit of P.T. Barnum is alive and well in Columbus, OH where enough suckers have been tricked by the odious anti-fracking group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to sign a petition to get a misnamed “Community Bill of Rights” onto the ballot this November. It’s more of the same from the PA-based CELDF. The Bill of Rights is a document in direct contravention to the Ohio Constitution, which reserves the right to regulate oil and gas drilling to the state itself–not to local municipalities. Each time the CELDF has tried this nonsense in other locations it has failed. The CELDF ballot initiative in Youngstown has now been voted down by voters seven times (see 
In 2016 MDN brought you the story of researchers who found microbes (bacteria) living nearly two miles down in Utica Shale wells. They dubbed one of the never-before-seen bacterial “lifeforms” in the well Frackibacter. We immediately labeled it a different name: Frackenstein (see