USGS Finally Issues Report for Selling Water from 3 OH Reserviors
In June 2012, the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD) board flip-flopped on a decision to make water sales from their considerable inventory of lakes and reservoirs to Marcellus and Utica Shale drillers. At first they voted to move forward with water sales, then a few days later, reversed their decision pending a full-blown study by the U.S. Geological Survey (see Muskingum Watershed Reverses Decision to Sell Water to Drillers). Thankfully, the MWCD didn’t wait for the USGS study, which was supposed to be issued by the end of last year, before they went ahead with more water sales in September (see Muskingum Watershed Moves Forward with Water Sales to Drillers).
Perhaps the reason the MWCD moved forward before getting the results of the USGS study was a premonition about how long the study would take. The 33-page USGS report, titled “An analysis of potential water availability from the Atwood, Leesville, and Tappan Lakes in the Muskingum River Watershed, Ohio” was just released today (full copy embedded below)–seven months later than anticipated. Although the study offers analysis only and no conclusions or recommendations, the MWCD says the data in the study is “helpful”…
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Halcón Resources Corporation, increasingly an important driller in the Utica Shale, released their second quarter update yesterday. Halcón CEO Floyd Wilson also held a conference call for analysts. On that call, Wilson boasted about Halcón’s Utica Shale program–in particular the Kibler 1H well in Trumbull County which has been producing 2,233 barrels of oil equivalent per day–75% of it liquids. Halcón, which concentrates its drilling in “oily” plays like the Bakken and Utica, is currently operating 2 drilling rigs in Ohio/Pennsylvania. They’ve drilled nine Utica wells and are now evaluating the results. Halcón has 142,000 acres leased in the Utica Shale (primarily in Ohio).
Gulfport Energy issued its second quarter 2013 operations update yesterday. Among the highlights: The company produced less oil than a year ago after selling off its Permian wells and acreage to Diamondback, but they saw a dramatic increase in production of natural gas and natural gas liquids from a year ago. Gulfport’s natgas production was up 6.5X and liquids production more than doubled–up 2.3X from last year. The company also said they increased their Utica Shale acreage by an additional 8,000 acres–they now own 145,000 leased Utica acres.
An MDN subscriber recently emailed us to ask for more details about that map showing, by region, the number of new natural gas gathering and transmission pipelines that will be built (see