The executive director of the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Association, Rhonda Reda, predicts that oil and gas drilling rigs will increase 300% in the next five years, and those rigs will create new jobs to operate them:
Read More “OH Drilling Rigs Expected to Increase 300% in Next 5 Years”
Under pressure from low commodity prices for natural gas causing a cash deficit for drilling, Chesapeake Energy is looking to sell off some of its oil and gas fields in Texas, Mexico and Oklahoma so it can continue to concentrate on drilling in eastern Ohio’s Utica Shale and other “wet gas” areas of the country.
Read More “Chesapeake Selling Assets to Concentrate on OH/Wet Gas”
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine (Republican) said yesterday he wants tougher penalties for Utica and Marcellus Shale drillers who “pollute.”
Read More “OH Attorney General Wants Drillers Who Pollute to Pay More”
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican in his first term in office, delivered the annual State of the State address yesterday. He chose to do it from the auditorium of a high-performing elementary school in Steubenville. During the 90-minute speech he was briefly interrupted by several hecklers until state troopers removed them from the room. Who were the bad actors? You guessed it—anti-drillers.
Read More “OH Gov. Kasich Heckled by Anti-Drillers During Speech”
West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio are all in the hunt to land an ethane cracker plant in their respective states (see the long list of MDN stories on a potential cracker plant in the Marcellus/Utica Shale region). According to WV Commerce Secretary Keith Burdette, Shell and another unnamed company are now in talks with private property owners. That is, the deals are now being negotiated, and it’s a waiting game to see the outcome.
All three states have offered huge tax incentives to land the plant. Shell originally set January for an announcement, but changed it a few weeks ago to be February.
Read More “Waiting Game: Cracker Plants Talk to Property Owners”
Increasingly, you will read on MDN and in press accounts about natural gas liquids (NGLs), and how major energy companies are now focused on drilling in the “liquids-rich” portion of the Marcellus and Utica Shales. The geography of where NGLs are found is typically western Pennsylvania, the West Virginia panhandle and eastern Ohio. But, just what are NGLs anyway? A helpful article on The Motley Fool website provides an excellent summary:
It looks like a $520 million Marcellus Lateral Project pipeline that Kinder Morgan wanted to build spanning 240 miles from the West Virginia panhandle to Toledo, Ohio, and the 2,500 jobs it would have provided, is dead.
Read More “Kinder Morgan OH Marcellus Lateral Pipeline Project Dead?”
West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio wait on pins and needles for Shell to announce which state they have chosen as a site to build a new $1.5-$2.0 billion ethane cracker plant, each of them looking for an edge to ensure their state is selected. WV Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin is flying to Houston this week to meet with representatives of Shell to make a personal pitch that West Virginia should be that place, with a promise of no property taxes on the plant for 25 years if they do so. Thing is, Ohio Gov. John Kasich has already been to Houston to pitch his state—two months ago. Does that give Ohio an edge?
Read More “Ohio vs. West Virginia in the Cracker Plant Sweepstakes”
Competition to attract an ethane cracker plant is heating up. West Virginia has made no bones that they intend to be the winners of the investment that will be made to build an ethane cracker plant to be built by Shell. The plant will cost upward of $2 billion and will create thousands of jobs to build the plant, operate the plant, and just as importantly, in the industries that will locate near the plant once it’s operational. It’s an economic jackpot worth $5 billion or more, and those who are in the game to attract it are in it to win.
Read More “Ohio Offers Shell Cracker Plant $1.4B in Tax Incentives”
Chesapeake Energy, American Electric Power and Spectra Energy are joining forces to build 70 miles of new pipeline in Ohio that will connect Utica and Marcellus gas wells in eastern Ohio to Spectra’s Texas Eastern pipeline system, which runs from Texas to New York. The new joint project is called the Ohio Pipeline Energy Network (OPEN). The estimated cost for the project is $500 million according to Spectra Energy.
Read More “Chesapeake Investing in New 70-Mile Ohio Pipeline”
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) is finalizing new state oversight rules on well construction for oil and natural gas that it says will be among the toughest in the U.S. (a copy of the proposed new rules is embedded below). According to ODNR officials, the new rules do not specifically address hydraulic fracturing, although the new rules will apply to horizontally drilled and fracked wells as well as conventional vertical wells. New fracking rules, according to the ODNR, “will be addressed later.”
Read More “New Ohio Oil & Gas Drilling Rules Coming January 2012”
In a year-end “media gathering” with Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the governor recounted his administration’s accomplishments for his first 12 months in office, and then he turned his sights on 2012. At the top of his agenda for next year? Drilling in the Marcellus and Utica Shales.
Read More “OH Gov Kasich’s Top Priority for 2012: Shale Gas”
The number of shale gas drilling permits in Ohio has rocketed from virtually none in 2009 and 2010, to 141 in 2011—the vast majority of that in the Utica Shale.
Read More “OH Shale Drilling Permits See Dramatic Increase in 2011”
Survey work in central Ohio has already begun on a new ethane pipeline to be built by Enterprise Products Partners. The pipeline, which was recently announced (see this MDN story), will reach from the Marcellus and Utica Shale region in Washington County, PA all the way to Cape Girardeau, MO where it will connect with an existing pipeline to the Gulf Coast. Surveyors for the new pipeline have already turned up in Fairfield County, OH.
Read More “Work on New Ethane Pipeline to Gulf Coast Now Underway in OH”
Politics in shale gas drilling is an unfortunate fact because the environment has been politicized. But that’s the reality. Anyone who thinks the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is not a political animal has their head in the sand. From its beginning, MDN has pointed out that the EPA is making a power grab—attempting to regulate oil and gas drilling via the back door by using legislation like the Clean Water Act.
Some on Capitol Hill, like Congressman Bob Latta (R-Ohio) who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, agree. Rep. Latta posted an editorial on the Politico website last night that says, in part:
Read More “OH Congressman Says Let State Governments Regulate Fracking”
A few weeks ago, MDN called attention to a new trend in the Marcellus and Utica Shale region—companies who want to buy landowners’ rights to future royalties (see this MDN story). It seems to be happening mostly in Ohio at the moment. These companies are offering to purchase a landowner’s potential future royalties for gas wells drilled on their property, paying them an up-front, one-time payment now. Think of those commercials you’ve heard where companies offer to pay lottery winners a lump sum now for the future long-term payouts, or settlements from a lawsuit with payments that stretch over years. That’s essentially what these companies are doing for landowners with leases in the Marcellus and Utica Shales.
Read More “Companies Target OH Landowners to Buy Royalty Rights”