Ohio has Money, Needs Contractors to Plug Orphan Wells
It’s time to help the orphans in Ohio–orphan wells, that is. Ohio has some 1,000 orphaned/abandoned oil and gas wells. In early 2018 Ohio passed a new law making more funds available to plug orphaned wells–important because drilling a horizontal shale well through an old conventional/orphaned well can result in a disaster. Although Ohio now has plenty of money to plug their orphaned wells, there’s a shortage of contractors to do the work.
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9/5/19 NOTE: ODNR’s original percentages were incorrectly calculated. A day after releasing the wrong numbers, ODNR fixed the wrong numbers in their 2Q19 update. Frankly, we should have noticed the original error, and didn’t. The raw production numbers were right there before our eyes, yet we simply relied on ODNR’s incorrect percentages and drew the wrong conclusions. See below for the corrected numbers.
The boneheaded new law passed by the Ohio legislature known as House Bill (HB) 6, meant to save a couple of failing nuclear plants along with a few coal-fired electric plants, has just claimed its first casualty. And it’s major. Clean Energy Future Inc. which has already built two natural gas-fired power plants in Lordstown (Trumbull County, OH) announced it is canceling a project to build a third Lordstown power plant–costing the state $1.1 billion of investment. What a disaster.
The National Association of Royalty Owners (NARO), with a mission “to encourage and promote exploration and production of minerals in the United States while preserving, protecting, advancing and representing the interests and rights of mineral and royalty owners” is getting a brand new state chapter–in Ohio. The Ohio chapter of NARO is an offshoot from the NARO Appalachia Chapter–in order to focus exclusively on issues in Ohio.
Last November Encino Acquisition Partners (i.e. Encino Energy) completed its purchase of all of Chesapeake Energy’s Ohio Utica Shale assets for $2 billion (see 
In 2017 a group of Ohio landowners did what others had previously done in Pennsylvania, Texas and elsewhere–they filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Chesapeake Energy claiming Chessy had screwed them and about 1,000 other Ohio landowners out of a collective $30 million in royalty payments (see 
Ohio recently passed an odious new law (House Bill 6) to prop up two bankrupt nuclear power plants and several coal-fired plants (see 
Two weeks ago MDN brought you news about a newly passed Ohio law (House Bill 6) to prop up two bankrupt nuclear power plants and several coal-fired plants (see 
How much “due diligence” must a landowner engage in when it comes to locating a long lost mineral rights owner in Ohio? According to Ohio’s Dormant Mineral Act (ODMA), the landowner who wants to reclaim mineral rights that were severed must (a) send a certified letter to the last known address of the rights owner, and (b) if that doesn’t work, publish a notice in local newspapers to try and find the long lost rights owner. After that, the landowner can reclaim the mineral rights (an oversimplification, but you get the idea).
We caught wind of something on the Tallgrass quarterly conference call yesterday that had previously eluded our otherwise reliable radar. Tallgrass, via its subsidiary BNN Water, bought out and merged in Central Environmental Services back in May. That’s important because Central is a “water services” provider in the Marcellus/Utica. Namely, Central (now BNN) operates three injection wells in Ohio. On yesterday’s Tallgrass conference call, company officials said they are working on a plan to build pipelines to those injection wells, saving a whole bunch of truck trips.
It’s hard to miss the stories in oil and gas (even national) media: Company after company, in particular oilfield services companies, are predicting a big slowdown in drilling during the second half of 2019. Over the past few days OFS companies including Schlumberger, Halliburton, Patterson-UTI, Superior Energy Services, Helmerich & Payne, and RPC have all predicted a coming decline (crash?) in drilling in the near future. What about the Marcellus/Utica region? Does the coming slowdown affect us too?
A new law passed in Ohio to bail out two bankrupt nuclear plants was pitched as a way for ratepayers to save money. That was a lie. A bunch of squishy RINOs along with some Democrats in the Ohio legislature passed a new bill yesterday, signed into law immediately by Ohio’s RINO governor, Mike DeWine, to add a new surcharge to every residential and business electric bill in order to keep the two financially failing nuke plants operating for years to come. It’s a $5.4 billion boondoggle.
Super secret sources are whispering to Bloomberg that Energy Transfer is seriously considering selling its 33% ownership stake in the 713-mile, 3.25 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas Rover Pipeline, a line that flows Utica Shale gas from Ohio into Michigan and all the way to Ontario, Canada. Such a sale would net ET somewhere around $2.5 billion. Yes, we’re shocked!
It’s been some time since we’ve checked in on EnerVest, a private equity firm that owns a lot of acreage and wells (most of them conventional) in the Marcellus/Utica region. We spotted an update on the company’s holdings given by Steve Downey, EnerVest’s vice president of business development. Steve also happens to be president of the Ohio Oil & Gas Association (OOGA).