Utica Shale’s Impact on Ohio Past 10 Years: $100 Billion!
Aubrey McClendon, co-founder of Chesapeake Energy and founder of American Energy Partners (renamed to Ascent Resources) was the first to recognize the importance of the Ohio Utica Shale and once famously said the Utica is “the biggest thing to hit Ohio since maybe the plow.” Turns out he was right, God rest his soul. The Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), a national group of families, farmers, small businesses, distributors, producers and manufacturers joined together to support America’s energy future, has just released a report that shows from 2006 to 2016, Ohioans saved more than $40 billion (!) on energy costs (natural gas and electricity) because of the Ohio Utica Shale. The report, titled “The Benefits of Ohio’s Natural Gas Production to Energy Consumers and Job Creators” (full copy below), breaks down the savings this way: Ohio residential customers saved close to $15 billion during the 10-year period, while commercial and industrial consumers saved more than $25 billion. But that’s not all. The report also quotes JobsOhio in saying that shale-related investment in the Buckeye State from 2011-2017 was a staggering $63.9 billion. If you add those two numbers together, the amount of money saved on energy (and therefore spent on other things), and the amount of money invested, it totals more than $100 billion of economic impact from shale in Ohio–in ten short years. Put another way, one-tenth of trillion dollars has been spent in Ohio because of shale. Mind-blowing…
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While the Marcellus Shale play is mostly about natural gas, with some natural gas liquids in the southwestern part of the play, the Utica play in Ohio is a different story. Yes, a lot of natgas and NGLs get produced in the Utica, but the Utica also has a lot of oil coming out of the ground. Crude oil. Straight from the Utica/Point Pleasant rock layer. Something that hadn’t dawned on us (until now) is this question: How do Utica drillers get their crude to refineries? With natgas and even NGLs, it’s done mostly via pipelines. When’s the last time you heard about a “gathering pipeline” running to a well pad for crude oil? Yeah, never. So how do drillers get all that oil to refineries? They truck it. Another interesting factoid: those Pilot Flying J truck stops don’t only sell refined petroleum (diesel) to truckers, some of those operations also truck raw crude to refineries. The Pilot Flying J in Canton, OH is one such operation–and they currently have a shortage of truck drivers to haul Utica crude. It’s a “trucker’s market” right now. If you have a Class A commercial driver’s license with Hazmat (hazardous materials) and tanker endorsements, Flying J wants to talk to you, stat…
Last week MDN shared the blockbuster news that Chesapeake Energy is exiting the Ohio Utica, selling all of its Ohio assets for $2 billion (see 
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 
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…
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…
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 
In 2015, landowners in Harrison County, OH who own 127 acres (the Kerns) filed a lawsuit alleging their property rights were about to be violated because Chesapeake Energy had filed a pooling request with the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) to pool (combine) the Kerns property with surrounding properties for shale drilling. The Kerns had not signed and do not want drilling under their land. Their neighbors do. Ohio has a law on the books that allows for “forced pooling” in cases when a majority of the surrounding land is leased but landowners with small positions refuse to sign. The Kerns resisted and fought the case all the way to Ohio Supreme Court, which rejected their claims. Chesapeake drilled and fracked three wells (on a neighboring property), which included drilling under the Kerns’ property. So the Kerns filed a new lawsuit in 2016, in federal court, claiming a “taking” of their property had occurred. The federal court has just ruled–against the Kerns. This was the first time a court case dealt directly with the constitutionality of Ohio’s unitization (forced pooling) law. The upshot: Ohio’s forced pooling law remains intact and in force…
On Tuesday the voters in Ohio once again roared their disapproval of anti-fracking candidates, and anti-fracking ballot measures. For the seventh time in a row, a radical anti-fossil fuel ballot measure was voted down in Youngstown, OH–by an overwhelming majority (56%). Even so, the hardened radicals behind the ballot measure promise to keep bringing it back until Hades freezes over. These radicals have already cost the taxpayers of Youngstown $188,000 to run the ballot measure. And yet they keep coming back. They fit Einstein’s definition of insanity. Statewide voters shot down the candidacy of anti-fossil fueler Dennis Kucinich, the man who pledged that if elected governor he would institute a total ban on fracking statewide (see