When Will More Oil Drilling Return to Eastern OH?
David Hill is a geologist and a driller located in Ohio (David R. Hill Inc.). At a recent Coffee and Commerce meeting sponsored by the Cambridge Area Chamber of Commerce, Hill offered his insights into when oil drilling may return to Guernsey County and eastern Ohio. As MDN recently reported, much of the focus on drilling in the Utica has lately turned to dry gas, or methane only (see Why Utica Drillers are Moving from Wet Gas to Dry Gas). Oil drilling, which was the original focus of the Utica and why Aubrey McClendon was so excited with his discovery of the Utica, has never developed to the extent hoped for–largely because of low pressure to force the oil out of the ground. There is oil drilling and production in the Utica to be sure, but not nearly as much oil drilling as there is drilling for dry gas and NGLs (wet gas). Hill and others are working on new technologies to unlock the abundant oil supplies in the Utica. So when will oil drilling return to Guernsey and other locations? According to Hill, when oil prices hit $70-$80/barrel. He may be waiting a long time…
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Yesterday MDN reported the story that Dominion Transmission has decided to lock out union members from working at their jobs in Dominion installations over a contract dispute (see 
Virulent anti-fossil fuel nutters who are opposed to Spectra Energy’s $2 billion, 255-mile NEXUS interstate pipeline that will run from Ohio through Michigan and eventually to the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada, have stayed up late at night reading through all of the comments sent to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The habit of antis is to generate a blizzard of negative comments to FERC on any given project, sometimes using the names of their children (see 
This story is almost too good to be true. Researchers from Ohio State University have been analyzing the genomes of microorganisms (i.e. bacteria) that live in Utica Shale wells. (Who would think to do something like that?) The researchers “have found evidence of sustainable ecosystems taking hold there–populated in part by a never-before-seen genus of bacteria they have dubbed ‘Frackibacter.'” Translation: There’s little communities of microscopic critters that live in those shale wells, including a brand new critter that lives only in fracked Utica Shale wells. The hypothesis is that fracking itself created this new mutated life form. The researchers are calling it Frackibacter (we think it’s pronounced frack-uh-back-tor). We have a better name: Frackenstein! Yes ladies and gentlemen, step right up to witness this fracking freak of nature–a bacteria created from fracking itself. Who knew fracking didn’t destroy life, but actually creates it?! Below is an article about the discovery, along with a copy of the peer reviewed paper published in the journal Nature Microbiology announcing the discovery of this new fracked life form…
This is an update to a story MDN ran last week observing that Utica drillers have slowed (or stopped) their wet gas drilling work and instead have shifted to drilling Utica wells, in Ohio, in the dry gas areas (see 
The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) has just issued production numbers for the second quarter of 2016. Compared with second quarter 2015, production numbers in 2Q16 were a mixed bag. Oil production in 2Q16 dropped by 19%–that’s the bad news. But natural gas production from shale is up 51% year over year–that’s the good news. CONSOL Energy’s CNX Gas division had the #1 producing gas well in Monroe County, the Brewster well, producing 1.6 billion cubic feet of natgas during 2Q16. Eclipse Resources had the #1 producing oil well in Guernsey County, the monster Purple Hayes, which produced an astonishing 71,072 barrels of oil in 2Q16. Below we have the ODNR’s high level overview of the numbers, along with MDN’s own exclusive analysis showing: the top 25 producing gas wells, the top 25 producing oil wells, and then the top 25 gas and oil wells as ranked by average production per day. There is a difference!…
In 2015 CONSOL Energy temporarily quit all new drilling activity. In July of this year, they said they would restart their drilling activities, targeting the Ohio Utica (see 
Two radical environmental groups in Ohio–Ohio Environmental Council and the Clean Air Task Force–have just released a 100% bogus “report” that attempts to tie asthma in children to fracking. If lying to the public were a crime, they’d be in jail right now. Here’s how these sleazy groups make such a claim: They claim, from looking at medical records, that there are 7,129 childhood asthma attacks in the Columbus metro area, and 7,558 in the Cleveland metro area each year. Absolutely no context as to whether those numbers are higher or lower than elsewhere in the country, or whether or not the numbers are increasing year over year. These groups just toss out numbers. They claim the asthma attacks are because of smog in those cities. They further claim smog comes from burning oil and gas and ergo, childhood asthma attacks are the result of fracking, because fracking extracts more oil and gas which is burned and causes smog which causes asthma. It is a heaping mound of cow manure. The problem is that otherwise good news sources, like the Akron Beacon Journal, push this manure out as news…
Listen up Ohio landowners and drillers: there are important new changes coming in the way oil and gas reserves are taxed, starting THIS YEAR. One such change: tax bills will now only be issued to producers (i.e. drillers) and NOT to royalty interest holders (i.e. landowners). Therefore drillers will be responsible to collecting taxes owed by landowners. The new changes will “significantly change how the ad valorem tax is collected” and because of the changes, it will be “very important” for drillers to accurately report production volumes to the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR). Here’s a rundown of the changes from the legal beagles at top energy law firm Vorys…
In June MDN told you about an economic development group of business and government leaders from Ohio and West Virginia (the Mid-Ohio Valley) called Shale Crescent (see 
Stark State College, located in North Canton, OH, has just been awarded a half million dollar grant from OH Gov. John Kasich’s Education Innovation program to provide ShaleNET education and training to students at Stark State’s sister schools, Eastern Gateway Community College in Steubenville, OH and Hocking College in Nelsonville, OH. MDN first reported on Stark’s new Well Site Training Center back in 2014 (see 
All the way back in February MDN brought you exclusive news that Shell had begun approaching landowners in Beaver County to get them to sign easements for two ethane pipelines to feed the mighty cracker plant they plan to build in the county (see 
While the number of permits issued to drill new wells in Ohio and Pennsylvania was down in July 2016 compared with July 2015, permit activity has picked up from earlier in the year. Finally. The question is, where are the new permits being issued? You have to have a permit before you have drilling. Permits are the best indicator of where drilling (and economic) activity is about to pick up. Below is a rundown of which counties are likely to soon see drilling–and which drillers will be doing the drilling…