Why CONSOL Energy Chose Ohio Utica as Place to Restart Drilling
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 CONSOL Energy to Restart Drilling in August – Mainly in Utica). The drill bit is now chewing away. CONSOL, once a coal company, has been a huge driller in the Marcellus. Why did it change focus to the Utica? What, about the Utica, turned CONSOL’s head in that direction?…
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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…
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has issued a favorable environmental assessment (EA) for three Spectra Energy projects: Access South, Adair Southwest and Lebanon Express. The three are part of an expansion of the Texas Eastern Transmission (Tetco) pipeline. The combined projects will transport an additional 662,000 dekatherms per day (or 662 million cubic feet) of Marcellus and Utica Shale gas from Pennsylvania to Ohio, Kentucky and Mississippi. This is great news indeed!…
We’d never heard this before, but apparently the Marcellus/Utica has been known for some time as the “Beast of the East.” Fitting! However, our region has gone from “Beast of the East” to “Beast on a Leash.” Very true. Low prices have suppressed new drilling projects. But according to experts on a recent webinar held by S&P Global Platts, new Marcellus/Utica drilling “is imminent.” Now that’s REALLY good news! Here’s some other things said on the webinar…
Ohio Gov. John “foreigner hunter” Kasich is finally getting back to work after it has sunk in he’s not going to be the Republican Party’s nominee for president. One of the first things up on the agenda for Kasich: Issue executive orders. On August 9th Kasich issued Executive Order (i.e. Edict) 2016-04K which forces companies in the oil and gas industry to immediately report o&g emergencies to the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources’ (ODNR) Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management. The ODNR will then figure out who else needs to get notified and who should respond. Kasich’s Edict will expire in four months and is a band aid solution until the ODNR can adopt a formal, final rule…
The legal beagles at global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright have done us all a huge favor. Researchers have just issued a quarterly legislative action update for the second quarter of 2016 looking at previously laws acted upon, and new laws introduced, affecting the oil and gas industry in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. The “Quarterly legislative action update: Marcellus and Utica shale region” (full copy below) begins with a quick listing by state for existing or new laws introduced, with descriptions for each bill/law. This is, in one place, pretty much everything you need to know about what new laws (i.e. regulations) are coming down the pike that will affect the Marcellus and Utica Shale drilling industry…
