Here Comes Another “National Day of Action” Against Fracking
Get ready. Here it comes! Throngs of anti-drillers rising up to show their opposition to clean-burning natural gas. Break out the tie dye psychedelic shirts and hippie beads. It’s time to protest, maaan. Dig it! It’s like, whoa, tomorrow is “Freedom From Toxic Fracking Waste and Earthquakes: A National Day of Action.” Here’s our prediction: There will be two or three protest locations with about dozen people each–most of them hippie has-beens. Nobody outside of Democrat media will even notice the so-called protests. Below is the call to protest, naming the nutter groups behind it (the usual suspects)…
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Last week Gulfport Energy released their third quarter 2015 financial and operations results (see today’s companion story). If you read the full update, you notice Gulfport is not taking delivery of a fifth Utica Shale drilling rig in early 2016 as previously planned–which connotes they will continue to operate the four rigs currently in operation now. But therein lies the rub. MDN received a tip last Thursday from a reader that said: “I received word last night that Gulfport Energy is going to suspend operations in Ohio until the END of 1Q 2016. This would also include their service provider company, Stingray, which just had approximately 150 layoffs already. This news should break today once they inform the employees of the ‘layoff’.” MDN has not seen nor heard anything in the news about Gulfport suspending all drilling operations. We did find mention from September that Stingray had filed a WARN notice they would be laying off 47 employees in Pennsylvania and Ohio. We’re not sure what to make of the rumor…
A group of Ohio landowners is doing what others have previously done in Pennsylvania, Texas and elsewhere–they’ve filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Chesapeake Energy claiming Chessy has screwed them and about 1,000 other Ohio landowners out of a collective $30 million in royalty payments. The lawsuit was filed last Monday in Columbiana County Common Pleas Court (copy embedded below) by an Akron, OH woman and the owners of two Columbiana County farms. In addition to Chesapeake, French company Total E&P USA, Pelican Energy LLC and Jamestown Resources LLC were also named in the lawsuit. The plaintiffs claim the only allowed deduction from royalties, according to signed leases, is for taxes–not for drilling expenses, not for post-production costs, etc. The lawyers filing the lawsuit figure there are at least 1,000 landowners with 40,000 acres who have been negatively affected by Chesapeake’s royalty shenanigans…
In a somewhat related story posted today, MDN tackles the thorny issue of taxing pipelines in Pennsylvania. As serendipity would have it, last week Energy in Depth posted an excellent article on the financial impact pipelines are having in Ohio. Would you believe it if we told you that not only will an astounding $8 billion be spent to build new pipelines in the Buckeye State in 2016, but also an estimated $360 million in ad valorem property taxes (taxes on pipelines) will roll in to local municipal coffers. Next year. And every year thereafter! Here’s the numbers broken down by who is doing the spending and paying the taxes, and which pipelines will generate the most economic activity in Ohio next year…
In March 2014 MDN alerted you to a pitch being made by Gateway Royalty to purchase royalty rights from landowners in eastern Ohio (see 
It’s obvious that Hess has pretty much given up on its Utica Shale drilling program. Just last week we told you that Hess is shopping the rest of its remaining Utica acreage (see 
May we paint with broad brush-strokes for a moment? It’s been our observation over the years that anti-drillers (and anti-pipeliners, and anti-fossil fuelers) are typically liberal Democrats who have bought into the notion that (a) mankind is catastrophically heating up ole Mother Earth, and (b) they (the lib Dems) are uniquely qualified to run your life for you by choosing your energy sources. They love to tell you how to live your life–i.e. deny you freedom to live your life they way you want to, including selecting your own energy sources. It’s also been our observation that many (not all, but many) of the most vocal antis are hippie retreads who haven’t been this jazzed about a “cause” since the end of the Vietnam war. Yes that’s a very broad generalization and not true in all circumstances–but it’s more true than not. On the other side of the isle, when we’ve attended meetings about fracking and pipelines and FERC scoping hearings–we’ve noticed landowners and small business owners and pro-drillers are the “gray heads with hats” and blue jeans in the crowd. Typically quiet. Perhaps a bit uncomfortable that they’re in the same room with a largely lawless bunch of mouthy antis. The antis tend to form all sorts of groups with innocuous sounding names (Riverkeeper, Mountainkeeper, Trout, Clean Air, Community Rights, etc.). Pro-drillers and landowners? They don’t form groups so much. They don’t protest so much. They’re too busy working their fingers to the bone–paying for the welfare state anti-drillers avail themselves of! So when a group of pro-energy people DO form a group–that’s news. Such a group has formed in Ohio and Michigan in order to support two much-needed pipeline projects–Energy Transfer’s Rover Pipeline and Spectra Energy’s NEXUS Pipeline…
MDN told you back in April that OH Gov. John Kasich’s insistence that the state budget include a higher severance tax would not happen as part of the 2015 budget (see 
MDN has just published Volume 2 of the 
In January 2014 Hess Corporation sold 74,000 of its 95,000 100%-owned Utica Shale acreage leases to Aubrey McClendon’s American Energy Partners for $924 million (see 
The Obama war on coal continues. So far Obama has put around a half million people working for coal companies in the unemployment line. His solution? If you live and/or have worked in coal mines in Ohio and are now out of work, Obama is giving the state a $2 million Band-Aid grant (of taxpayer’s money) for “retraining” so the out-of-work coal miners can go to work in the Marcellus/Utica shale gas fields. One small problem: the gas companies are laying people off too. In record numbers. Government at its finest: retrain someone out of work in one industry for jobs that don’t exist in another industry. Here’s the details on the retraining program coming to the Buckeye State for out-of-work coal miners…
With President Obama’s war on coal in full swing, so-called renewable energy sources like wind and solar can’t possibly pick up the slack from coal-powered electric generating plants shutting down. Coal-fired electric plants are shutting down at an alarming rate–we’ve lost 11 million megawatts of coal-fired electric capacity in the past year alone. That situation spells opportunity for natural gas. One reason that natgas is making inroads in the electric generating space is because it’s a whole lot cheaper today than it was just a few short years ago to use clean-burning natural gas to power electric plants. In 2008 the price of natural gas sold for an average of $13 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf). Today? The price of gas has been bumping along at around $2.75/Mcf. In places like southwest Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio Marcellus and Utica gas sells for around $1.50-$1.75/Mcf. So it’s no wonder electric plants powered by natural gas are springing up all over the place. Below is a quick look at six such plants in eastern Ohio and West Virginia…