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ODNR Approves 4 Wastewater Injection Wells, More on the Way

Now that the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) has created tougher regulations for wastewater injection wells following earthquakes last year related to injection wells, they are once again approving new wells.

On Tuesday ODNR signed off on four new injection wells—another 30 applications are in the pipeline for consideration:

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Large Block of 95K Acres Available for Lease in OH Utica Shale

A private firm representing landowners with 95,000 acres in southeastern Ohio issued a press release yesterday essentially saying, “Hey, we’re still here, and we still have 95,000 acres to lease to some lucky driller.” The land is located in Washington, Athens, Meigs, Muskingum, and Perry counties in southeastern Ohio.

MDN is not in the habit of running this kind of “news,” but we are today because a) it helps the landowners, and b) it’s more or less a large landowner group—even though it’s a for-profit venture. And so, without further ado:

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GreenHunter Buys 2 More Wastewater Injection Wells

GreenHunter Energy, a company specializing in treatment and disposal of fracking wastewater, continues to add new wastewater injection wells to its portfolio. Just today they announced they’ve purchased two more injection wells, one in Washington County, OH and the other in Ritchie County, WV. In February of this year, GreenHunter purchased three injection wells, one of which was also in Washington County, OH (see this MDN story).

Here’s the details about the two newest injection wells for GreenHunter:

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Ohio Pipe Company Desperately Needs $30/Hr Welders

A pipeline fabrication and installation company located in Marietta, Ohio can’t find enough new welders and because of it turned away more than $20 million of business just last month, so the company—the Pioneer Group of companies, including Pioneer Pipe—has started their own program to train new welders to meet the demand. Why the sudden uptick in demand, and where is all that new business coming from they’ve had to turn away? The shale drilling industry, of course.

Once students going through the training, are certified and become union members, they’ll immediately start making $30 per hour. Not bad wages for 16 weeks of training. Pioneer is looking to hire 100 new welders.

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PDC Energy will Go-it-Alone with Utica Shale Drilling

go it alonePDC announced today they will “go it alone” and develop 45,000 acres of Utica Shale leases they own in southeastern Ohio without a joint venture partner. Apparently the offers they received weren’t good enough, so they’re committing $50 million to drilling efforts in the Utica in their 2013 budget.

Early results for PDC have been promising. They report drilling two wells in Guernsey County, OH. They plan to drill a third Utica well later this year in Washington County. Here’s the press release outlining early results, and their Utica plans for the next 12 months:

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GreenHunter’s New Water Facility on Ohio River Goes Live

GreenHunter Water’s new water and wastewater handing facility on the Ohio River in Washington County, Ohio has just gone operational. It is a bulk water storage facility, handling both fresh water used for fracking, and flowback or the salty wastewater that comes out of the ground after fracking.

From the GreenHunter press release:

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Why Would Seismic Testing Happen Inside City Limits?

An article in The Marietta Times (Marietta, Ohio) does an excellent job of describing the process of seismic mapping recently performed in the City of Marietta. Having a map of underground structures—how the rock formations and layers are arranged—is worth millions to drillers. So they hire companies to create maps.

Cables are laid along side roadways and a truck moves along “stopping at regular intervals to lower large vibrating metal disks from each truck onto the road surface.” The cables record seismic vibrations and create a 2-dimensional map of structures under the surface.

The initial 2-D mapping shows what’s happening directly beneath the road. If companies see areas that pique their interest, they then order a 3-D map, a more involved process. But they hardly ever (perhaps never) order 3-D maps for cities because drillers typically don’t want to deal with signing hundreds or thousands of individual landowners over a relatively small area. So the question is, why were seismic trucks doing 2-D mapping inside the city limits of Marietta if no drillers would ever want to drill there?

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Wolf Creek School District Leases to PDC Energy for $3K-18%

At a Monday meeting, the Wolf Creek Local Board of Education in Waterford (Washington County), OH voted to lease the mineral rights under school district property for Utica Shale drilling to PDC Energy. The lease terms are $3,000 per acre signing bonus and 18% royalties. School district officials, however, do not want any active drilling on the property—only underneath the property.

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