SWPA County Political Leaders Voice Support for Petchem, Shale
In a speech delivered October 31 to the P4 Climate Action Summit in downtown Pittsburgh, Mayor Bill Peduto declared his hatred for the petrochemical industry. He doesn’t want any more Shell crackers junking up his regional backyard. The highly negative reaction to Peduto’s idiotic (and pandering) remarks was swift. What petchem company wants to build in a region where the mayor of its largest city is trash talking the industry? In a bid to counter Peduto’s economically damaging remarks, some 20 county officials from Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Lawrence, Mercer, Washington and Westmoreland counties issued a joint statement on Wednesday to show their support for the petrochemical and shale industries in the region.
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Here is what we believe to be an exclusive: In June, PennEnergy Resources sold/transferred four well pads (with multiple wells) located in Butler and Lawrence counties in western PA to Geopetro LLC. We have the names of the well pads and proof of the transfer. We’ve not seen this news anywhere else.
It seems the door *does* swing both ways when it comes to Pennsylvania municipalities and the Act 13 lawsuit decision that allows municipalities to have a say in zoning in, or zoning out, shale drilling. In 2013 seven selfish PA towns won the right, from the PA Supreme Court, to impose their own zoning rules on oil and gas drilling (see 
We caught a helpful update on PennEnergy Resources from a report on last week’s Hart Energy DUG East Conference in Pittsburgh. PennEnergy CEO Richard Weber told the DUG audience that his company is currently producing an average half a billion cubic feet of natural gas per day, with plans to increase that by 10% this year. One thing holding the company back is the ongoing outage of Energy Transfer’s Revolution Pipeline gathering system.
EdgeMarc Energy, headquartered in Canonsburg, PA (with 45,000 acres of Marcellus/Utica leases), is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, looking to sell all of the company’s assets. The reason? They can’t move their production to market because their main pipeline partner, Energy Transfer’s Revolution Pipeline, exploded last September and ET has not been able to get the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection to allow them to restart it.
Speaking of the exploded Revolution Pipeline located in southwestern Pennsylvania that’s led to a driller declaring bankruptcy (see EdgeMarc Energy Files for Bankruptcy, Blames Revolution Pipe Outage), yesterday the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued an order to Energy Transfer, builder of Revolution, to “identify and restore or mitigate all streams and wetlands that it illegally eliminated or altered during the construction” of the pipeline. DEP claims ET “illegally” eliminated at least 23 streams and changed the length of another 120 streams.
Beginning in 2012, MDN reported on the story of a community in western Pennsylvania (in Butler County) whose residents said that nearby drilling by Rex Energy led to contamination of their water wells (see 
A journey which began for Pennsylvania landowners in Butler County, PA in July 2015 is nearing an end. Two Butler County, PA landowners with a combined 245.7 acres of land leased to XTO Energy sued XTO in 2015 claiming that XTO is breaking the lease agreement by paying royalties below 1/8 of what XTO receives in revenue for the gas (see 
Rex Energy, a driller focused mainly on the Marcellus/Utica (headquartered in State College, PA), issued their third quarter 2017 update earlier this week. The company continues to bleed money, losing $47 million in 3Q17, versus losing $55 million in 3Q16. An improvement, but showing a profit would be a whole lot better than a loss at this point. Highlights for 3Q17: Rex placed the four-well Wilson pad into sales (Butler County, PA) with initial 24-hour average sales rate per well of ~10.9 million cubic feet equivalent per day (MMcfe/d). Total production averaged 182 MMcfe/d–with 38% of that liquids production. Rex drills in both western PA and eastern OH. Rex officials said they are currently working on 10 new wells in Carroll County, OH that will go online in 2018. So far Rex has drilled 30 wells in the Buckeye State. Below is the full 3Q17 update, along with excerpts from the analyst phone call and the latest Rex slide deck…
A group of so-called “health experts” pontificated at an event yesterday hosted by the League of [Liberal Democrat] Women Voters in Pittsburgh. They were supposedly there to discuss shale and public health. One of the gripe sessions took aim against Shell’s now-under construction ethane cracker facility. Speakers tried hard not to come right out and curse shale and the cracker–but they couldn’t help themselves. In the end they made untrue statements that imply the cracker will poison the community and make it unlivable. One speaker’s solution? “Don’t build it.” Typical. All you need to know about yesterday’s meeting is that one of the panelists is the staff attorney for the radical enviro organization Earthjustice. Truth was the main casualty at yesterday’s meeting…
Ahead of providing its third quarter 2017 update, yesterday Rex Energy, a driller focused mainly on the Marcellus/Utica (headquartered in State College, PA) has issued an update on two wells recently connected to sales. The two wells are located in Rex’s Butler County, PA “Moraine East” area. What’s unique is that both wells were completed with a newly revamped/tweaked completion design. Completions is that part of drilling a well when you frack it and hook it up to production. Rex doesn’t comment on how they tweaked their completion design. Typically, changing up completions may involve how long each frack stage is, the type (and quantity) of sand or other proppant used, the kind of slick water used, etc. Rex worked with an engineering firm to review their completions process and made some changes–and they are happy with the results. Initial daily production for the two wells averaged 9.4 million cubic feet equivalent per day (MMcfe/d). Rex reports the methane (natural gas) portion was 4 MMcf/d, NGLs of 820 barrels per day, and condensate averaged 70 barrels per day. Looks like Rex has a couple of winners, with more on the way using the new completion design…
Rex Energy, a driller focused mainly on the Marcellus/Utica (headquartered in State College, PA), is a plucky company. Although it has faced its share of financial challenges, it continues to drill in the Marcellus/Utica–bringing new wells online. Rex released an announcement yesterday to tout two new wells pads with a cumulative 10 new wells between them that the company has now brought online into production. Rex always refers to their drilling program in three areas: “Bulter Legacy” and “Moraine East” are drilled on Rex’s leases in Butler County, PA; “Warrior North” refers to Rex’s drilling program on land in Carroll County, OH. The latest two pads were both drilled in Rex’s Moraine East area of Butler County. One of the pads, the “Shields” pad with six wells, produced an initial cumulative rate of 9.2 million cubic feet equivalent per day (MMcfe/d), dropping to 7.9 MMcfe/d after 30 days. The “Mackrell” pad with four wells produced an initial cumulative rate of 8.4 MMcfe/d. No 30-day rate (yet) for the Mackrell pad. Here’s the particulars of our “little driller that could”…