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How to Do Business with the Shell Ethane Cracker Plant

Some 400 business, education and government officials attended a sold-out forum last week in Titusville, PA to hear about doing business with the $6 billion Shell ethane cracker project in Beaver County, PA. The stakes are high. One PA official said, “This is the greatest generational economic development we’ve seen in Pennsylvania, maybe ever.” According to a Louisiana resident involved with crackers in his state, for ever job the Shell cracker creates there will be 8.3 jobs somewhere else–at other companies in the region–to support the plant. It is an incredible opportunity. The question, for businesses in the region, is: How do we get a piece of the cracker pie? We now have an answer–at least in part. If you want to supply goods and services for the construction of the plant, the key is in working with the main contractor building the plant–Bechtel. Below we have details on how to plug in to the Bechtel supply chain system, along with advice for job seekers who want to work at the cracker plant once it’s built…
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Universal Well Services Closes PA Facility, Lays Off Some Workers

It wasn’t so long ago that MDN told you about the “feel good” story of Universal Well Services, a Meadville (Crawford County), PA company specializing in pressure-pumping wells, cementing well pads and other well services (see Marcellus Supply Chain Success Story: Universal Well Services). Universal is a subsidiary of Patterson-UGI Energy, Inc.–a large oilfield services company. The company had grown from 200 to more than 1,000 employees in 10 years. But that was before the price of oil and gas went into the basement. Now they’re laying off employees…
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Marcellus Supply Chain Success Story: Universal Well Services

There is an inescapable fact in business: those who take risks are the ones who get the rewards. A corollary is this: Those who take the biggest risks get the biggest rewards. And so it is for Meadville (Crawford County), PA company Universal Well Services, a company that specializes in pressure-pumping wells, cementing well pads and other well services. Ten years ago Universal’s business was 100% servicing the needs of conventional oil and gas drillers. The company decided to take a leap of faith–they temporarily suspended their work for conventional drillers and instead worked on a single Marcellus Shale (unconventional/shale) project. It was a huge risk for a relatively small company…
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Titusville, PA Tells Shale Drilling Industry: We Want YOU

What a refreshing change! Titusville (Crawford County), PA, a small city in northwestern PA where this country’s first-ever commercial oil well was drilled (the Drake well), wants to market itself as the perfect place for those involved in the shale drilling industry to set up offices and operations. Titusville sits between active Marcellus and Utica Shale drilling on either side of it and will someday likely see its own drilling. City officials figure with a bit of marketing they can be a destination for the industry in NW PA. Smart.

Officials are spending $33,000 to get a plan developed that will assist them in knowing how and where to market their community. They’re even talking about using old wells in the area as (gasp) injection wells for frack wastewater! Right now the city is shopping for someone to help them develop a comprehensive plan…
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Allegheny College Faces Green Monster of Its Own Making

This is truly rich. Allegheny College, a private, exclusive, rich coeducational liberal arts college (2,100 students, tuition $38,750/year) in the northwestern PA town of Meadville has been a national leader in brainwashing teaching young college kids about the morally superior ways of so-called sustainability and worshiping Mother Earth and all things “green.” But dang, some of those nasty fossil fuel companies are waving big bucks in front of Allegheny College to lease some of the college’s land. Specifically, drillers want to lease, wait for it… the 283-acre Allegheny College Environmental Research Reserve. Talk about ironic! Like taking a bite from the apple all those years ago in Eden, it seems the temptation is just too much for Allegheny.

The college has assembled a white-wash working committee of faculty, staff and students to try, somehow, desperately, to justify selling their souls to the fracking devil so they can take those piles of money. Problem is, the college has created a legion of true green believers who now feel violated, betrayed, confused that the very institution they pay $38,750/year to teach them to hate all fossil fuels would possibly consider changing course for filthy lucre…
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Crawford County: Drilling Recap for 2012, Ahead for 2013

The Meadville Tribune (Crawford County, PA), like many local papers, is counting down their top stories from 2012. Their number 3 top story for the year? Shale gas drilling comes to Crawford County.

The article does a good job of recapping the drilling that happened this year in Crawford—both the who and the where—and makes some predictions about drilling for 2013:

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Mystery Buyer of Carrizo’s Northern Utica Acreage Revealed

Yesterday MDN reported that Carrizo Oil & Gas had sold off it’s interest in lease acreage in Ohio’s northern Utica Shale region for $43 million (see this MDN story). Carrizo did not identify the buyer, but the enterprising Youngstown Business Journal did.

Here’s who it is:

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