Pennsylvania

Armstrong County | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Ion GX Technology | Pennsylvania | Seismic Testing

Manor Township, PA Denies ION Access for Seismic Survey
September 4, 2012September 4, 2012

Houston-based ION Geophysical GX Technologies recently made a request to Manor Township (Armstrong County, PA) to allow them onto town property to conduct seismic mapping of the Marcellus and other underground structures. The board of supervisors for the town turned them down.

Here’s what ION told the supervisors at a meeting in July about what they hoped to do:

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA

PA DEP Releases Draft New Rules for Streamlined Drill Permitting
August 31, 2012August 31, 2012

A couple of weeks ago MDN outlined the smear job being attempted by the AP against PA Gov. Tom Corbett over his executive order to streamline the process used by the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) for permitting new gas and oil drilling (see this MDN story). Lord help us if a politician actually tries to reduce the red tape involved in legitimate businesses trying to do business!

The DEP has just submitted a draft for new rules to streamline the permitting process (embedded below). The DEP is now asking for public comments on the revised rules. As part of that process, they’ll hold two webinars for the public in September.

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Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA | Taxation

Final Numbers for 2011 PA Impact Fee Revenue Due Next Week
August 31, 2012August 31, 2012

As of next week, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) will know just how much money the new Act 13 drilling law will have generated for drilling that was initiated in 2011. The Act 13 law provides for an “impact fee” which is due payable by September 1.

Impact fee revenue will be used for a variety of reasons by local municipalities where drilling has occurred. In addition, 40% of the fees collected (in the spirit of compromise and American socialism) will be “spread around” to all 67 PA counties—the price of getting the legislation passed.

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Bradford County | Chesapeake Energy | Energy Companies | Pennsylvania

Chesapeake Updates Towanda, PA Landowners on Future Plans
August 30, 2012August 30, 2012

Chesapeake Energy Landowner Relations Manager Andy Travis held a meeting for landowners in the Towanda, PA (Bradford County) area Tuesday night to update them on Chesapeake’s future drilling plans for the Towanda area. Among his comments:

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Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

BENTEK’s Big Prediction on PA Natural Gas Production
August 30, 2012August 30, 2012

BENTEK Energy, a company started in 1985, has a deep understanding of the natural gas market having chronicled it, studied it and consulted on it for more than 25 years. BENTEK has just made a startling prediction: Pennsylvania’s natural gas production, mainly due to the Marcellus Shale, will increase 78% in the next three years.

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Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA

The Evolving Position of PSATS on PA’s Act 13 Law
August 30, 2012August 30, 2012

The Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors (PSATS) is an organization representing 1,455 local municipalities across PA—some 44% of the entire population. PSATS has appeared to some as wishy-washy when it comes to its support, or lack thereof, for PA’s new Act 13 drilling law. Initially they supported it as “the best deal” they could get from the PA legislature (something Gov. Corbett still refers to in his statements).

Later on, when seven of its member towns sued the state to overturn the zoning portion of Act 13, PSATS sort of supported them, eventually filing a brief in their support. Now they’re offering full-throated support to the effort to overturn the zoning provisions in Act 13 as it goes before PA Supreme Court.

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Ohio | Pennsylvania | Statewide OH | Statewide PA | Statewide WV | West Virginia

PA Drilling Rig Count Sinks to Lowest in 2 1/2 Years
August 29, 2012August 29, 2012

If you kick around the oil and gas industry for any length of time, you’ll hear about something called “the rig count.” Rig counts are the number of drilling rigs in use by energy companies to drill (or “spud”) new wells. If the rig count falls, that means new leasing is likely to fall and eventually, natural gas production will fall. But in the case of the Marcellus, falling rig counts don’t mean falling production—quite the opposite. It just means there’s a whole lot of wells already drilled, waiting to be completed and hooked up to pipelines.

Still, a falling rig count does give you a feel for where new drilling will (or won’t) take place—valuable for landowners and businesses to know. The latest numbers for Pennsylvania show the rig count in that state falling to its lowest level in years:

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Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

PA Electric Utility Dropping Rates – Again
August 29, 2012August 29, 2012

Electric utility Penelec, a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp. serving 600,000 customers in 31 western Pennsylvania counties, announced they are dropping the rate they charge for electricity for the third quarter in a row, saving the average residential customer an additional 4.2% on their electric bill.

Why the rate drop? In part, because of the Marcellus Shale.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

MSC Releases Guidelines for Pre-Drill Water Sampling
August 29, 2012August 29, 2012

The Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC), the powerhouse industry group headquartered in Pittsburgh that provides information to companies part of the drilling industry as well as info for the media, government and other “stakeholders,” yesterday released guidelines for drillers to use in sampling and testing water supplies before drilling commences.

The “Recommended Practices: Pre-Drill Water Supply Surveys” document (embedded below) helps drillers comply with the newly enacted Pennsylvania Act 13 law which requires drillers to sample and test water supplies within 2,500 feet of a proposed Marcellus Shale natural gas well. A certified laboratory must conduct the testing which provides baseline numbers that can be used for comparison during and after drilling to ensure water quality has not been adversely affected.

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA

Rewrite of 1984 PA Oil and Gas Act Underway
August 28, 2012August 28, 2012

Pennsylvania’s newly passed Act 13 was an important update to the state’s oil and natural gas drilling laws, but it didn’t do the whole job. Written into the Act 13 law itself is a requirement for the regulatory rewrite of the state’s 1984 Oil and Gas Act. That process has now begun.

Two weeks ago, the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued a 23-page “concept paper” of proposed changes to the agency’s Oil and Gas Technical Advisory Board (a copy is embedded below). It’s essentially a list identifying sections of the law with brief comments on changes (not intended to be the final language of a new law). The changes cover important issues like well location restrictions, water supply protection, predrilling surveys, application requirements, erosion and sedimentation controls, wastewater controls, standards for pit and tank containment and more.

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Allegheny County | Crime | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Wastewater

Pittsburgh Suburb Suspects Illegal Shale Wastewater Dumping
August 28, 2012August 28, 2012

Authorities in Plum Borough, near Pittsburgh, PA, believe there has been illegal dumping of Marcellus brine (wastewater)—two times—into its municipal sewer treatment system. The following notice offering a $1,000 reward was published today:

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Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

Penn State Extension Announces New Webinar Series
August 28, 2012August 28, 2012

The Penn State Extension Marcellus Education Team has just announced a new monthly shale webinar series, which begins on Thursday, Sept. 13 from 1:00-2:00 pm. The topic of the first session is a general overview of the Marcellus Shale with latest trends and updates. MDN has attended previous Penn State Extension webinars—they’re well worth your time.

Here’s the press release announcing the series along with the list of topics for future sessions:

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Energy Companies | Lease & Royalty Payments | Pennsylvania | Range Resources Corp | Washington County

Some Landowners Find Waiting Too Long to Lease Doesn’t Pay
August 27, 2012August 27, 2012

Hopewell Township in Washington County, Pennsylvania is the state’s single most densely drilled township. Leases in Hopewell go back to the 2005, the dawn of the modern shale gas drilling age in PA, and the driller who holds almost all of the leases in Hopewell is Range Resources, the company that sank the very first Marcellus Shale well which happened to be in Mt. Pleasant Township, which borders Hopewell (drilled in 2004).

Most of the residents of Hopewell have a tie to the shale drilling industry—either as landowners with leases or with jobs working directly or indirectly with the drilling industry. But that doesn’t mean landowners in Hopewell are getting top dollar for leasing their property. Quite the contrary. This is a cautionary tale about waiting too long to lease in hopes of getting a better price…

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Allegheny County | Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

Pittsburgh Businesses Rapidly Expand from Marcellus Shale
August 24, 2012August 24, 2012

It’s a story that just keeps repeating: How the Marcellus Shale has led to businesses expanding, adding employees (i.e. jobs), providing more tax revenue to communities and ultimately an improvement in the standard of living for the entire community.

Here’s yet another story from the thousands of similar stories that abound in the Marcellus and Utica Shale. This one is a trucking company in southwestern Pennsylvania:

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Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

PA Production Data Now Complete – Astonishing Results
August 23, 2012August 23, 2012

Late last week Pennsylvania released figures for natural gas production in the state for the first half of this year (see this MDN story). At the time MDN reported—based on what we now know was faulty data—that production had increased 12% over the previous 6-month period. Boy was that ever wrong!

By Monday, it was reported that (oops) Chesapeake Energy’s data was not reflected in the numbers (see this MDN story). Chesapeake just happens to be, ahem, the largest producer in the state. A lot of finger pointing quickly ensued. Chesapeake said in essence, “Hey, we provided the data! It was the screwed-up PA DEP database that didn’t show it.” But the PA DEP quickly shot back that the data provided by Chesapeake was late in arriving and full of errors and their database rightly screened out the data as bad.

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Coterra Energy (Cabot O&G) | Energy Companies | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Susquehanna County

PA DEP Allows Cabot to Resume Fracking in Dimock
August 22, 2012August 22, 2012

Now that most of the families in and around Dimock, PA who previously sued Cabot Oil & Gas claiming their water had been contaminated by nearby drilling have settled with the company (see this MDN story), the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has given Cabot a green light to resume fracking seven wells in Dimock that Cabot previously drilled but had not completed. The action to let Cabot finish those wells and bring them online comes two and a half years after activity on the wells was stopped by an order of the DEP.

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