Pennsylvania

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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Allegheny County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Regulation

South Fayette, PA First Town Challenged Under Act 13
August 22, 2012August 22, 2012

Pennsylvania towns that have ordinances conflicting with the new state drilling law known as Act 13 run the risk of not receiving their portion of a new impact fee being collected by the state—unless they revise their laws to not conflict with Act 13. The first town to be challenged under this provision is South Fayette, in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh area). A resident of South Fayette wrote to the Public Utility Commission (PUC), the agency charged with policing compliance with Act 13, to complain that several town ordinances violate Act 13.

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Health Impacts | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

Health Care Systems Partner to Study Marcellus Impacts
August 21, 2012August 21, 2012

Guthrie Health, a regional health care provider in northeastern Pennsylvania and southern New York serving 200,000 residents in 11 counties, along with Geisinger Health System, serving 2.6 million residents in 44 counties in northeastern and central Pennsylvania, have joined forces to study the health impacts of Marcellus Shale drilling.

Using medical records of their patients who live near drilling, preliminary results of the study on how drilling may (or may not) affect asthma, cardiovascular disease and cancer are targeted to be released sometime next year, while other data will take longer—up to 15 years.

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Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Lancaster County | Pennsylvania

Marcellus-based Firm Expands to Service Other Shale Plays
August 21, 2012August 21, 2012

MDN doesn’t usually run press releases issued by companies apart from earnings and operations reports from drillers, or announcements of major new projects and deals. We see plenty of “we’ve just added two new people to our regional office in Mayberry” announcements and “we’ve just opened a new branch office in Pittsburgh” announcements. No big deal. It’s a “dog bites man” type of story.

But when a company that started life in the Marcellus/Utica region expands because of Marcellus/Utica drilling and opens a large regional office in other shale basin areas, that’s a “man bites dog” type of story, and one we think worth highlighting. Such is the case with RETTEW, a Lancaster-PA based company that provides engineering, consulting and construction-related services to the drilling industry.

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Butler County | Economic Impact | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Processing Plants | Shell

Shell Rep Tells Monaca Residents Cracker Plant Looking Good
August 20, 2012August 20, 2012

Last Wednesday night, a Shell general manager spoke to a gathering of people in Monaca, PA about Shell’s plans to build an ethane cracker plant in the community. As MDN has said numerous times, Shell’s deal to build a cracker plant in Monaca is a) not a sure thing, and b) will take years to complete when it does happen.

The Shell general manager, while reiterating those points, gave Monaca residents reason to be optimistic that the project will indeed happen in their community.

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Chesapeake Energy | Economic Impact | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

Chesapeake Data Screw-up Means PA Production Figures Wrong
August 20, 2012August 20, 2012

Last Friday MDN reported on the increase in Pennsylvania’s natural gas production in the first half of 2012 as compared with the second half of 2011 (see this MDN story). We noted that Bradford County was displaced by Susquehanna County as producing the most natural gas for 1H12. But there’s a “little” problem.

Chesapeake Energy, due to a “technical issue,” did not report its numbers—and they’re the number one producer in the state. Oops! The lack of Chesapeake data in the numbers has two implications:

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Accidents | Butler County | Energy Companies | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Rex Energy

PA Residents Weary of Fight with Rex over Water Contamination
August 20, 2012August 20, 2012

MDN reported six months ago about an ongoing case 30 miles north of Pittsburgh in Connoquenessing Township, PA, in a community called the Woodlands. Some residents claim their well water was contaminated after Rex Energy drilled at least 15 natural gas wells in the area (see this MDN story). Water buffalos were installed for 11 families, but after a year and extensive testing, the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) said that Rex Energy’s drilling was not the cause and Rex-sponsored water deliveries ended.

A new story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette updates the story with this background:

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Broome County | DTE Energy | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | New York | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Susquehanna County

DTE Moves Forward with Bluestone Gathering Pipeline in NE PA
August 20, 2012August 20, 2012

In July of 2011 DTE Energy announced they would file to build a 37-mile natural gas gathering pipeline through the Town of Sanford (Broome County, NY) as well as the towns of New Milford, Harford, Thompson, Jackson, Lenox and Harmony in Susquehanna County, PA. Dubbed the Bluestone Pipeline, the new gathering pipeline will hook to Marcellus gas wells along its route and connect to both the Millennium and the Tennessee interstate pipelines. (A data sheet issued in July 2011 showing the route of the pipeline is embedded below.)

DTE, under their subsidiary Bluestone Gas Corporation, filed a proposal on August 9 to move forward with building the pipeline. The New York State Public Service Commission is now accepting public comment on the proposed pipeline and its route until August 31. From the Public Service Commission press release:

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Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Inergy | Lycoming County | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Statewide PA | UGI Energy Services

More Details on Commonwealth Pipeline for Marcellus
August 20, 2012August 20, 2012

As previously reported, a new $1 billion pipeline for Marcellus and Utica Shale gas is in the works from Inergy, UGI and Capitol Energy Ventures (see this MDN story). The 200-mile “Commonwealth Line” would run from the MARC 1 Hub Line in Lycoming County, PA due south, connecting to Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, DC.

Here’s a bit more information about the project which is moving forward full speed ahead:

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

Judge Rules Act 13 Zoning Unconstitutional During Appeal
August 17, 2012August 17, 2012

The ongoing and currently unresolved court case in Pennsylvania over PA’s newly passed Act 13 law has an interesting new twist. You may recall a few weeks ago the middle-level Commonwealth Court in PA upheld a lower court ruling striking down the zoning provisions in the new Act 13 drilling law (see this MDN story). Those provisions under Act 13 substitute statewide zoning rules for oil and gas drilling in place of any local restrictions. Seven townships sued to have that portion of the law struck down and so far two courts have agreed. It’s now on appeal to the PA Supreme Court.

However, while the decision of the lower courts is on appeal to the Supreme Court, the original zoning portion of Act 13 was still in effect—until a judge’s order on Wednesday.

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Bradford County | Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA | Susquehanna County

PA Shale Gas Production Goes Up Again
August 17, 2012August 17, 2012

Shale gas production in Pennsylvania, almost all of it from the Marcellus, increased 12% in the first half of 2012 over the last half of 2011 according to new data from the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection. Also during 1H12, Bradford County was displaced as producing the most shale gas in the state by…

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Pennsylvania | Statewide PA

Marcellus Shale Coalition Expands with 2 New Hires
August 17, 2012August 17, 2012

The Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC), an industry-backed organization headquartered in Pittsburgh that does a terrific job at getting out the truth about drilling in the Marcellus, is expanding. They’ve just added two new people, Andrew Paterson will become vice president for technical and regulatory affairs, and Shari Williams, a former communications specialist with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, will head up MSC’s outreach efforts in the greater Philly area.

From the MSC press release:

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

Dimock, PA Landowners Settle Lawsuit with Cabot
August 15, 2012August 15, 2012

The long nightmare for Cabot Oil & Gas in Dimock, PA is now about over. Recently, the EPA declared the water wells in and around Dimock are clean (see this MDN story). We now have word that all but four families that sued Cabot in an attempt at a big payday will settle—likely for far less than they had hoped to extract, although exact terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.

There are still a few in Dimock who will fight to the bitter end, but that’s what keeps lawyers employed. So what. They’ll drag it on for years and they still won’t get what they want.

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