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Marcellus Industry Tells U.S. Sen. Toomey “We Need More Workers”
Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senator Pat Toomey visited the Lackawanna College School of Petroleum and Natural Gas (PNG) near Tunkhannock (Wyoming County), PA yesterday. What struck us about coverage of the event is that PNG officials said they don’t have enough students to fill all of the available, open positions for graduates and that people from the industry said they don’t have enough workers to fill jobs in the Marcellus Shale.
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The wild roller coaster continues of up, down, up, down, up, down. Last week the number of permits issued to drill new shale wells is down again–to 18 total. Pennsylvania had 16 new permits last week, nine for Repsol and three for Coterra Energy. All of Repsol and Coterra’s permits issued for Susquehanna County. West Virginia had two new permits, one each for Southwestern Energy and Antero Resources, in Marshall and Doddridge counties. Ohio? A big, fat, goose egg. No new shale permits issued last week in the Buckeye State.
As predicted last week by Reuters, Chesapeake Energy announced yesterday it is buying Marcellus driller Chief Oil & Gas plus associated non-operated assets from Tug Hill Operating for $2 billion in cash and approximately 9.44 million common shares. The total purchase price (given the current CHK stock price of $67/share) is roughly $2.6 billion. The combination makes Chesapeake a powerhouse driller in the northeast Pennsylvania Marcellus with 653,000 acres of leases.
Back in December, MDN editor Jim Willis had the delight and pleasure of attending an open house at the new location of the 
Last week 24 permits were issued to drill new shale wells in the Marcellus/Utica. Pennsylvania had the lion’s share with 19 new permits–most of those (10) were issued for two Chesapeake Energy well pads in Bradford County in the northeastern part of the state. Ohio had just two new permits, both on the same Southwestern Energy well pad in Monroe County. West Virginia had three new permits, one in Pleasants County and two in Marshall County.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) published a notice in the November 20 Pennsylvania Bulletin that it has signed an oil and gas lease agreement with BKV Operating, LLC (Banpu, Thailand’s largest coal mining company and an investor/operator drilling shale wells here) covering 198.5 acres of the Susquehanna River located in Mehoopany and Washington Townships in Wyoming County.
Two out-of-state Members of Congress, Rep. Dan Newhouse (Washington-04) and Rep. Yvette Herrell (New Mexico-02), both members of the Congressional Western Caucus, recently took a field trip to northeastern Pennsylvania to get a firsthand look at how Marcellus drillers and midstream companies get the job done. They came away thoroughly impressed, to the point they penned an editorial for a local newspaper that begins with this sentence: “Pennsylvania’s natural gas producers are providing safe, reliable, and affordable energy for the United States and setting an example for states across the country.”
In January EQT Corporation announced it would partner with a Denver, CO company calling itself “Project Canary” to run a test on two of its shale gas pads, to prove the natural gas produces is “certified responsibly sourced” (see 
At some point in the distant past (during our lifetime) swamps got renamed to “wetlands.” Don’t you just love how the left euphemizes everything? Chesapeake Energy is a bad actor when it comes to shafting landowners out of royalties, we’ll grant you that. However, the company must now pay Pennsylvania and the federal government (DOJ and EPA) a combined $1.9 million for “failure to identify and protect wetlands at 76 oil and gas well sites in Pennsylvania.” In other words, failure to protect swamps.
We don’t write much about Alta Resources, a shale drilling company co-founded by the inventor of shale fracking, George Mitchell. But that doesn’t mean Alta doesn’t drill in the Marcellus. The company owns some 547,000 gross (239,000 net) acres producing natural gas from approximately 900 wells in the Marcellus Shale across Bradford, Wyoming, Sullivan, Lycoming, Clinton, and Centre counties in northeast Pennsylvania. Alta is shopping all of their considerable Marcellus assets, looking for a buyer.