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Weekly Shale Drilling Permits for PA, OH, WV: Sep 13-19
A nice bump up (finally) in the number of permits to drill new shale wells in the M-U, although it’s a lot of wells for a relatively few well pads. Pennsylvania issued 19 new permits across five pads in both the northeast and southwest portion of the play, including 8 permits for a single Cabot Oil & Gas pad in Susquehanna County. Ohio issued just 3 new permits, all to Encino Energy for a single pad in Carroll County. And West Virginia issued a surprisingly high 18 permits to two drillers on three pads in two counties: Marshall and Monongalia.
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EQT announced yesterday it has closed on a deal to sell “certain non-strategic assets” to Diversified Gas & Oil (DGO) for $125 million, plus another potential $20 million later on. MDN first told you about this deal on May 13 (see 
In September Longview Power filed an application with the West Virginia Public Service Commission to build and operate a Marcellus gas-fired electric generating facility in Monongalia County, WV, near Maidsville (see 
Natural gas was front and center at the ninth annual Marcellus and Manufacturing Development Conference, an event of the West Virginia Manufacturers Association, held yesterday in Morgantown, WV. Among the speakers was Steve Winberg, U.S. Department of Energy assistant secretary for fossil energy. He mouthed strong support for the Appalachian Basin ethane “hub” saying the region can easily support up to five ethane crackers, and that could lead to $35 billion of investment and 100,000 jobs in the region.
Northeast Natural Energy (NNE) is a small-to-midsized driller headquartered in Morgantown, WV. It’s a young company, drilling its first shale well in 2013. In April 2017 MDN reported that NNE had obtained $300 million of investment from two investment firms (see 
As enormously productive as the Marcellus/Utica wells are, did you know that the best wells only recover perhaps 20% of the available gas trapped in shale rocks? Often it’s more like 10%, or 5% recovery. The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Morgantown, WV is trying to change those numbers. In a research program NETL calls “mastering the subsurface,” researchers are learning what happens at the smallest level of fracturing shale–so they can improve recovery rates using new processes and materials. In addition to improving recovery, they’re also looking for ways to cut down on water use. Since there’s a fair bit of water already trapped in shale, NETL is experimenting with carbon dioxide foam, as a way of using less water. (Don’t tell Al Gore. He HATES carbon dioxide, calling it a “pollutant” and saying it causes Mom Earth to toast). NETL is also using natural gas itself to frack rock. A lot of very important research is happening at NETL–research that may one day change the way we frack…
NGI’s Shale Daily has done it again. Ace reporter Jamison Cocklin has unearthed news that (so far) no one else has: Rice Energy has quietly, confidentially, hush-hush purchased all of the assets of LOLA Energy. The sale raises a lot of questions. But first, who is LOLA? No, not the show girl in Barry Manilow’s 1978 hit song Copacabana. LOLA Energy was birthed near the end of 2015, by former EQT executives using $250 million of private equity money from Denham Capital (see