According to Jeffrey Green, director of research for WorkForce West Virginia, oil and gas jobs, mostly in the Marcellus Shale, grew by 9.5% from 2008 to 2011. The average annual wage for gas industry workers in West Virginia? $70,082 per year—and increasing each year.
Green share a number of statistics with WV lawmakers on Monday:
Read More “Research Shows WV Marcellus Drilling Equals High Paying Jobs”
A new polyethelene (PE) manufacturing plant complete with a “small” ethane cracker is coming to West Virginia, somewhere “south of Wheeling.” Appalachian Resins Inc. is the company that will build the new plant with a capacity to produce 500 million pounds of PE per year. They aim to take advantage of Marcellus and Utica Shale gas and its byproduct ethane which is so abundant throughout the region.
Construction on the new plant will begin later this year. Here are the details that we have so far:
Read More ““Small” Ethane Cracker Plant Coming to Wheeling, WV”
In a story about a natural gas pipeline that will be run under a county-owned trail in Brooke County, WV, MDN spotted a brief mention about the signing bonus and royalty rate received by Brooke Hills Park in 2011 for drilling on 100 acres of park land. It is perhaps the highest per acre signing bonus we’ve seen for land in the Marcellus:
Read More “WV Park’s Marcellus Signing Bonus the Highest We’ve Seen”
A group of landowners in Wirt County, WV have just taken the crown as the largest landowner coalition MDN is aware of in the entire Marcellus and Utica Shale. The Wirt County Oil and Gas Group closed the door on new signups as of Monday, and the total acreage represented by the group is an astonishing 227,000 acres—almost 1/4 million acres! The really attractive part for potential drillers? The land is located in the wet gas area of the Marcellus.
The next largest group MDN is aware of is in Upstate New York—the CNY (Central New York) Landowners Coalition—with 194,500 acres. Both the Wirt County and CNY coalitions have representatives in Houston this week for the NAPE Winter Expo, shopping the acreage looking for a lease.
More details on the Wirt County group:
Read More “WV Group Largest Landowner Coalition in Marcellus/Utica”
It never ceases to amaze MDN the kinds of businesses that benefit from Marcellus and Utica Shale drilling. Here’s yet another one we bet you didn’t know about: The West Virginia manufacturer sells a 6,000-pound “cattle stop” to the Marcellus and Utica drilling industry.
Er, what is a cattle stop, and who does this manufacturer sell them to? Read on…
Read More “Strange/Interesting Things Companies Sell to the Shale Industry”
Drilling company Antero Resources continues to grow its presence and commitment to the state of West Virginia. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin issued is 2013 annual doing business in WV report (called the West Virginia Edge Business Report) yesterday. In the report we found this interesting brief statement about Antero building a new office complex in Bridgeport:
Read More “Antero Says 2013 Plans for WV Drilling are “Aggressive””
In early December, the Columbia Gas Transmission pipeline (owned by Nisource) exploded near Sissonville, WV—10 miles north of Charleston (see Columbia NatGas Pipeline Explodes Near Charleston, WV). The repercussions are still being felt. WV Sen. Jay Rockefeller held a Senate “field hearing” about pipeline safety on Monday in Charleston, WV. The first person to testify was Sissonville resident Sue Bonham who thought the world was literally be blowing up. The fire that burned in Sissonville near her home for more than an hour was so hot it burned the asphalt on I-77 into cinders.
So it’s no surprise that the federal government would start nosing around non-federally regulated (smaller) pipelines. Apparently they’ve set their sites on local gathering lines in the PA Marcellus:
Read More “Feds Eye Regulating PA Marcellus Gathering Pipelines”
In December 2011 the West Virginia legislature pass sweeping new shale drilling regulations in record time. The effort and the end result was heralded by then acting (now sitting) Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin as a “milestone” in addressing concerns about Marcellus Shale drilling in WV.
The 2011 legislation called for three new environmental studies to be completed and delivered to lawmakers. Two of the studies were due within a day of each other: Dec. 31, 2012 and Jan. 1, 2013. Both are late. According the state DEP, one study will be along in mid-February. The other? No estimated date…
Read More “WV DEP Late in Filing Required Marcellus Environmental Studies”
In the past two years, the assessed value of property in Marshall County, WV has increased by 50%. Since 2007, assessed values in the county have gone up 200%! The reason is, of course, almost entirely due to Marcellus Shale drilling and related infrastructure.
How do local officials describe it? “Extraordinary.” Kind of flies in the face of the anti-drilling argument that property values go down when Marcellus drilling comes to town. Here’s the story…
Read More “Marshall County, WV Property Values Double in 6 Years”
Gastar Exploration Ltd. is a Houston-based independent company engaged in exploration and production of natural gas, natural gas liquids, condensate and oil. Their current focus is on the Marcellus Shale play—specifically in West Virginia’s northern panhandle.
A recent interview with Gastar’s vice president of northeast operations, Michael McCown, pulled the curtain back on the company’s WV Marcellus results in 2012, and revealed their plans to change drilling locations in 2013:
Read More “Insider Look at Gastar’s WV Marcellus Operations, Changes in 2013”
IGS Energy, America’s largest independent supplier of retail natural gas, believes natural gas is no longer the “fuel of tomorrow” when it comes to vehicles, but instead is “the fuel of today.” One of the biggest issues for the adoption and use of natural gas-powered vehicles is lack of fueling stations. IGS announced yesterday they are building a string of CNG (compressed natural gas) fueling stations along Interstate 79 from Charleston, WV to Mount Morris, PA—an area they have dubbed the “CNG Fueling Corridor.”
IGS says this is just the beginning…
Read More “CNG Fueling Corridor for Motorists Comes to WV – Fill ’er Up!”
Monday night, an Omni Energy Services Corp. worker died when a rig being used to drill shallow exploratory holes for Marcellus Shale seismic testing overturned and crushed him. The accident happened at the Loveridge Mine preparation plant property owned by CONSOL Energy in Fairview (Marion County), WV. The accident was not related to CONSOL’s coal mining operations at the property.
The few details that we know thus far:
Read More “Accident Kills Marcellus Shale Rig Worker in Fairview, WV”
Yesterday the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released their monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), which includes the outlook for natural gas. EIA has some of the best and brightest that crunch the numbers, so when they issue their reports, people pay attention. EIA reports are not exactly a crystal ball to predict the future—but they’re darned close.
The Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania and West Virginia is mentioned prominently in this update, including its predicted role in boosting overall natural gas production this year. Below is the natural gas portion of the STEO, with predictions for prices, production and consumption in 2013:
Read More “Marcellus Shale’s Prominent Role in Latest EIA Outlook”
Crestwood Midstream announced in November they were purchasing a “bolt-on” acquisition of four compression/dehydration stations from Enerven Compression for $95 million (see Crestwood Midstream Buys 4 Compressor Stations in WV). The deal will mean an additional $11-$12 million in new revenue for Crestwood in 2013. As of Dec. 28, the transaction is officially completed and the stations now bear the name of Crestwood Midstream.
Apparently selling the four compressor stations was part of a larger strategy for Enerven. In addition to the WV sale, they’ve now sold the rest of the company!
Read More “Enerven Completes Sale of WV Compressor Plants, All Other Assets”
A landowner in Marshall County, West Virginia had previously sued Chesapeake Energy, claiming Chesapeake’s nearby drilling and fracking operations (from 2009/2010) caused methane to migrate and contaminate his water well. Chesapeake sampled the well and found the kind of methane in the well (the “fingerprint” for the methane) does not match the methane from their drilled natural gas well.
The story then gets complicated. It seems that CNX Gas, a division of CONSOL Energy, had previously drilled a number of shallow natural gas wells in the area, and that Columbia Gas, a division of NiSource, has an underground natural gas storage field adjacent to the landowner’s property. Oy vey. There’s no shortage of possibilities for how the methane may have gotten into his well, and so now everyone is now getting sued…
Read More “WV Landowner Sues 3 Companies for Methane Contamination of Water”
Hey buddy, can you spare a few (million) dimes? The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) is looking for someone in the oil and gas drilling industry to help get a now four year-old project off the ground. The NETL unveiled, to great fanfare, the Extreme Drilling Laboratory (XDL) in January 2009 in Morgantown, WV. It’s centerpiece of technology is the Ultra-Deep Single-Cutter Drilling Simulator (UDS), which they call their “rock star.” The UDS is an impressive device that can simulate drilling at 30,000 pounds of force per square inch and temperatures exceeding 480 °F – conditions that would be found at the bottom of very deep oil and gas wells.
Just one tiny problem: Industry isn’t using this marvelous technology to figure out better ways to drill. How come?
Read More “National Lab Looks for Industry to Fund “Extreme Drilling””