Full Circle for Cabot O&G: From WV to PA and Back Again
On Monday, MDN highlighted a pair of stories from West Virginia in which we noted that Cabot Oil & Gas, a Texas-based company that (so far) has concentrated its Marcellus Shale drilling in Susquehanna County, PA, had drilled and plugged a well in West Virginia that seems to be aimed at the Utica Shale (and/or Marcellus) in that state (see Cabot’s Wood County, WV Utica Well – Vertical or Horizontal Miss?). Cabot is one of the most prolific producers of Marcellus Shale gas, producing an incredible 2 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas from Susquehanna, a single county in northeast PA (see Cabot O&G 3Q14: A Wandering Eye + Welcome to the 2 Bcf/d Club!). It piqued our interest that Cabot may be nosing around a “new” area (for them) for horizontal shale drilling, so we asked George Stark, Cabot spokesman, about it. He called us yesterday to elucidate…
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Last week West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin led a trade delegation on a junket to Brazil to talk with officials from Odebrecht and Braskem about the $3 billion proposed ethane cracker plant/petrochemical complex the companies are planning for Parkersburg, WV (see 
The mother’s milk of academe is grant money–and West Virginia University is happy to announce a new grant related to the Marcellus Shale. The U.S. Dept. of Energy is forking over $11 million to WVU and Ohio State University for a five-year project to study “baseline measurements, subsurface development and environmental monitoring” in the Marcellus and Utica Shale. The money will be used for research and to establish a first-of-its-kind Marcellus Shale Energy and Environment Laboratory–a field site and dedicated research laboratory to be located at the Morgantown (WV) Industrial Park…
Yesterday’s election was, by all accounts, historic. It was a complete and utter repudiation of Barack H. Obama and his aggressive socialist policies–there’s no denying that. Republicans picked up governorships in most states where they ran. The one cloud was, unfortunately, Pennsylvania where California environmentalist wacko Tom Steyer’s $10 million+ purchased the governorship for the hapless Democrat Tom Wolf. One bright spot in PA (we challenge you to find this news in your local newspaper today) is that Republicans picked up MORE seats in both the PA House and Senate. Which means unless Republicans cave, there will be no severance tax to shut down Marcellus drilling in the Keystone State–at least for the next few years. Whew. In New York, Republicans (beyond all belief) held on and improved their majority in the Senate. The NY Senate is the only firewall against legislative action to permanently stop fracking in the Empire State. Whew. And what’s this, New England moves Republican???…
The Chesapeake Energy fire sale continues–and this time it’s cut right into the bone and sinew of the company. The beneficiary of Chesapeake’s ongoing divestiture, this time, is Southwestern Energy. Southwestern has signed a deal to pick up 413,000 (!) Marcellus/Utica acres, most of it in West Virginia with some of it in Washington County, PA. Much of the land is in prime wet gas areas (see the map below). The deal includes 256 (!) operating and producing Marcellus and Utica Shale wells and another 179 (!) non-operated, non-producing wells–a total of 435 drilled wells. Southwestern is paying Chesapeake $5.375 BILLION for the deal–which will make Chesapeake’s real boss, corporate raider Carl Icahn, very happy…