2 Landowner Groups Merge to Fight DRBC’s Theft of Drilling Rights
Landowners who live in the Delaware River Basin feel betrayed and disenfranchised following the actions of the aggressive, malignant Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC)–a quasi-governmental agency set up to oversee and protect water usage within the Delaware River Basin. The DRBC colors WAY outside the lines of its charter by limiting not just water use, but land use within the basin. The Delaware River and its tributaries supply fresh drinking water for some 14 million people, including New York City. The DRBC, under the pretense of protecting water, issued draft regulations on Nov. 30 that will permanently (!) ban hydraulic fracturing in the basin (see DRBC Drops Permanent Frack Ban Bomb – Public Hearings in January). Residents in Wayne and Pike counties in PA are furious. They could have, long ago, leased their land for drilling had it not been for the DRBC. And a drilling ban isn’t the only way the DRBC is screwing the residents who live within the basin. The agency has become an arm of the Rockefeller/gentry clan who want to make the region their own personal, private playground. Enough is enough. Two different landowner groups in the basin–Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance (NWPOA) and the Upper Delaware River Basin Citizens (UDRBC)–are merging together to fight the DRBC beast. Their philosophy is “better together.” Their mission is righteous and the stakes are critical. We applaud these groups joining together to beat back the tyrannical DRBC…
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Once upon a time, it was pretty easy for commodities traders (and others) to predict oil and gas production. You just watch the Baker Hughes rig count. When the number of rigs actively drilling goes up, production will follow X months later. And when active rigs go down, production goes down too. But that is no longer the case! Why? Shale wells are producing more over a longer period of time. And the technology used when drilling today is radically different than tech from just a few years ago. Drillers now drill wells faster–much faster–meaning they can use fewer rigs. And frackers are using “hellish” amounts of sand to frack wells, producing ever-more quantities of oil and gas. What it all means is this: If you’re a trader, you can no longer depend on rig counts as your main metric to calculate production. You need new metrics, such as…
Sometimes it’s hard not to grow weary fighting against Big Green and their seemingly endless sources of funding (and a sympathetic mainstream media) when it comes to the issue of fracking. The very word itself, fracking, is a moniker slapped on the industry as a way of implying there’s something dirty and vulgar about what we do. We can’t tell you how many times readers have lectured us to not use that word–fracking. But the word is now entrenched in the public psyche, so we use it. How do we effectively counter the wrong/false statements and arguments used by Big Green and their supporters? Simply using facts and science, to counter the emotional puking that comes from Big Green, is not enough. The United Kingdom is now entering a phase long past here in the U.S. The U.K. is just now beginning to drill and frack its very first wells. There are more than 300 anti-fracking groups in the U.K. and an almost endless barrage of negative press about fracking in the country. The head of communications recently granted an interview to PR Week about how they are countering the opposition there. It’s an excellent interview and gives us some ideas about how we might counter the opposition on this side of the pond…
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye over the break that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Ohio firefighters take part in Utica training program; New Englanders have only themselves to blame for spike in energy prices; North Dakota cuts back oil output due to gas flaring; shale oil output poised to pass 6.5 million barrels in February; oil prices in trouble?; API president Jack Gerard stepping down; Quantum forms new PetroLogistics II; natgas processing economics; the challenge at EPA is deeper than policy; and more!
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has just collected a whopping $1.7 million fine from Energy Corporation of America (ECA) for violations at 17 well sites in Cumberland, Jefferson, and Whiteley Townships in Greene County, and Goshen Township in Clearfield County. ECA’s violations? “Failure to properly contains fluids in onsite pits, unauthorized discharge of industrial waste into groundwater, unauthorized disposal of residual waste, failure to restore the pits and well sites, and operating solid waste storage, treatment, and transfer facilities without permits.” Pretty serious stuff. Essentially, ECA (according to DEP) was sloppy in how they handled flowback and brine, using open pits to store it long after their use was outlawed under new Chapter 78a regulations were adopted. Spills from those pits contaminated a water well of one nearby resident. It’s interesting to MDN that as you read the consent order (full copy below), not only is ECA listed, but also “Greylock Production.” You may recall our news from late last year that ECA reorganized itself under a new name–Greylock Energy–shafting existing shareholders in favor of a new investor, ArcLight Capital (see 
Yesterday our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issued our favorite monthly report, the Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The DPR is the EIA’s best guess, based on expert data crunchers, as to how much each of the U.S.’s seven major shale plays will produce for both oil and natural gas in the coming month. The numbers are AMAZING. Natgas production continues to be on fire (poor metaphor, but the only thing we can think of)–especially here in the Marcellus/Utica region, which is labeled “Appalachia” in the report. EIA predicts production in the Marcellus/Utica will soar another 377 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d), which is more than one-third of a billion cubic feet (!), between January and February. Incredible! What’s even more incredible: Marcellus/Utica production, predicted to be 26.8 Bcf/d in February, represents 42% of all shale natural gas production in the U.S. Our region is a MONSTER natural gas producer. Here’s the latest DPR with the amazing news…
Yesterday we brought you the news that the Ohio Dept. of Environmental Protection (OEPA) had made claims, in a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), that Rover Pipeline’s restart of underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) near the Tuscarawas River had resulted in a second large spill of drilling mud–146,000 gallons (see 
A group of radicalized Catholic nuns whom we refer to as Sisters of the Corn are demanding a trial on the grounds of “religious freedom” in an effort to block Williams’ Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline from crossing their land in Lancaster County, PA. The order of nuns, called Adorers of the Blood of Christ, have tried several strategies to derail Atlantic Sunrise. One of stunts they pulled, in league with a radical Big Green group, is to stick a few wooden park benches in the middle of a corn field that they own (leased to a local farmer), calling it a “chapel” (see 
We’ve written plenty about Mountaineer NGL Storage hub project proposed for Monroe County, OH, located just across the river (and border) from West Virginia (see our 
As part of the Pennsylvania Senate’s misguided and mangled budget bill last year, Republicans managed to slip in fixes to the state Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) chronic delays in issuing permits related to shale drilling (see 
This story continues to grate on our nerves–the fact that mainstream media is covering up a MAJOR scandal. What scandal? The scandal of Russian LNG banned from the U.S. coming to the U.S. (to Boston) because it was offloaded in the UK and reloaded on a different ship, to “whitewash” the gas (see 
A new “research study” was recently published that, per the usual routine, is generating false headlines that leave a false impression. The study is called “Sustainability of UK shale gas in comparison with other electricity options: Current situation and future scenarios,” published in the so-called journal, Science of The Total Environment. Here’s an example of a headline it’s generating in fake mainstream news: “Shale gas is one of the least sustainable ways to produce electricity, research finds” (Phys.org). We’ve seen that headline or variations of it in a number of publications. The narrative being spun by anti-fossil fuelers in quoting the study is this: “You know how shale gas has taken over as king of producing electricity–well you should ignore all of its benefits (clean burning, less polluting, cheaper) and instead use renewables because shale gas isn’t really sustainable and all that great after all.” That’s the upshot of the study, and the stories about the study. Just one teeny, tiny problem: The “research” is fake. Fraudulent. A heaping pile of doo-doo. The so-called researcher concocted his own biased set of criteria on which to judge various forms of electricity generation sources, and then declared shale gas flunks the test. Once again, fake research based on a twisted, biased worldview that says all fossil fuels are evil…
The Marcellus/Utica Shale industry is changing underneath our feet–literally! Last time we checked, most well pads in the Marcellus/Utica sported an average of maybe 3-4 wells–with a dozen wells on a pad being “big.” Something has changed, dramatically, in the gas fields of PA, OH and WV. The “new normal” are supersized well pads–holding as many as (gasp) 40 wells! We hasten to add no such pad yet exists–a pad with 40 wells drilled from it. However, there is an EQT well pad in Allegheny County (near Pittsburgh) with 38 wells permitted (9 of which have been drilled so far). EQT says it now averages drilling 17-18 wells per pad. Antero Resources is drilling an average of 10 wells per pad–up from 3-4 “just a few years ago.” The trend now is more wells per pad, and longer laterals–meaning fewer well pads overall. That’s good for the environment, and good for the bottom line (less money spent pushing dirt around developing pads). Here’s an update on the trend to supersize well pads in the Marcellus/Utica…