Plum, PA Gives Huntley & Huntley Green Light for Shale Drilling
Unlike the anti-drilling Luddites in Monroeville, PA who seek to stifle shale drilling in their municipality (see today’s story: Monroeville, PA Hostile to Shale, Bans Drilling in Most Places), the leaders in Plum, PA (shares a border with Monroeville, in Alleghany County) has approved a plan by Huntley & Huntley to drill a series of Marcellus wells in their municipality. Last week MDN told you that H&H plans to begin constructing a well pad in Plum next month (see Huntley & Huntley Starts Shale Drilling in Plum, PA Next Month). Plum officials gave H&H their blessing on the plan at a meeting on Wednesday. About 150 people showed up for the meeting, many against H&H’s plan to drill. Among the antis was a representative from FracTracker Alliance–a non-profit that pretends to be an impartial “watchdog” of the drilling industry. At the meeting the FracTracker rep revealed his out-of-the-mainstream, anti-drilling bias. He outted his organization as an anti-fossil fuel, Big Green group. Although there was plenty of the typical anti moaning and groaning at the meeting, to their credit, the Plum Council voted 6-1 to approve H&H’s plan to construct a well pad, and to drill several fracked Marcellus wells at the site…
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Williams representatives were on hand earlier this week in Tunhannock, PA (Wyoming County) to present a briefing to local politicians and community leaders on the status of the now-under construction Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project. Atlantic Sunrise is a $3 billion, 198-mile natural gas pipeline project running through 10 Pennsylvania counties to connect Marcellus Shale natural gas from northeastern PA with the Williams’ Transco pipeline in southern Lancaster County. Much of the attention has focused on Lancaster County and a small group of antis who oppose the project there. However, Atlantic Sunrise will begin its journey to Lancaster in Susquehanna County, PA–in the northeastern tip of the state. Construction in Susquehanna and adjacent counties is scheduled to begin “very soon,” according to Williams rep Mike Atchie. When it does begin, some of the people working on it will come from the same counties where it’s getting built. Last week the Teamsters held a job fair in Harrisburg (see 
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has done it again. They’ve posted another fake news story about the Marcellus Shale industry. Here’s how it works: A Big Green group, like the odious Earthworks, enlists the help of a servile, biased “reporter”–feeding all sorts of false information to said “reporter”–the “reporter” essentially takes dictation, writes it up, and publishes it as “news.” Earthworks and Moms Clean Air Force, both national, radical, out-of-the-mainstream anti fossil-fuel groups, have colluded with the Post-Gazette to release a fake news “report” that says because some of Pennsylvania’s children go to school within a half mile of an oil or gas well, those children are endangered from emissions, including methane. Yeah, methane–you know, natural gas. IF methane happens to leak (which doesn’t happen often) it simply goes straight up into the atmosphere where it supposedly contributes to man-made global warming. It certainly doesn’t endanger anyone on the ground. The Big Green groups publishing the report say 311,000 kids in PA go to school near an oil or gas well (the vast majority being conventional, non-shale wells). Big Green totally lies about the risks. But let’s set that aside for the moment. Why are only children endangered? Why not adults too? Or pets? Or zombies? Big Green is (ab)using children in their narrative because everyone has a knee-jerk reaction when it comes to kids. We all will protect our children with our own lives–it’s an ingrained, automatic reaction. These sleazeballs are playing off that fear with a false report–and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is complicit in spreading the lie…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: NEXUS says pipeline will be built by 3Q18; PA DEP hearing on natgas-fired power plant in Greene County; WVONGA urges FERC action on 11 pipelines; WV monitoring cybersecurity; Atlantic Sunrise donates $5,300 to NEPA school; Shell wants veterans for cracker jobs; Maine’s Sen. King pushes measure to speed up natgas pipeline permits; problems with rail transport of energy supplies; and more!
Ahead of providing its third quarter 2017 update, yesterday Rex Energy, a driller focused mainly on the Marcellus/Utica (headquartered in State College, PA) has issued an update on two wells recently connected to sales. The two wells are located in Rex’s Butler County, PA “Moraine East” area. What’s unique is that both wells were completed with a newly revamped/tweaked completion design. Completions is that part of drilling a well when you frack it and hook it up to production. Rex doesn’t comment on how they tweaked their completion design. Typically, changing up completions may involve how long each frack stage is, the type (and quantity) of sand or other proppant used, the kind of slick water used, etc. Rex worked with an engineering firm to review their completions process and made some changes–and they are happy with the results. Initial daily production for the two wells averaged 9.4 million cubic feet equivalent per day (MMcfe/d). Rex reports the methane (natural gas) portion was 4 MMcf/d, NGLs of 820 barrels per day, and condensate averaged 70 barrels per day. Looks like Rex has a couple of winners, with more on the way using the new completion design…
Sadly, the severance tax issue in Pennsylvania is not yet dead, as we had hoped. Last week budget negotiations broke down and PA Gov. Wolf took matters into his own hands by borrowing $1.25 billion from the state’s Liquor Control Board to plug a gap in this year’s budget (see 
Yesterday Utica Summit V was held in North Canton, OH. MDN could not, unfortunately, attend. But others did and the reports we’re reading indicate it was another great event. Two major news items of interest came from the event. The first was the results of a recent economic study that show an amazing $54.7 billion has been invested in the Utica Shale play from 2012-2016, across upstream ($42.7 billion), midstream ($8.6 billion) and downstream ($3.4 billion). In a surprise statement, the report’s author said, “the biggest impact of the Utica may be the development of gas-fired power plants in Ohio and surrounding states.” The second news item was a big emphasis at the event on the downstream–on the really big deal the petrochemical industry is and will be for Ohio and surrounding states. Presenters made the point that some manufacturers in Ohio were cut off from plastics supplies from the Gulf Coast after the recent hurricanes to hit that area–and that with the Shell and potentially PTT Global cracker plants coming along, manufacturers in the region change where they source their supply of raw plastics. In fact, the petchem industry will explode in Appalachia. All thanks to the Utica (and Marcellus) and the ethane produced. Here’s a pair of reports from yesterday’s event…
In August 2016, energy giant Tenaska (headquartered in Omaha, NE) broke ground to build a 925-megawatt natural gas-fueled power plant in South Huntingdon (Westmoreland County), PA (see 
Earlier this week MDN told you of the curious case of American Energy Partners, Inc.–a company headquartered in Allentown, PA that appears to have nothing to do with Aubrey McClendon’s now-closed American Energy Partners (see 
It has seemed to us that anecdotally most of the media in Virginia has tilted left and anti-pipeline when covering stories about the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) and Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) projects, both slated to cross the state. So imagine our surprise in reading an editorial from the editors of the Fredericksburg, VA Free Lance-Star that gives full-throated support for fracked shale gas pipelines. The editorial begins by calling those who oppose ACP “NIMBY’s” (Not In My Back Yard). Later in the editorial, we learn this startling fact: “To prevent blackouts in Virginia this summer, Energy Secretary Rick Perry had to give Dominion Energy permission to reopen two shuttered coal-burning plants (Yorktown 1 and 2) in response to a request by PJM Interconnections, which manages the electric grid in 13 states. That’s how close the East Coast is to a real power crisis.” Yes folks, without ACP (and MVP), Virginia faces rolling blackouts. They won’t be able to produce enough electricity to meet the demand–unless they want to keep using coal. When will the NIMBYs wake up? Will it take a blackout to snap them out of their denial?…
Each year the consultants at Deloitte conduct a survey of oil and gas industry professionals. Last year the survey showed o&g execs believed we were already in the midst of a recovery for the industry (see