WV Trade Groups Defend Antero’s Wastewater Recycling Facility
The heads of both WVONGA (West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association) and IOGA WV (Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia) teamed up to write a column in the Charleston Gazette-Mail by touting (defending?) Antero Resources’ Clearwater Facility–a $275 million frack wastewater recycling facility due to go online later this year. WVONGA and IOGA WV use the Clearwater Facility as evidence of the industry’s efforts at becoming more “green” (environmentally friendly) year in and year out. They point out that our air is getting cleaner, and our water is getting cleaner too. Last fall Antero responded to so-called environmentalists who were criticizing the facility (see Antero Responds to Critics of New WV Wastewater Facility). You would think “environmentalists” would be in favor of recycling and reusing frack wastewater, rather than pumping it down a hole into the ground. But no, they continue to harp on the facility–which points out their own hypocrisy. Here’s what WVONGA and IOGA WV had to say about the soon-opening Clearwater Facility…
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In May, MDN told you that virulent anti-drillers in Youngstown, OH, puppets of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), have once again circulated a petition to put a so-called Community Bill of Rights ballot measure on the ballot this November (see 
West Virginia’s U.S. Senators, Shelley Moore Capito (Republican) and Joe Manchin (Democrat), continue to be a driving force in advocating for a $10 billion NGL storage hub to be located in WV, PA or OH. Back in May, Capito and Manchin introduced a bill to study such a project (see 
When huge ethane crackers like the proposed Shell cracker in Beaver County, PA use steam to “split” or “crack” ethane to form ethylene (the raw material used to make plastics), it takes a lot of energy, and there’s a lot of “leftover” energy and leftover carbon dioxide (CO2). As the mythology goes, more CO2 in the atmosphere leads to global warming (if you believe in that sort of thing). Scientists have long known of other ways to convert “heavier” hydrocarbons, like ethane, into “lighter” hydrocarbons, like ethylene, using metals via a chemical process. But the metals used are rare and expensive–things like rhodium, ruthenium and iridium. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania say they have found a way to use cheaper, more abundant metals, like titanium, to transform natural gas, ethane and other hydrocarbons into more useful chemicals like ethylene. The big bonus? No leftover CO2 to worry about…
A quick oil & gas lesson, for new MDN readers. A DUC is a Drilled but UnCompleted well. Many times drillers will drill the initial hole in the ground, but then not “complete” (or frack) the well. Why do that? For a variety of reasons. The biggest reason is usually because the commodity price of gas (or oil, depending on the well) is not favorable. Rather than lose the lease a company paid good money for, they will begin the process by drilling, and then leaving, the well–only to return later to complete it when prices go up again. Keeping an eye on DUC inventories tells you a lot about the economics of a commodity–what drillers believe will happen in the near-term with the price for that commodity. Once upon a time both the oil and natural gas industries tracked together. When there was more drilling (and production) for oil, there was also more drilling and production for gas. The prices for both oil and gas tracked along the same path. What is now obvious–has been obvious for some time–is that “tracking together” is no longer the case. Each commodity, oil and gas, now have their own economics, driven by different factors. What makes it evident that oil and gas economics have now separated are DUCs. Right now oil drillers are drilling but not completing wells like crazy, piling up a high DUC inventory, saving wells for later, when prices improve. However, DUCs for natural gas are going down, especially in the Marcellus/Utica region, which means drillers believe prices will soon go higher for natgas. The fewer DUCs there are, the more new drilling there will be…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: World’s first ‘transparent’ shale well operating in Morgantown, WV; natgas production up 13th straight year in WV; can Millstone nuke plant survive natgas; shortage of fracking crews slows the shale boom; frac sand demand breaking records; 2 important signs that shale growth is slowing; coming squeeze for shale oil drillers; #ExxonKnew fakers have a new hashtag: #UtilitiesKnew; Pittsburgh Tribune-Review fail in publishing “fracking kills” letter; Russian collusion with ecofascists; and more!
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 
Rover Pipeline has had trouble with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA). The OEPA has jumped on Rover’s back and hasn’t gotten off–over spills of drilling mud and mishandling (according to OEPA) torrential rainwater that ended up in Rover trenches, which Rover pumped out, flooding local farmers’ fields (see 
In June the West Virginia Public Service Commission held a public hearing in Clarksburg, WV on the proposed ESC Harrison County Power Plant project (see 
Radical anti-fossil fuelers with THE Delaware Riverkeeper and New Jersey Sierra Club, along with a mish mash of other fringe “environmental” groups, are becoming shrill in their demand that fracking be permanently banned in the Delaware River Basin. Riverkeeper, Sierra Club and other nutjob groups are this week delivering a petition they claim has over 63,000 signatures (many of them made up or dead) calling on the governors of the four states that are part of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to vote to permanently ban fracking in the DRBC’s jurisdiction. Each day this week the group of, whatever you call them, are delivering the petitions in staged media events, in each state capital. These groups have wanted and lobbied for a permanent ban for years. Why push so hard for it now? What’s the urgency? Why go on the road now to demand an outright ban? There is only one reason we can think of for why these radicals are pushing so hard now: they are running scared, concerned that a lawsuit by a Wayne County landowner in federal court will go against the DRBC and finally force the issue, allowing fracking (see 
New York City needs more natural gas pipelines–and it needs them BAD. That’s the upshot of a newly released report from the New York Building Congress, a trade group representing some 450 other building-related trade groups with 250,000+ members. The report, titled “Electricity Outlook: Powering New York City’s Future” (full copy below) says NYC needs more pipelines built before the Indian Point Nuclear plant closes in 2021–both for electric generation (to replace Indian Point’s electricity) and because of the prohibition coming on heavier fuel oil used for wintertime heating. Interesting (and mind-blowing) fact: 81.5% of the electricity flowing in the five boroughs of NYC comes from natural gas-fired electric plants. The report calls for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to promptly approve Transco’s Northeast Supply Enhancement Project, when FERC has a quorum, which will flow more PA Marcellus gas to NYC and New Jersey. The report also calls on officials to approve Millennium Pipeline’s expansion request in Upstate. Of course the irony is not lost on those of us who live in Upstate New York–the irony being that we could be the ones providing at least some of that natural gas to our cousins in the City, if sleazeball Gov. Andrew Cuomo hadn’t banned fracking. So yes, New York needs more natural gas and needs it asap, but New York has banned the production of it–so we’ll have to get it from places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia instead. Bad for us, but good for them…
West Goshen Township, in the Philadelphia suburb of Chester County, has won a short-lived, temporary victory in their efforts to stop Sunoco Logistics’ Mariner East 2 NGL pipeline in its community. Last March MDN told you about the desperate last stand taken by liberal anti-pipeliners in West Goshen (see 
Can proposed NGL storage facilities in the Marcellus/Utica benefit the environment? The answer is a resounding, YES! How? First you must understand what an NGL is, and why we have so much of it in the northeast. NGL stands for natural gas liquid. When you drill a hole in the ground to extract oil, or natural gas, you almost always get not only oil, but natural gas (and vice versa). In addition, you also get NGLs. They are all hydrocarbons with slightly different atomic configurations. NGLs include propane, butane, isobutane and ethane. Aside from natural gas (or oil), the most common hydrocarbon coming out of a well is ethane. Ethane, as it turns out, is quite useful. It can be “cracked” chemically and turned into ethylene, which is the raw feedstock for manufacturing plastics, among other things. We have at least one ethane cracker plant coming in our neck of the woods–Shell’s cracker plant in Beaver County, PA (near Pittsburgh). Another one is likely to get built by PTT Global Chemical–in Belmont County, OH. Other smaller plants that process ethane are also likely to get built. They all need a ready supply of ethane. Enter storage hubs–huge underground caverns to store NGLs until they can be used. Mountaineer NGL Storage is close to beginning work on such a facility (see 
Since 2012, Pennsylvania has collected the equivalent of a severance tax from Marcellus Shale drillers via something called an impact fee. Same concept as a severance tax. You drill a well, gas comes out, you pay a tax. Except with an impact fee you pay whether or not anything comes out of the ground, meaning an impact fee is superior to a severance tax, which is based on how much comes out of the ground. The impact fee quickly started to generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year in extra revenue for Pennsylvania–60% of which goes back to the communities where drilling happens (which Philadelphia politicians hate), and 40% of which goes to the black hole of Harrisburg for redistribution (which Philadelphia politicians love). Drilling began to slow in 2014, and crashed in 2015/2016, with low low commodity prices for natgas. The impact fee doled out this year is based on revenues raised last year, in 2016, during the worst part of the downturn. So it’s no surprise that impact fees collected and distributed this year, in 2017 have been the lowest since the impact fee began (see 
For years anti-drillers have used the word “frack” and “fracking” as a pejorative, to try and smear the oil and gas industry. The word is shortened from “hydraulic fracturing” and meant to connote a “naughty” word of similar sound. The supremely untalented Julian Lennon (son of Beatle legend John Lennon) and his stepmom, Yoko Ono, went on Jimmy Fallon’s show a few years ago to sing a song called “Don’t Frack My Mother” (watch it below). That’s the mentality of anti-drillers. The word “frack” is short, sounds like something dirty, and is useful for protest signs, bumper stickers, and songs. Never mind that fracking is only one small part of the success in extracting shale oil and gas. The larger, arguably more important technological breakthrough is horizontal drilling. But it’s hard to shorten “horizontal drilling” into a bumper sticker slogan that sounds dirty. So back in 2013 we offered to enhance the fracking phrase (see