WV Senate Bill 244 Introduced for Co-Tenancy & Joint Development
The legislative session for West Virginia is in full swing–a session that lasts for 60 non-contiguous days at the beginning of each year. This year’s session opened on Jan. 11 and will conclude on Apr. 8th. As MDN previously reported, perhaps the biggest energy-related issue for this year’s session will NOT be (as it has in five previous sessions) a bill on forced pooling. Instead, the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association (WVONGA) is pushing a legislation on co-tenancy and joint development (see WV Won’t Push Forced Pooling, Will Push Joint Dev. & Co-Tenancy). Senate Bill (SB) 244 has now been introduced to cover both co-tenancy and joint development. Co-tenancy is pretty easy to understand: if there are multiple owners for the mineral rights under a property–something that happens fairly regularly in WV–you would only need a simple majority of those owners to approve a drilling lease. Currently, if one person with a teeny tiny share objects, it stops the process. Joint development, on the other hand, had us stumped. But we got some insight into the issue from a couple of sharp MDN readers (see More on WV’s Push for “Joint Development” Instead of Forced Pooling). Currently there are a number of existing old leases, signed before shale drilling began, that prevents drillers from drilling a horizontal well across an individual property boundary line–until a new lease is signed. Joint development says if the driller already owns the leases on all adjoining properties they want to combine into a drilling unit, they can do so without signing a new lease. WVONGA says it corrects a loophole that prevents more drilling from happening. Rights owners say joint development legislation lets drillers have a freebie–instead of signing a new lease (for more money), the driller gets something never envisioned when the original lease was signed. Who’s right? We expect SB 244 to be hotly contested this year, like forced pooling has been in previous years…
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Last September MDN reported on a midstream deal with major implications for the Marcellus/Utica: Canadian pipeline operator Enbridge Inc. announced an all-stock deal to buy out pipeline operator Spectra Energy, based in Houston, for $28 billion (see 
Stone Energy is an independent oil and natural gas exploration and production company (E&P) headquartered in Lafayette, Louisiana, drilling mainly in the Gulf of Mexico but also has (or rather had) a presence in the Marcellus/Utica Shale with 86,000 acres of leases. Stone quit actively drilling in the Marcellus in 2015, and filed for bankruptcy last October. As part of the bankruptcy filing, Stone signed a deal with Tug Hill to sell those 86,000 acres to Tug Hill for $350 million (see 
In December, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) threw a little cold water on two important pipeline upgrades to carry more Marcellus/Utica gas to southern markets. A final environmental impact statement (EIS) was due from FERC for both the Mountaineer XPress and Gulf XPress projects no later than April 28, 2017. FERC said that the deadline would slip by three months due to reroutes and additional environment information requested (see 
After idling most of its rigs in the Marcellus/Utica during 2016, Southwestern Energy, one of our regions biggest drillers, is restarting rigs and drilling new wells in 2017–according to announcements made by the company over the past several days. Southwestern issued its 2016 update, and 2017 guidance, late last week. Some of the most exciting news to come from Southwestern came on the earnings call last Friday. Southwestern CEO Bill Way said this: “We are very encouraged by the early results of our first Utica well [in Marshall County, WV] and as a result have accelerated the timing for our second test well located in Washington County, Pennsylvania, which was spud earlier this month. And you will recall that we had originally planned to begin our Utica testing in 2018, but results from wells and circling our position and our first well, provided us with the confidence to accelerate this activity.” Although rigs got idled in 2016, it doesn’t mean there was no drilling. Last year Southwestern invested a total of $623 million in drilling, and drilled 62 wells, completed 86 wells, placed 85 wells to sales and had 135 wells in progress. Of the 135 wells in progress at year-end, 73 were located in Northeast Appalachia, 42 in Southwest Appalachia and 20 in the Fayetteville Shale. On the down side, the company reports losing $2.8 billion (mostly a paper loss for “impairments”–write-downs of asset value). But that’s a vast improvement over losing $4.7 billion in 2015…
Earlier this month Rover Pipeline, a $3.7 billion, 711-mile Marcellus/Utica natural gas pipeline that will run from PA, WV and eastern OH through OH into Michigan and eventually into Canada, received its final authorization from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Friday (see 
Across the Keystone State (i.e. Pennsylvania), the shale revolution is “boosting agriculture,” says a farm expert. How? By providing new sources of capital (cash) to buy new equipment, more livestock, fix buildings, etc. Shale is also lowering the cost of fuel and fertilizer for farmers. And it provides jobs for members of farming families–bringing in an important new income stream. It is not an overstatement to say that shale is literally saving the family farm in PA…
For those in the Pittsburgh region, there is still time to register and attend this year’s Oil & Gas Awards Northeast Industry Summit, being held on March 2 in Pittsburgh. MDN editor Jim Willis will moderate two of the panel discussions at the event. Jim invites Marcellus Drilling News readers in the Pittsburgh orbit to attend the Summit–for FREE. 
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: OH hotels lose business with drilling downturn, slowly regaining; PA’s natgas industry poised for a rebound; confirmation votes for Energy, Interior picks coming this week; second coming of shale even more powerful than the first; U.S. drillers add rigs for 6th week in a row; oil production increasing in 2017; and more!
One of the big success stories about Marcellus drilling in Pennsylvania is the money generated from state land leased for oil and gas drilling. You may recall two governors ago Democrat Gov. Ed Rendell was hell bent for leather in leasing state-owned land for drilling ON said land. After his voracious appetite for money was sated and his Democrat cronies in the legislature spent (“blew”) all $444 million of it, Rendell tried to pretend that he’s an environmentalist by slapping an executive order–a moratorium–on any more leasing of state-owned land. Hypocrite. The next Governor, Tom Corbett, lifted that moratorium with an executive order of his own so that another $75 million of badly needed revenue could be raised by leases for drilling under (not on) state land. Then along came the disastrous Tom Wolf. He immediately signed a new executive order banning any new leases on state-owned land (see 
In January 2014 MDN brought you the story that due to incessant nagging from the NJ Sierra Club and the NJ League of [Liberal Democrat] Women Voters the Pinelands Commission, which oversees a stand of scrub pines in South Jersey, nixed a plan for a new natural gas pipeline to bring cheap, clean, abundant Marcellus Shale natural gas to South Jersey for use by residents and to feed an electric plant a local utility wants to convert from burning coal to natgas (see 
Several southwest Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers (and a Democrat lawmaker) addressed the League of [Liberal Democrat] Women Voters at the group’s annual question-and-answer session with area legislators in Washington, PA on Friday. The Lib Dems attending likely got more than what they bargained for, as the legislators who addressed them stuck up for fossil fuels. The moderator asked a question about so-called clean energy jobs and investing, and promptly got schooled about REAL clean energy–i.e., fossil fuels!…
An interesting article in the Harrisburg Patriot-News looks (favorably) at a trouble-making anti from Lancaster County, PA who participated in the illegal activities at Standing Rock, ND. He earnestly hopes he can attract that kind of disruption and mayhem to peaceful Amish Country in an attempt to stop the Transco Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project from getting built. But just like Standing Rock, this effort will fail. What we found interesting is that this is an open admission of something we’ve been reporting (warning about) for months–that some of the miscreants from North Dakota are targeting the Marcellus/Utica for their next round of anarchy. There’s nothing “peaceful” about what these people do…
Anti-drilling zealots are sometimes maddening, sometimes funny, and often just plain bizarre. As they are with their latest publicity attack (aided and abetted by PBS reporters) by claiming a couple of townships along the pipeline’s proposed route have ordinances in place that would potentially stop the pipeline in those locations “if only” those lazy, corrupt townships would just enforce the ordinances. That’s the upshot of the argument. One of the towns, Thornbury (Delaware County, a Philly suburb) has a requirement that the subdivision where the pipeline will run must maintain at least 40% of the land in the subdivision as “open space.” The antis claim the pipeline will use enough acreage to reduce the “open space” to below 40%. Ah, Mr. & Ms. Anti, did you know that the pipeline will run underground? And that pipelines lead to MORE permanent open spaces? Nice green fairways that are well-maintained? Lawyers from the usual radical suspects are getting ready to file lawsuits for “force” the townships to pay money defending against this latest inanity…