WVU Scores Another $4M Grant – to Study Produced Water
At the end of 2014 West Virginia University (WVU) scored a major grant from the U.S. Dept. of Energy, which forked over $11 million to WVU and Ohio State University to conduct a five-year project to study “baseline measurements, subsurface development and environmental monitoring” in the Marcellus and Utica Shale (see WVU/OSU Get $11M Grant to Study Shale Energy Best Practices). WVU’s efforts are yielding fruit. In July we told you that WVU had studied frack waste and pronounced it safe (see Independent Research @ WVU Concludes Frack Waste is Safe). We’d call that a good use of taxpayer money! One of the innovations WVU has been working on is “green” drilling mud, a more environmentally-friendly drilling mud used to drill Marcellus/Utica wells (see WVU Effusive Over “Green” Drilling Fluid Used in Test Wells). WVU has done it again. WVU, along with the University of Kansas, has just been awarded a $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study “produced water”–which is water from the depths that comes out of the borehole long after drilling and fracking are done. This naturally occurring water is super salty–far more salty (with minerals) than sea water. Typically drillers will either recycle it and reuse it for more drilling and fracking, or dispose of it via an injection well. WVU and KU are charged with developing “cutting-edge strategies for better management, treatment, protection and recovery of produced water.” Here’s the announcement and good news that WVU is on the case for better handling of produced water…
Read More “WVU Scores Another $4M Grant – to Study Produced Water”
Last week the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) doled out a total of $13 million in grants for twelve multi-year research projects. The aim of the projects is to develop ways to mitigate methane emissions from natural gas pipelines and storage infrastructure, ways that don’t break the bank. Two of the twelve projects will be run in Pittsburgh. PPG Industries, the Gas Technology Institute and RTI International received a combined $876,639 to study remote monitoring of natural gas pipelines. The University of Pittsburgh and Corning together got a whopping $1.2 million to develop an advanced distributed optical fiber technology for natural gas infrastructure monitoring. Here’s the lowdown from the DOE…
Channeling our inner Joan Rivers: Can we talk? It hurts when a good friend publicly criticizes you. It feels like you’ve been stabbed in the back. Perhaps a case of public criticism is one of the reasons for the developing rancor (we call it a civil war) between landowners and the Marcellus industry in Pennsylvania. Landowners are upset that their royalty checks are, in some cases, pennies–as in less than one dollar. Drillers claim that super low prices they receive for the gas are to blame–that nobody is making money right now. Landowners say that drillers (e.g. Chesapeake Energy) are deducting post-production costs that they shouldn’t be allowed to deduct, resulting in worthless royalty checks. For a number of years landowners in Pennsylvania have supported legislation to force drillers to pay a minimum 12.5% royalty, which is stipulated under a 1979 law. Drillers say post-production costs are written into many contracts and if it’s there, landowners must live by the contract. It’s turning into a mess. We’ve covered it extensively (
Two Democrat-run anti-fossil fuel organizations–the Southern Environmental Law Center and Appalachian Mountain Advocates–pooled their donated money together and went out to find a consulting firm with the veneer of respectability that could be bought off to produce a faux “report” slamming two much-needed pipelines. They found an easy mark in Synapse Energy Economics, headquartered in ultra-liberal Massachusetts. The “report” Synapse produced says neither Dominion’s $5 billion, 594-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (a natural gas pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina), nor EQT’s $3.5 billion, 301-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA) are needed. The sham report, titled “Are the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline Necessary?” (full copy below) is getting picked up by lazy (or propagandist) mainstream news organizations and reported as real news. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s a joke…
Although there’s less new drilling for oil and gas (at least there’s less if you believe press reports), and although DUCs (drilled but uncompleted wells) are decreasing, overall production in the lower 48 states is actually increasing. IHS Markit says natgas production in August increased month over month for the second month in a row–something that hasn’t happened in a year. Markit says the main reason is an increase in production in the northeast–specifically an increase in production in the Utica Shale. However, there were also increases in other plays. Here’s the full update…
Using natural gas may literally save your life. Researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) recently conducted research using the country of Turkey because that country has made a big shift over the past couple of decades, moving away from other forms of energy and to natural gas. The researchers looked at mortality rates for adults and the elderly and found that mortality rates for both groups dropped, dramatically, over that period. Why? How? Good questions. Because the air is now cleaner thanks to an increase in natgas use, there has been a decrease in pollution linked and a correlating decrease in lung and heart disease deaths among adults and the elderly. It’s in the report. Of course people living longer because of natural gas isn’t good news for anti-fossil fuel nutters…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Why Summit Midstream is focusing on the Utica; DOE Sec. Moniz visits WV; LNG imports coming back to US this winter; onshore drilling heading for a big comeback?; gas traders caught short by Cheniere; and more!
Macquarie Infrastructure has filed an application to build a new natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Chesapeake, Virginia, the state’s third most populous city, located near Norfolk. The facility, called Matex Virginia Power, would produce 1,400 megawatts of electricity by using three gas combustion turbines and one steam turbine. It’s not (yet) known how the new plant will get its gas, although Dominion’s planned $5 billion, 550-mile long Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project is scheduled to have a branch going to Chesapeake. It’s not much of a stretch to think that ACP will feed this new plant, bringing Marcellus/Utica gas from the north to the plant. Here’s the good news, followed by reaction from environmental Nazis that oppose it…
What happens when you put a virulent anti-driller in charge of a state’s forestry service, a state that previously had a small, safe, healthy program to allow some shale drilling, giving taxpayers a break with a source of new revenue? Of course the anti-driller immediately tries to quash any more new drilling efforts. And that’s just what has happened with former PennFuture president and current Secretary of the PA Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), Cindy Dunn. We called for her firing back in June when she was caught using–we’d say misappropriating–taxpayer money to send her staff to Big Green reeducation events (see 
Getting a pre-packaged bankruptcy today is like ordering a McDonalds Happy Meal–just order and drive up to the window and pick it up. Simple. In July Halcon Resources, a Utica Shale driller that “guessed wrong” by leasing 140,000 Utica Shale acres in the northern part of the play (in Ohio) and currently doesn’t drill on any of that acreage, filed for a pre-packaged bankruptcy (see 
In June 2014 MDN broke the news that Moxie Energy was in the hunt to begin a third new Marcellus gas-powered electric plant project in Pennsylvania, near Wilkes-Barre (see 
Last Thursday Antero Midstream, the wholly-owned midstream subsidiary of powerhouse Marcellus/Utica driller Antero Resources, announced it is floating a round of “senior notes” (otherwise known as IOUs) to help the company pay off older debt. New debt for old debt. Not a game we enjoy playing, but Wall Streeters dig it. Antero Midstream first said they hoped to get $500 million for the notes, but later issued a second announcement “upsizing” the offering (like supersizing your fries at McDonalds) to $650 million. Such upsizing is typical (we’ve seen it dozens of times before). Here’s the announcements from Antero from last week…