PA DEP Fines Stonehenge $1.5M for Damaging 2 Butler County Swamps
A year ago MDN told you about a new gathering pipeline project in Butler County, PA. Rex Energy contracted with Stonehenge Energy Resources to build a gathering system in Butler County (see Rex Energy Hires Stonehenge to Build Gathering Pipeline in PA). The new system got built last year and now provides Rex with an additional 400 million cubic feet per day of natural gas pipeline capacity. The Stonehenge gathering system delivers Rex’s gas to MarkWest Energy’s Bluestone processing plant. When Stonehenge built the pipeline, they had a few minor accidents. Some dirt slid down a hill into a creek. The creek empties into a couple of swamps. Ergo, some of the dirt got into the swamps. For that little mishap, Stonehenge has agreed to pay the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection a $1.5 million fine. DEP Acting Secretary Pat McDonnell called the minor mishaps “egregious and avoidable.” Whatever…
Read More “PA DEP Fines Stonehenge $1.5M for Damaging 2 Butler County Swamps”
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania has sided with landowners in a dispute with Shell’s shale drilling arm, called SWEPI (Shell Western Exploration Production Inc.). SWEPI signed a lease with two landowners who own a collective 1,036 acres in Lycoming County. SWEPI promised a $4,000 per acre signing bonus, but a few months after signing SWEPI decided they didn’t want the acreage after all and tried to cancel the lease and the bonus payment. The judge ordered SWEPI to pay $2,072,000 to each of the two landowner families…
Some interesting Marcellus-related items were included in the recently adopted Pennsylvania state budget that have largely flown under the radar. There are also a few things that weren’t in the budget bill–previously intended to be part of it–that didn’t survive the process. At the top of the list is lack of a severance tax. But right behind that (for us) is that a gross receipts tax on natural gas use, which we thought would be part of the final deal, was not. As MDN previously reported, a gross receipts tax taxes end users of natural gas, in essence targeting low-income households (see 
In what appears to be a new standard operating procedure, Eclipse Resources yesterday released their second quarter 2016 operating update, delaying the release of the “bad news” (i.e. financial update) until a later date. A few days Antero Resources and Gulfport both did the same thing. Drillers like to brag about increasing production, but hate to talk about how much money (at least on paper) they’re losing. We understand. Eclipse is a Marcellus/Utica pure play driller headquartered in State College, PA that drills mostly in Ohio. What do we learn? Eclipse’s production went up 19% in 2Q16 over 2Q15. Previously the company had stopped all drilling, but they resumed again in 2Q16 (a good sign) and ended up drilling and completing 2 Utica wells during the quarter. Here’s the operational (not financial) update from Eclipse for 2Q16…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Drilling on upswing nationwide, but OH permitting down; PA rig count up for first time in months; antis protest pipeline in Mass.; how a single natgas-fired electric plant in VA is saving consumers billions; ND sues EPA over new methane rule; Chesapeake & Tom Ward sued for alleged collusion; oil & gas deals coming back; and more!
Fairmount Santrol, an Ohio-based sand producer that sells sand as a proppant for use in Utica and Marcellus Shale drilling, released their preliminary second quarter 2016 results last week. Although the company expects to lose between $91-$93 million for the quarter (compared to a profit of $14.1 million a year ago), things are not all bad. Yes, it’s been tough for Fairmount and other companies in the oil and gas industry. Really tough. But Fairmount’s CEO Jenniffer Deckard, said this: “…we are also encouraged by the early signs of improvement we are seeing in the proppant market.” In other words, a crack of light is peeking through the door and we’re beginning to see the great slowdown in drilling come to an end…
Last Friday MDN brought you the really big news that Sunoco Logistics Partners had won a major appeals court case that recognizes them as a public utility in Pennsylvania with the right to use eminent domain to build the Mariner East 2 NGL pipeline (see 
It’s hard to believe something as simple and uncomplicated and safe has a storage tank for liquefied natural gas (LNG) could be controversial. But if you irrationally believe all fossil fuels are evil, you’re against such a storage tank. That’s the battle now shaping up in Somerset, Massachusetts. Spectra Energy is looking to build “two giant storage tanks full of liquefied natural gas” at a site in town , near Walker Street. The town administrator is in favor because Spectra will pay the town $10 million in lieu of taxes. But anti-fossil fuel nutters are rising up to oppose the project–even though they do so using the very fossil fuels the abhor every single day of their pathetic lives–being wholly dependent on fossil fuels for their very existence…