Apex Energy | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Westmoreland County
Penn Twp Commissioners Block Apex Shale Well Request in 3-2 Vote
Last month MDN told you that the Penn Township (Westmoreland County) zoning board refused to grant a permit to Apex Energy to build a DEP-permitted well pad in the town (see Penn Twp Blocks Apex Energy Well Pad Request, What Next?). Last night the town board followed suit also voted to deny the request in a close vote: 3-2. As we previously mentioned, last year a group of anti-drillers took Apex to court to stop drilling on two wells, with the town backing them. Apex’s lawyers roared that the company was losing $70K per day by not drilling, threatening to sue. The town backed down, and Apex drilled the wells. We’re hoping for a repeat…
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States often send trade delegations to foreign countries looking for investors to set up shop in their states–a sad but necessary activity that’s been going on for years. Just look at the ethane cracker plants announced for the Marcellus/Utica: Shell (headquartered in the Netherlands) wants to build a plant in PA; PTT Global Chemical (Thailand) wants to build a plant in OH; and Odebrecht (Brazil) once wanted to build a plant in WV, a plan that seems to now be dead. Speaking of WV, a new trade delegation is heading back to Japan, seeking more investment in the Mountain State. Among those going is Pat Ford, representing the Northern Panhandle area. One of Ford’s main reasons for going is “discussions on West Virginia’s energy growth, in particular ongoing development of the Marcellus and Utica shale plays for the natural gas industry.” Hmmm. That’s interesting. Makes us wonder if Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin is looking for another cracker investor–this time from the Land of the Rising Sun…
Cabot Oil & Gas is a great company that focuses most of its shale efforts in the Marcellus. And every single Marcellus well they drill is located in a single northeastern Pennsylvania county–Susquehanna County. Susquehanna County has been good for Cabot, and conversely, Cabot has been good for Susquehanna County–providing jobs and pumping millions into the local economy. So it was no surprise to learn that Cabot is the main sponsor of a county event being held tomorrow: the Susquehanna County Business Expo. The purpose of the expo? To lure companies to locate or relocate in a relatively rural but rapidly growing county–where the air is good, the people are nice, the taxes are LOW and the gas is plentiful. The not-so-subtle message to businesses located nearby in Broome County, NY (where MDN is written) is that they ought to consider relocating over the border. Specifically in their sights are manufacturers who can leverage the cheapest natural gas in the world! The sad truth is that businesses have been, and continue to, leave the Empire State in droves. Cuomo is driving them out with his obtuse policies. The Expo will be held tomorrow in Montrose, PA. MDN encourages Broome businesses (and business from other areas) to consider attending. Here’s the details…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: More NGL storage will help northeast; now >1,300 producing Utica wells; OH lease language ‘paying quantities’; PA folly vs. LA foresight; NJ Dems seek to destroy all new pipelines; don’t let the nutters keep it buried in the ground; new natgas-electric tractor trailer; and more!
Three cheers for Williams. Hip hip horray! Williams announced yesterday a two-pronged legal challenge against New York State and its decision to deny stream crossing permits for the federally-approved Constitution Pipeline project (see 
The Constitution Pipleine from northeastern Pennsylvania into east-central New York State is not the only pipeline project to get delayed. It is one of five highly important projects for drillers in the Marcellus/Utica region that are either delayed–or even canceled. What are the other four projects? Read on…
What will it take for drillers to begin drilling again? That’s a question getting asked frequently by analysts on quarterly earnings calls with Marcellus/Utica drillers. The short answer is for the price of natural gas to go up and stay up. How high? Here’s some interesting economics from Southwestern Energy CEO Bill Way: every time the price of natural gas increases another quarter ($0.25), it translates into $185 million in cash flow for his company. If the price went up 50 cents, Southwestern would reactivate two drilling rigs. Another key factor in when drillers will start drilling again are DUCs–drilled but uncompleted wells. The DUC inventory is going down–but many drillers still have a year’s worth of DUCs they can leverage before they have to sink new holes…
Yesterday MDN’s favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issued our favorite monthly report–the Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The DPR is the EIA’s best guess, based on expert data crunchers, as to how much each of the U.S.’s seven major shale plays will produce for both oil and natural gas in the coming month. Our first interesting observation from the May report: The EIA projects that in June (the report is a forecast looking forward) that once again the Utica Shale will be the only play out of the seven major plays that will continue to produce more natural gas than it did the month before. In April the EIA said the Utica would produce 1 million cubic feet per day (Mmcf/d) of natural gas above what it did the month before, and this report says the Utica will produce 4 Mmcf/d more than it did last month. Second interesting observation: Production in the Marcellus Shale, while it continues to produce each month than it did the month before, is slowing down. That is, the rate of decline is slowing, which means we may be getting close to the point when Marcellus production begins to pick up again. Keep a close eye on Marcellus production, because it’s the largest producing shale play in the country…
We’ve heard of microwaving popcorn (one of our favorite things to microwave), but we’ve never heard of microwaving “nanoribbons.” We suspect you haven’t either. All’s it takes is a 30-watt microwave to nuke nanoribbons and voila–drillers have a new, cheap and better way to seal up tiny fractures in wellbores. Researchers at Rice University have discovered wellbores drilled to extract oil and gas can be “dramatically reinforced” with a small amount of modified graphene nanoribbons–added to a polymer and microwaved. Think of it as nuking a tiny bit of plastic over a rock and the plastic melts into and firms up the rock. It’s quite possible there will be a microwave coming to a well pad near you!…
You may recall a few months back when President Barack Hussein Obama signed the Paris climate treaty, referred to as COP21. As we wrote at the time, the treaty is not binding on the U.S. because it’s not been ratified by the Senate (see 
Energy Transfer Equity (ETE) pushed and prodded and poked and cajoled and insisted, and finally with the help of an inside corporate raider, forced Williams to agree to a buyout/merger (see