Wheeling Area 5th Fastest Growing Economy in US – Thanks to Shale
Hey anti-drillers who like to lie about the benefits of fracking: Tell us again how there’s no positive economic impact from the shale industry. It’s all just smoke and mirrors and the only ones who make money are Big Oil & Gas. Tell us how the jobs are “temporary” and the money from the industry illusory. Then we’ll tell you about the Wheeling Metropolitan Statistical Area, comprised of Belmont County, OH along with Marshall and Ohio counties in WV. The Wheeling MSA’s gross domestic product grew by 9.5% from 2013 to 2014, according to data provided by the U.S. Department of Commerce. That’s the fifth fastest growing MSA in the country–out of 381 MSAs. Oh, and the reason it’s growing so fast? Yep–the Marcellus and Utica Shale boom happening in the region…
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MDN’s Jim Willis comes from the marketing world having held marketing positions at various publishing companies over the past 25 years or so. Sometimes (like you) Jim wants to pull his remaining hair out when reading press releases larded up with tech and marketing speak. Just say it in plain English, please! We came across such a press release from GE–as in General Electric. We waded through a tangle of “optimized compression” and “asset level” and “condition-based” phraseology to bring you this news: Crestwood Midstream is using new software from GE that will improve the compressor stations they operate in WV, allowing Crestwood to move more gas using the same equipment. There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Why can’t marketing types learn the lesson that simple language is better!…
What is it about some anti-drillers (actually, anti-fossil fuelers) that makes them closed-minded and unreasonable? A Colorado research chemist and two technology students from Singapore set out to answer the question of whether or not shale oil should be produced. All three attended a 10-week intensive course focusing on Utah’s vast oil reserves (no, this story is not about the Marcellus/Utica per se, but it is illustrative nonetheless). Although the three had intended on submitting a research paper at the 35th Annual Oil Shale Symposium being held yesterday and today in Salt Lake City, the research paper ended up being a 116-page e-book they’re selling on Amazon, called “
Get this: The Obama administration has made a $730,000 grant to the Pittsburgh Region Clean Cities (PRCC) organization to study how to convert boats to operate more efficiently and pollute the environment less. Most boats today burn a nasty, filthy, rotten fossil fuel called diesel. Belches out all sorts of “pollutants” including carbon dioxide. Obamadroids want to clean up Mother Earth and need to figure out ways to do it. But sticking a windmill or a solar panel on a boat doesn’t work very well (Obama’s already tried it). So for the administration that’s given us the Clean Power Plan that tries to eliminate both coal and natural gas, we have a grant to convert a tugboat from burning diesel to…burning natural gas. Yep. Even Obamadroids have to admit you can power boats with solar and wind–so they’ve given $730,000 to the PRCC to run an experiment in converting a tugboat burning diesel into burning clean, abundant and cheap natural gas. Perhaps the smartest thing Obama has ever done!…
The Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY) and JLC United will air another live session of the Good News Table Talk Radio Show on Sunday, Oct. 18 from 7-8 pm on WNBF Radio 1290 in Binghamton (listen online at: 
In September MDN brought you the news that the buyer of the bankrupt Canadian waterless fracking company, GASFRAC, is shelving the waterless propane fracking product the company was known for (see 
Yes, it takes years from the first announcement of a new pipeline project until it’s done and “in service.” In October 2012 MDN told you about a new project from then NiSource and it’s Columbia Pipeline subsidiary called the East Side Expansion (see 
A Pennsylvania state judge last Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by three Cumberland County landowners against Sunoco Logistics Partners over the company’s assertion of eminent domain to build the Mariner East 2 pipeline across their property. Sunoco is currently pumping propane through the Mainer East 1 pipeline and has plans to add a second and third pipeline next to the existing pipeline, collectively called Mariner East 2. All told, Sunoco LP is spending an eye-popping $3 billion to build out the Mariner East project which flows natural gas liquids (propane, ethane, others) from as far away as eastern Ohio to the Philadelphia-area Marcus Hook refinery. The judge, in tossing out the lawsuit, further strengthens Sunoco LP’s argument that the Mariner projects, which will distribute the NGLs flowing through them both within PA and beyond PA, is in fact a public utility under PA law and entitled to use eminent domain, if necessary, to build the project…
Dominion is a huge utility/pipeline company operating in 13 states and organized into multiple corporations–but all under the broad umbrella known as Dominion. One of the pieces of the company is called Dominion Transmission, Inc. (DTI)–the interstate and gathering pipeline segment of the company, headquartered in Richmond, VA. Dominion has just announced they will strip out the gathering pipeline bits of the business from DTI and put them into a new company (on paper) called Dominion Gathering & Processing, Inc. It also appears that DTI itself will be renamed to Dominion Resources, Inc. The value of the transaction (what Dominion will essentially pay itself) is $434 million for the gathering assets. Why all of the musical chairs and setting up new corporations on paper? This time it doesn’t appear to be about tax advantages, as it so often is. Dominion is making the change because gathering systems are not regulated under FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) rules the way interstate pipelines are. By unbundling the gathering pipelines/compressor plants/etc. from the company that operates the interstate pipeline, Dominion can better compete with others in the midstream space. That is, right now because the gathering assets are part of the same company as the interstate pipeline, those assets are subject to FERC regulatory hoops and nonsense–so Dominion is removing those assets from that nonsense–sort of untying their hands to be on a level playing field with others…
It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about Pennant Midstream, a joint venture between Columbia Pipeline Group and Hilcorp’s midstream subsidiary Harvest Pipeline Company with assets located mostly in the Mahoning Valley area of Ohio. Columbia, the lead jv partner, announced today that Williams (currently being bought out by Energy Transfer Equity) will become the third partner in the jv. Williams will have an initial 5% ownership share, although it’s not clear to us how much they’ve initially invested for that 5%. However, should Williams want to pony up cash for expansions to the system, they can achieve a full one-third ownership in time. Here’s the announcement with the details Columbia has decided to share…
Shares of Magnum Hunter Resources’ (MHR) stock have, like almost all other oil and gas company stocks, taken a beating over the past year. In September the New York Stock Exchange sent MHR a notice that their stock has been trading under $1.00 per share for more than 30 consecutive days and is in danger of being de-listed (see 
Since March MDN has been watching the active number of rigs operated by Patterson-UTI Energy as a proxy for whether or not we’ve “turned the corner” on falling rig counts in the Marcellus/Utica. Patterson is a major drilling contractor with operations in the Marcellus/Utica region. We won’t recount all of the numbers here, for that you can read our story from August (see 
MPR Transloading & Energy, part of MPR Supply Chain Solutions, operates a 20-acre transloading site on the shores of the Ohio River in Belmont County, OH, just across the river from Wheeling, WV. MPR is working hard to finish a new, large sand hopper at the site so trucks hauling frac sand can pull under it to quickly load and head off to drill sites in the region. There’s just one small problem: There are only 35 rigs operating in eastern Ohio and West Virginia today, half of the number that were operating just a year ago when the sand hopper was planned. That is, there’s less demand for sand…
It’s kind of funny to hear anti-drilling liberal NPR reporters interview each other and present it as news. Hilarious, in fact. They do their dead-level best to sound objective (which they aren’t) and knowledgeable (which they sometimes are) and haughty (which they always are). Here’s what precipitated the latest round of self-interviews. In July, MDN told you that the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission (PUC) had given preliminary approval to Liberty Utilities (a NH utility company) to purchase firm capacity on Kinder Morgan’s proposed Northeast Energy Direct extension of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline (see 
Sometimes you have to reach out to the other side (i.e. the unreasonable enemy of fossil fuels) to try and convince them that the oil and gas industry is not Satanic. We don’t bother with trying to convince them (lost cause in our opinion), but kudos to those who have the patience to try it. Case in point: Cabot Oil & Gas recently hosted a delegation from the Big Green/radical group Trout Unlimited (TU). TU, you may recall, is the sad story of a once great group co-opted into being a radical green group (see 
MDN is happy to support the