US Steel Tests New Pipe Connector in Range Resources Marcellus Well
For more than a year MDN has told you about a brewing controversy–South Korea and other countries “dumping” steel pipes on the U.S. market–selling pipes for below cost to corner the market and force out competitors. Concerns about dumping caught the attention of Congress who pressured the Obama Administration and in July 2014 the Dept. of Commerce slapped new/high tariffs on steel pipes from South Korea and eight other countries (see Commerce Dept Slaps Foreign Countries for Steel Pipe Dumping). One of the problems drillers face is that some of the steel pipes and connectors they use are specialized, and only available from foreign producers. U.S. Steel, headquartered in Pittsburgh, is working to address that. They’ve just completed a successful test of a new pipe connector in a Marcellus well drilled by Range Resources in Washington County, PA…
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As we told you yesterday, Ohio Gov. John Kasich horned in on a visit by Thailand-based PTT Global CEO Supattanapong Punmeechaow to Belmont County where Punmeechaow announced his company will spend $100 million over the next 9-12 months on a potential ethane cracker plant complex (see 
The McKeesport City Council (Allengheny County, near Pittsburgh) voted Wednesday evening to lease 133.257 acres of Renziehausen Park for drilling under (not on) for Marcellus Shale gas by EQT. The city will receive a $3,000 per acre signing bonus–$400,000 total. No word on what kind of royalty rate they agreed to. The city has been grappling with whether or not to lease the park for more than a year. The vote was 6-1. In typical fashion, one anti-drilling resident attending the meeting wouldn’t shut up and had to be escorted out of the meeting by a police officer. Two other loud mouth anti-drillers continued to spit and sputter and comment from the audience, speaking out of turn (but they weren’t thrown out). Here’s how it went down…
Katie Klaber, principal of the Klaber Group consulting firm and former president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, was hired to write a white paper/study for the Ben Franklin Shale Gas Innovation and Commercialization Center (SGICC) on the topic of how small Pennsylvania companies can be successful in delivering new products and services to the oil and gas industry. That is, how can your company plug into the supply chain? The white paper, titled “Technology Adoption in the Shale Energy Industry + the Role of SGICC” (full copy below) focuses mainly on technology companies–those with a new innovation. How do such companies get noticed? Get their first customer? Katie’s company surveyed 24 such companies that have worked with the SGICC to get noticed and get plugged in. She brings the lessons learned to this report. You might think, “Yeah, but I have a fencing company–nothing high tech about it. Would this report help me?” Yes, it would. There’s plenty of great marketing insights, an update on where things stand for the Marcellus/Utica specifically, and the oil and gas industry in general. We think this is a great report for any business that wants a better understanding of how to market to the upstream, midstream and downstream in the oil and gas industry…
“This is Dr. Frazier Crane, I’m listening.” Remember the old sitcom Frazier? Funny stuff. Something equally as funny is coming to Pennsylvania. The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection is holding 14 “listening sessions” from this month through November to accept comments on Barack H. Obama’s so-called Clean Power Plan that will force states like PA to cut carbon emissions to the point of bankrupting businesses and forcing sky-high utility rates. The PennFuture Secretary of the DEP, John Quigley, an Obama acolyte and global warming Kool Aid drinker, can’t wait to “listen” to what PA residents have to say. We encourage you to show up and give him a piece of your mind…
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 July (see 
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has buckled to pressure from politicians to schedule yet another scoping hearing in New Hampshire (the third such hearing in tiny NH, the 14th overall), and extend the period for public comments, for the Kinder Morgan Northeast Energy Direct pipeline project that would bring much-needed supplies of abundant, cheap and clean-burning Marcellus/Utica Shale gas to New England (see 
So four anti-drillers are sitting at a bar…no wait–that’s another story. Four anti-drilling activists who teach at three different colleges–University of Florida, Florida State University, and North Carolina State University (none of them nowhere near the Marcellus/Utica Shale)–got together and concocted a sham study that used an ONLINE survey of 225 people (i.e. unscientific) in the Marcellus/Utica region who visit public parks. Based on the GIGO survey results, the researchers say one-third of Appalachian folks ain’t a goin’ to no park with frackin’ nearby, nosiree. Of course, it’s likely they wouldn’t even know whether or not there is fracking nearby since you typically can’t tell from more than a few hundred feet away where a well is being drilled. We wonder if the researchers also asked the same 225 if they would fly in to or out of an airport with fracking nearby? If that’s your criteria for whether or not to do something, whether there’s fracking nearby, you won’t be using Pittsburgh International Airport where some 47 wells are being drilled as we write this…
PennEast Pipeline, the $1 billion, 118-mile, 36-inch diameter pipeline that will deliver 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day from the Marcellus gas fields of northeastern Pennsylvania (in Luzerne County) to southeastern PA and New Jersey (terminating in Mercer County, NJ), has just announced another $50,000 of community grants, bringing the grand total of such grants up to $240,000–so far. The organizations receiving the grants are eminently worthy–mostly fire departments and EMS departments located in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey…
Earlier this week a $2.85 million compressed natural gas (CNG) filling station was opened with a large crowd of people eager to begin using it. Nexus Natural Gas, a consortium of seven different companies, unveiled their first collaborative CNG fueling station aimed at cars, trucks, tractor-trailers and buses. The state got involved with a $570,000 grant–recognizing the benefits of using natural gas as a transportation fuel (burns cleaner, natural gas is a home-grown fuel). Local utility/pipeline companies are involved too–to deliver cheap, abundant and clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas to the new fueling station. What’s that? Where’s this new CNG fueling station located–where crowds of natgas lovers congregated to celebrate? Would you believe, in New York State!…
Two sister companies based in Ohio–Valley Electrical Consolidated Inc. and Evets Oil & Gas Construction Services–will be merged together under parent company VEC, Inc. starting January 1, 2016. VEC/Evets has done construction and steel fabrication work for many Utica/Marcellus companies in Ohio and neighboring states. According to VEC’s president and owner, Rex Ferry, the realignment and merging of the two into one will allow them to better serve customers. Along with the merger of the two companies comes a few promotions, including a promotion for an MDN subscriber…
We have an update on the story we broke yesterday–that Chief Oil & Gas is closing its Wexford (Pittsburgh) office (see 
Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is having trouble getting anyone to notice he’s running for president (predictably, nobody cares when an establishment RINO runs), will swoop in at a press conference today at 3 pm in Belmont County, OH to announce that foreigners from Thailand-based PTT Global and Marubeni Corp. of Tokyo will drop $100 million on Ohio to conduct engineering and design work for a previously announced potential ethane cracker plant in the county (see