Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Tue, Sep 8, 2015
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading:
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PTT Announces 2 Contractors Working on Belmont Cracker Plant
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 PTT CEO Arrives in OH to Announce First $100M for Cracker Plant). PTT has said all along a final decision about whether or not to build the plant won’t happen until 2016 or 2017. Gov. Kasich has a bit more cheery (Pollyanna?) perspective, saying in baseball terms the project is already rounding third base and heading toward home plate. We hope he’s right, but we’ve been led down the primrose path before when it comes to cracker projects (cough *Odebrecht* cough). We do know the name for two of the companies that will receive at least some of (perhaps most of) the $100 million PTT is spending over the next year…
Read More “PTT Announces 2 Contractors Working on Belmont Cracker Plant” -
McKeesport Leases Local Park for Marcellus Drilling, $400K Bonus
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…
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New Study: How Businesses Can Plug in to Marcellus Supply Chain
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…
Read More “New Study: How Businesses Can Plug in to Marcellus Supply Chain” -
PA DEP to Hold 14 “Listening Sessions” on Obama CPP
“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…
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Patterson-UTI Active Rigs (Sadly) Falls Again in August
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 Patterson-UTI Active Rigs Finally Hits Bottom in July? Maybe). We theorized that perhaps Patterson had hit bottom in July with 111 active rigs operating in the U.S. and 4 rigs in Canada. Alas, it seems the bottom as not yet been reached. Patterson released their August numbers yesterday, the while Canada has stayed steady at 4 active rigs, their U.S. rig fleet has fallen to an average of 106 active rigs in August…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Kinder Morgan | Pipelines | Regulation | Tennessee Gas Pipeline
FERC Adds 14th Hearing, Extends Comment Period for NED Pipeline
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 NH Gov Hassan Asks FERC to Schedule More Hearings for KM Pipeline). Scoping hearings, and written public comments, offer members of the public an opportunity to weigh in with specific concerns about a pipeline’s route. Concerns like, “It will cut through the middle of my hay field during the very time I need to harvest hay next year,” and “Can it please be re-routed away from my back porch–it’s currently planned to pass within 25 feet of my house.” Practical, valid, legitimate concerns folks may have about a project. Instead, small groups of anti-fossil fuel zealots show up to hijack scoping hearings. They’re essentially zombies reading from the same script: pipelines are evil, pipelines don’t create permanent jobs, pipelines don’t benefit the locals, pipelines might blow up, pipelines lead to more fracking, blah blah blah. Their statements are predictable because you hear them at every…single…hearing (we know, we’ve heard them!). Scoping hearings would be better renamed anti-fossil fuel freak shows…
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Sham Study: Folks Won’t Visit Public Parks with Fracking Nearby
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…
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PennEast Pipeline Donates $50K to Fire Depts, Other Groups
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…
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CNG Customers Gather to Celebrate Grand Opening in…
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!…
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Ohio Construction Company VEC Consolidates O&G Operation
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…
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Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Fri, Sep 4, 2015
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading:
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Chief O&G Confirms MDN Story re Closing of Pittsburgh Office
We have an update on the story we broke yesterday–that Chief Oil & Gas is closing its Wexford (Pittsburgh) office (see Rumor: Chief Oil & Gas has Closed it’s Marcellus Office Near Pittsburgh). A few hours after posting our story, a spokesperson for Chief sent us a statement (below) confirming our story. The statement makes the point that although they are closing the Wexford office, Chief remains fully committed to the Marcellus. In addition to the Chief Statement, we also have some more inside details from our tipster about what went down at the Wexford office on Tuesday…
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PTT CEO Arrives in OH to Announce First $100M for Cracker Plant
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 It’s Official: Belmont County Chosen as POSSIBLE Cracker Plant Site). Kasich doesn’t like “foreigners” from exotic places like Texas and Oklahoma working in the oil and gas fields of Ohio (see Ohio Gov. John Kasich Jazzed About Chesapeake Striking Oil in the Utica Shale – Refers to Potential Out-of-State Workers as “Foreigners” and OH Gov. Kasich Continues Trash Talk Out-of-State Workers). But if you’re a foreigner from, you know, a foreign country? And you have a few billion dollars to drop in the state? That’s A.O.K. for the son of a postal worker turned Congressman turned career politician turned RINO turned governor. But let’s not get lost in the tortured politics of John Kasich. Let’s celebrate the fact that PTT Global CEO Supattanapong Punmeechaow, from Thailand, is flying over to attend today’s announcement. That’s a very positive sign indeed that this potential $5 billion project, which we’re now reading has been upgraded closer to $6 billion, is on track to become a reality…
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PA DEP Screws Up Water Test at Ten Mile Creek – Egg on Face
Pennsylvania anti-drillers from a local chapter of the Izaak Walton League, a so-called conservation organization, attempted a smear job on the Marcellus Shale industry–and it’s come back to bite them. The Izaak Walton gang has been testing water from Ten Mile Creek that runs through Washington and Greene counties in western PA for the past four years. Last year the League raised an alarm that there are high levels of radiation and other nasty things in the creek. The League immediately started pointing a finger at the Marcellus industry, accusing drillers of illegally dumping untreated wastewater in the creek (see Is Shale Wastewater Causing Radiation Spike in Ten Mile Creek?). The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) ran a test of the water in April 2014 and found from its own testing high levels of radioactivity. The problem is, the DEP ran the WRONG test, and therefore got erroneous results. A team of scientists from West Virginia University tested in the same location–six times–during July and August. They used the right test–and guess what? There are no elevated levels of radioactivity in Ten Mile Creek. Sounds to us like the Izaak Walton gang was telling a Ten Mile High story. The DEP has considerable egg on its face for screwing up the original test and scaring everyone for the past year. The DEP says they will retest for themselves, this time using a more accurate test…
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Antis Publish Study Revealing How They Manipulate Public Opinion
We shouldn’t be, but we’re stunned. We’ve discovered that anti-drillers are funding studies to discover how best to fool you. What words, phrases, stories and lies will resonate the best, and move low information types, to oppose fossil fuels. They study it and actually publish their findings (crow about it) for all the world to see! We’ve known for a long time that so-called peer reviewed research is nothing more than bought-and-paid-for propaganda (read this recent story in the New York Times: Many Psychology Findings Not as Strong as Claimed, Study Says; and this NY Times editorial: Scientists Who Cheat). A new study appearing in the October issue of American Sociological Review looks at how the propaganda in Josh Fox’s fictional movie Gasland, along with social media efforts, tangibly moved the dial in favor of anti-fracking sentiment among those who refuse to think for themselves. The study was originally titled “No Fracking Way!” Media Activism, Discursive Opportunities and Local Opposition against Hydraulic Fracturing in the United States, 2010-2013, but in good propaganda fashion, the authors changed the name, removing “Media Activism” (because that cuts a little too close to the truth) replacing it with “Documentary Film.” They also made the plural “Opportunities” into the singular “Opportunity.” The published title became: “No Fracking Way!” Documentary Film, Discursive Opportunity, and Local Opposition against Hydraulic Fracturing in the United States, 2010-2013. Below we connect the dots to the anti-fossil fuelers who funded the “study”…
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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 
Pennsylvania anti-drillers from a local chapter of the Izaak Walton League, a so-called conservation organization, attempted a smear job on the Marcellus Shale industry–and it’s come back to bite them. The Izaak Walton gang has been testing water from Ten Mile Creek that runs through Washington and Greene counties in western PA for the past four years. Last year the League raised an alarm that there are high levels of radiation and other nasty things in the creek. The League immediately started pointing a finger at the Marcellus industry, accusing drillers of illegally dumping untreated wastewater in the creek (see 
We shouldn’t be, but we’re stunned. We’ve discovered that anti-drillers are funding studies to discover how best to fool you. What words, phrases, stories and lies will resonate the best, and move low information types, to oppose fossil fuels. They study it and actually publish their findings (crow about it) for all the world to see! We’ve known for a long time that so-called peer reviewed research is nothing more than bought-and-paid-for propaganda (read this recent story in the New York Times: