SWPA Landowners Allege Range Withheld Info in Water Well Case
MDN has been highlighting stories and writing about potential water well contamination by Range Resources at their Yeager well and wastewater impoundment site in Amwell Township (Washington County), PA since 2012 (see MDN’s list of Range/Yeager stories here). Residents living nearby have claimed their wells were contaminated, and their health affected. Range finally closed the wastewater impoundment at the site last year (see Range Resources to Begin Closing Yeager Impoundment on Monday). A judge ordered Range to produce a list of all chemicals used at the site since it was first drilled. One of the things Range didn’t disclose, according to the residents living nearby, was that the company used “tracer” chemicals when they originally drilled the well in 2009. Tracers are used to track the presence of fracking fluids. The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) eventually ruled the water wells near the Yeager site were not contaminated by Range’s activities. The landowners are now appealing that decision based on this “new” evidence that Range used tracers, but never disclosed the use of tracers that investigators could have used in looking for evidence of contamination. The neighbors are alleging that Range engaged in a cover-up to keep what might have been damning evidence from the plaintiffs…
Read More “SWPA Landowners Allege Range Withheld Info in Water Well Case”
If landowners along the route of the PennEast Pipeline don’t sign a lease with the company, PennEast says they will be forced to (and will) use eminent domain to gain lease rights. The PennEast, as a reminder, is a proposed pipeline costing $1 billion that will run from Luzerne County, PA (near Wilkes-Barre) all the way to Mercer County, NJ (just outside of Trenton), flowing 1 billion cubic feet of clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas each and every day. Landowners along the pipeline’s route will still own the land, but there will be restrictions–you can’t erect a building over top of a pipeline, for example. PennEast looks at eminent domain as an absolute last resort. However, according to the radicals at the PA Sierra Club who are opposing the pipeline, around two-thirds of the landowners along the pipeline’s route have not yet signed a lease to allow the pipeline across their land. PennEast recently filed their official application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) seems to have a grudge against EQT. Last October the DEP levied a $4.5 million fine against EQT over a leaky wastewater impoundment in Tioga County, PA (see 
For the past few months MDN has noted several large sales of Carrizo Oil & Gas stock by company CEO Chip Johnson, totaling nearly $2 million of stock sold since June (see 
In 2012, Barnesville (Belmont County), OH signed a contract with Gulfport Energy to sell Gulfport water from the Slope Creek Reservoir for 1 penny per gallon. Earlier this year Gulfport wanted to begin drilling in the area, following a joint venture agreement with Antero Resources. But Barnesville said the water level in the reservoir is too low and wouldn’t sell any to Gulfport, so Gulfport sued and in March the whole matter ended up in federal court (see 
Houston-based Schlumberger (pronounced Shlum-Bur-Zhay), the largest oilfield services company in the world, reported its third quarter 2015 financial results yesterday. Schlumberger has major operations in the Marcellus/Utica, as well as 85+ other countries around the world. BIG company–employing over 100,000 people. Schlumberger is a good proxy for how the entire oil and gas industry is doing, given its size. And how is the mighty Schlumberger doing? Worldwide revenue for the company is down 33% from the same quarter last year. If you look only at North America, Schlumberger’s revenue is down 47% year over year–nearly half! Revenue from outside of North America performed slightly better–down “just” 27% year over year. The reason for the massive drop in revenue, according to CEO Paal Kibsgaard: fewer rigs operating and for those rigs that are operating, drillers are hammering the company to lower prices. Was there any good news in the update? Schlumberger has taken advantage of the low price environment to hoover up a number of associated and/or quasi-competitive companies, including Cameron International, Novatek Inc., and T&T Engineering Services. Below are select extracts of yesterday’s update, followed by a PDF of the full update (for those into that sort of thing)…
Two days ago MDN told you that the U.S. Coast Guard has approved of a project off the coast of New York and New Jersey that would import natural gas from Trinidad (see 
It seems like almost every day we read the “bad news” that more rigs are being laid down in the Marcellus/Utica, and jobs are being lost. We’re in the midst of a vicious down cycle right now in the industry, waiting for light to appear at the end of this long tunnel. So when we spot a story, or press release (in this case) about a company selling to the industry that’s actually expanding rather than contracting, we like to highlight that good news. A company we’d not previously heard of, Inspectorate (aka Bureau Veritas, a French company), announced yesterday they have expanded their offices and laboratories in Linden (NJ), Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. Inspectorate is a testing and inspection service for the oil and gas industry. The reason for their expansion in the northeast (and elsewhere in North America) is an uptick in demand for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) testing. Shale gas production drives increased market demand for propane, butane, and ethane, and along with it, the need to test it to ensure and verify quality…
Attention Marcellus and Utica drillers (and those companies working in and for the industry): A National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) expert will present the findings of his field research in the Marcellus/Utica at the 
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: OH landowners appeal pipeline ruling; Moldovan phishing scheme hooks PA driller; oil permits up, gas permits down; and more!
What a difference a few months, or even a week, can make. In August, Gastar Exploration, which owns roughly 60,000 acres of leases in the Marcellus/Utica mostly in Marshall and Wetzel counties in West Virginia, was talking up their drilling program in the northeast (see 
Last month MDN told you that a county judge in Butler County, PA dismissed a lawsuit brought by a business and group of Middlesex Township landowners against two Big Green groups and four anti-fossil fuel parents from the Mars School District–whom we refer to as the Martians (see 
It’s a theme often repeated here on MDN and in mainstream media: We need more pipelines in the Marcellus/Utica. The problem, of course, is that it’s easy and fast to add new rigs and drill new wells in nothing flat. But at some point all of those wells flowing all of that gas need larger interstate pipelines to get the gas to market–markets in New England, New York and New Jersey, the south, the Midwest, even the Gulf Coast. The Marcellus/Utica is producing more than 25% of all the gas being produced in the country–way more than we can use ourselves. We need to move the gas to other parts of the country that can use it. So new wells come online, but it takes, literally, years to build a new pipeline. Why? Mostly because government regulatory agencies grind so slowly. We have an imbalance. What are drillers in the northeast doing to address the situation? Choking back their wells so they flow less. In some cases they’re shutting the wells in to stop them producing–until new pipelines are finished providing access to new markets so they can sell gas for a higher price. The latest mainstream media source to note this trend is Bloomberg…
Canadian company TransCanada is perhaps best known for its Keystone XL Pipeline project, a 1,179-mile crude oil pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to Nebraska–if it ever gets built. Lord Obama opposes the pipeline and as we all know when a dictator opposes something, it doesn’t happen. The Keystone XL Pipeline would flow Canadian crude oil as far south as Texas. However, moving Canadian oil isn’t the only thing TransCanada does. They’re also owners of electric generating plants, and one of the markets they have their eye on is the northeast with its access to abundant, clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas. Last week TransCanada announced a deal to buy the Ironwood natural gas-fired power plant located in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Ironwood produces up to 778 megawatts of electricity–enough electricity to power over half a million homes. TransCanada is paying $654 million to buy the plant…
Shhh. We have to whisper for this bit of news. Pennsylvania state budget talks began yesterday–“quietly” according to mainstream (Democrat) media. Staffers from no less than four House and Senate caucuses met yesterday, and will continue their meetings today and tomorrow, to see if they can hammer out a compromise budget. The dirty little secret is that no Gov. Wolf staffers are invited. Republicans and Democrats will work out the budget without Wolf and then let Wolf pretend it was all his idea in the first place. That’s how mainstream media covers for one of their own who’s gone off the rails as much as Wolf has. WORD IS (shhh! keep your voice down)…(oops, sorry)…word is that the budget negotiators will first agree how much extra spending they can get away with–put a number to it. After that they’ll figure out how they will raise insane amounts of new revenue to pay for it all. Yes, a potential severance tax is (unfortunately) still alive and kicking. We hope and trust Republicans will hold true and refuse any new taxes on the Marcellus Shale industry…