WV Severance Tax Doubles in 2014, 90% Disappears in Charleston
Wow–who woulda thunk? Drillers in West Virginia paid double the amount of revenue in severance taxes in 2014 than they did in 2013–a total of $188 million. Those numbers are approaching the total haul for the tax/impact fee in Pennsylvania (a little over $200 million each year). But there’s a big difference between the revenue raised in WV and PA. In PA, 60% of the revenue raised stays local with the towns and counties where drilling occurs, and 40% goes to the state and other geographies. We call the 40% “walking around money” (i.e. extortion) that politicians had to agree to in order to get any kind of deal done that remotely approaches common sense. In WV however, an eye-popping 90% of the severance revenue raised goes to the state–to disappear through politicians’ fingers–while a meager 7.5% stays in the counties that see drilling…
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More troubling talk from Odebrecht about a proposed ethane cracker plant in Parkersburg, WV. In February, MDN brought you the first tremors in what until that point had been nothing but positive signs the project would move forward (see 
How low will it go? Data from the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) shows a significant drop in the number of Marcellus Shale drilling permits issued for the first quarter of 2015. In fact, the number of permits issued dropped 30% in 1Q15–to the lowest number of permits issued in the past five years. Here’s a look at the numbers…
One more twist in what is shaping up to be a very long process to build the state’s largest electric generating plant powered by Marcellus Shale gas. Invenergy hopes to build the 1500-megawatt plant in the borough of Jessup (Lackawanna County), near Scranton, on an 80-acre former coal mine and landfill site (see 
Aubrey McClendon, former CEO of Chesapeake Energy, current CEO of American Energy Partners and the media’s favorite bad boy of fracking–knows a thing or two about developing a deep bench. In addition to Aubrey’s focus on natural gas drilling, he’s one of the co-owners of the Oklahoma City Thunder NBA basketball team. So Aubrey knows it’s good to have a lot of talent on the bench and in the game. In that spirit, Aubrey has just made three more hires to, as he says, “broaden and deepen” his management team. Yesterday American Energy Partners announced that it has hired Scott D. Sachs as Senior Geoscience Executive Advisor, James C. Johnson as Senior Marketing and Midstream Executive and Traci D. Cook as Chief Accounting Officer…
The third shoe has now dropped. On Monday we told you that Schlumberger has cut an additional 11,000 jobs–20,000 total now gone–from the payroll (see 
Is there a weather forecast worth the pixels used to broadcast it? We doubt it. We laugh when we hear about “climate change” coming in the next X years, which really means global warming, and how the “average temperature” of old Mother Earth is about to skyrocket–any year now. Of course hucksters like Al Gore have been saying that for the past 25 years. And still the average temp on earth goes up, then it goes down, then it goes up. OMG–climate changes! Can you believe that?!! What dopes. Anyway, last month we brought you the long range weather forecast for the entire country, month by month, from Weather Services International (WSI)–a respected weather prognosticating company used by many in the natural gas industry (see 
When MDN editor Jim Willis attends industry conferences, more often than not there is at least one, sometimes more than one, session on CSR, or Corporate Social Responsibility. CSR means oil and gas companies ensure they are in compliance not only with the letter, but the spirit of the laws and regulations under which they operate. It also means going beyond the minimum and being good neighbors and participating in the communities in which they operate. Our industry takes the CSR role seriously. So when we noticed that Hess was named the No. 1 oil and gas company on Corporate Responsibility magazine’s prestigious list of 100 Best Corporate Citizens for 2015, we thought it worth mentioning and giving them a shout-out for a job well done…![IHSPredictsNaphthaOversupplyThrough2020[1]](http://marcellusdrilling.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/IHSPredictsNaphthaOversupplyThrough20201.jpg)
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading:
Last October MDN told you about the rumor that a pair of companies from Thailand and Japan were partnering with the aim of building an ethane cracker plant in the Marcellus/Utica region (see 
It seems that unfortunately, Schlumberger’s second round of layoffs was an omen and indeed a predictor of things to come (see 
Patterson-UTI operates (leases out) drilling rigs for shale and conventional drilling. They are one of the biggest rig firms in the Marcellus/Utica. They were also, a few years ago, a juicy target for the mob. The mob told Patterson that the goodfellas didn’t like Patterson’s hiring patterns. Patterson wasn’t treating all of its employees exactly the same. And the color mix of employees was a bit off for the mob’s taste. So the mob did what they do best–a shake down. Patterson could pay them big bucks and the problems would all magically disappear. It’s called protection money. The cost to Patterson to “protect them” would run into the millions–which is why the company originally opposed such a scheme. But in the end, Patterson caved and handed over $12.26 million in protection money to the mob. Oops. Did we say “mob”? We meant to say “U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.” And did we say “protection money?” We meant to say “settlement.” Here’s the details behind the shakedown of Patterson-UTI…