Report: Shale Drillers Find Ways to Profit by Lowering Costs
The New York-based Manhattan Institute, a non-profit think tank with a mission “to develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility,” says the shale revolution is only just getting started, contrary to the naysayers who believe the low price of oil and gas means the end of the revolution. In a new report titled “Shale 2.0: Technology and the Coming Big-Data Revolution in America’s Shale Oil Fields” (full copy below), Mark Mills, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writes that new technology is rapidly lowering the cost to produce shale energy and that drillers will be able to turn a profit on much lower oil and gas prices than previously thought…
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In February 2014 there was an explosion and fire at a Chevron well pad that eventually spread from one Marcellus well to a second well on the same well pad in Greene County, PA (see 
Let the drilling begin! The three members of the Middlesex Zoning Hearing Board (Butler County, PA, where the Mars School District is located) voted unanimously on Wednesday to reject challenges by anti-drillers to changes in zoning laws that allow Rex Energy to drill a series of wells on a pad about 3/4 of a mile from the Mars School. Four Martian parents have worked themselves up into a frenzy, convincing themselves that faraway drilling will harm their precious, innocent lil’ chil’ren. The Martians have enlisted the help of anti-drilling groups from the opposite side of the state–the Philadelphia area–tapping into their deep pockets to fund endless lawsuits and appeals that are costing Middlesex taxpayers big bucks to defend (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection is wading into an area that’s likely best left to towns and municipalities: regulation of noise coming from Marcellus Shale drilling operations. The DEP wants drillers to craft a site-specific plan for noise mitigation for each and every well pad they drill. Problem is, the DEP won’t give drillers any standards against which to devise their plans. That is, the DEP isn’t willing to say “this loud is too loud at this distance from the drill site.” Drillers are understandably confused. How do you draw up a plan with no standards/no regulations? The DEP says noise is a funny thing–it can carry in one place but not another. They claim you can’t draw up hard and fast guidelines. One noise expert says trying to figure out the source of noise (and how to prevent it) is “sort of chasing ghosts”…
In February 2014 MDN told you about a deal cut by wildcatter Aubrey McClendon to lease 130,000 acres in the Ohio Utica Shale, a deal with three different companies (see