First Time Ever: US Shale Produces Less Oil/Gas Month Over Month
As MDN pointed out a month ago, the U.S. has seen a turning point in the production of shale oil and gas (see Turning Point: EIA Drilling Report Shows Slow Down in Production). Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, is fresh out with its monthly Drilling Productivity Report for April/May. It shows a couple of firsts. Last month the major shale plays in the U.S. produced about as much oil as they did the month before (April estimates vs March estimates). But the major shale plays produced 221 million cubic feet per day (mmcf/d) more of natural gas in April than in March. This month that’s all changed. For the first time, the major shale plays, in May, will have produced 5,700 barrels of oil per day less than the month before, and 23 mmcf/d less of natural gas. However, the Marcellus and Utica shales will both produce more oil and gas in May than in April–although the rate of production in both has greatly slowed…
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We’re passing along a bit of gossip–we call it gossip because we haven’t (yet) been able to verify it, but we believe it to be true. A long-time MDN reader wrote to tell us that he services most of the rigs operating in the Appalachian basin (Marcellus/Utica), and that Southwestern either has or is about to idle two rigs owned and operated by Precision Drilling in northeast PA: Rigs #538 and #539 in Bradford and Susquehanna counties. According to our source, the Bradford County rig was idled last week and the Susquehanna County rig will be idled this week. We don’t know if Southwestern has any remaining active rigs in northeastern PA owned by other companies.
This is truly brazen. We’ve previously written about callous drillers like Hess who drilled next door to a cemetery (see 
Apparently torrential rains in Marshall County, WV last week softened up the earth and led to soil shifting and two Williams pipelines rupturing–within hours of each other. One of the pipelines is a 12-inch gathering line that runs from wells in the area to the nearby Fort Beeler processing plant. The other pipeline is a 4-inch condensate pipeline. Condensate spilled out of a hole and into the nearby Little Grave Creek. Cleanup efforts are ongoing. For a short time, five families who live near the 12-inch gathering line were evacuated as a precautionary measure–but they returned home within a few hours…