Marcellus Drilling News

Butler County | Energy Companies | Pennsylvania | Rex Energy

Struggling Rex Energy Gets JV Partner, Slashes Budget Again
April 1, 2015April 1, 2015

Rex Energy, our little energy company that could (and does) continue to drill in the Marcellus/Utica, is struggling. Rex has, like all companies, been hit with low commodity prices for natural gas, a shortage of pipelines to get the gas to markets, and consequently has scaled back on plans for 2015. Although Rex had a great 2014 with production up some 66% over 2013, in December the company announced they would trim the 2015 budget by 44% over 2014 (see Rex Energy Reduces 2015 Marcellus/Utica Drilling Budget by 44%). In February Rex was included in a list of 19 companies on one analyst’s “death list”–meaning they owe a lot more money than they bring in–in Rex’s case they owe 5 times as much as they bring in annually (see 19 Oil/Gas Companies on “Death List” – 8 are in Marcellus/Utica). Shortly after that, Rex put 28K PA acres up for sale in their non-core area, to raise cash (see Rex Energy Looks to Sell 28,300 Marcellus Acres in Bid to Raise $). And that brings us to yesterday, when Rex announced they are slashing their drilling budget again, by another 30%, and they’ve taken on a joint venture partner for some of their acreage in a bid to keep drilling…
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Forced Pooling | Industrywide Issues | Regulation | Statewide WV | West Virginia

WV Forced Pooling Bill HB 2688 May Get Another Vote This Fall
April 1, 2015April 1, 2015

After five years of trying, it seemed that a forced pooling bill was finally going to pass in West Virginia during the 2015 WV 60-day legislative session. But at the literal eleventh hour of the last day of the session, it failed (see The Real Story of Why Forced Pooling Bill Failed in WV). The bill this time was House Bill (HB) 2688 and was introduced and championed by Delegate Woody Ireland, R-Ritchie. Ireland was a bit dumbstruck after HB 2688 failed and he didn’t have much to say. But Woodie is talking now–and talking about re-introducing the bill this fall…
Read More “WV Forced Pooling Bill HB 2688 May Get Another Vote This Fall”
Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Regulation | Statewide PA | Transco | Williams

It’s Official: Williams Files with FERC for Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline
April 1, 2015April 1, 2015

It’s finally time for the sun to rise on Williams’ Transco Atlantic Sunrise pipeline project. It seems like we’ve covered the story of Atlantic Sunrise forever–a $2.1 billion project consisting of compression and looping of the Transco Leidy Line in Pennsylvania along with a greenfield (brand new) pipeline segment of 178 miles, called the Central Penn Line, connecting the northeastern Marcellus producing region to the Transco mainline near Station 195 in southeastern Pennsylvania (see Atlantic Sunrise Will Pump $1.6B into Economy, Create 8K Jobs). We’ve covered many of the anti-drilling nutball antics in opposing the pipeline (see Convicted Lancaster Protesters Taunt Williams After Court Date). Even though Williams has conducted countless meetings and filed reams of paperwork–it was only yesterday that Williams filed the full, complete, and official application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), asking FERC to approve the project…
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Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Kinder Morgan | New York | Pipelines | Statewide NY | Tennessee Gas Pipeline

Power Lines and Pipeline Corrosion – A Quick MDN Primer
April 1, 2015April 1, 2015

MDN told you yesterday about a story in the anti-drilling Albany Times Union newspaper that seeks to spread FUD–fear, uncertainty and doubt–about the proposed Kinder Morgan Northeast Extension Direct pipeline (see Albany Times Union Says Electric Lines will Corrode NED Pipeline). The meme trying to be spread by the TU is that if Kinder moves forward with a plan to co-locate the pipeline along miles and miles of high voltage power line corridors, the power lines will eat away the pipeline and turn it into a ticking time bomb that will one day explode. That’s our words, not the TU’s words, but that’s clearly the impression the TU reporter attempts to convey in the article. We poked fun at the notion that electric lines corrode pipelines. However, it does happen! No less than three sharp MDN readers, one of them from the federal government, emailed with information about the phenomenon of pipeline corrosion from AC power lines. The upshot is that a) this is a known issue, b) there are ways to safely mitigate any potential corrosion from AC power lines, and c) pipelines have been co-located along power line corridors for decades–safely…
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Best of the Rest

Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Wed, Apr 1, 2015
April 1, 2015April 1, 2015

The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading:
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Beaver County | Energy Companies | Ethane | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Processing Plants | Shell

PA DEP Signals Approval for Shell Ethane Cracker Air Quality Plan
March 31, 2015March 31, 2015

We understand it’s a really big commitment to decide to spend $2 billion or more on a single project, like the Shell ethane cracker plant announced in June 2011 that may (or may not) be coming to the Marcellus (see Shell Commits to Building a Billion Dollar Chemical Plant in the Marcellus Region of U.S.). But after a while (nearly four years!), the waiting grows tiresome. In March 2012 Shell settled on a potential site in Monoca (Beaver County), PA, about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh (see Shell Announces Location of Ethane Cracker Plant). In June 2012, a Shell official said a final decision on whether or not to build was “18 to 24 months away” (see Shell: Final Decision on Cracker Plant Still 18-24 Mo. Away). Er, right. The end of the 24 months was nine months ago. Still, there have been some positive signs, including a very positive sign from last Saturday…
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Lease & Royalty Payments | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA | Westmoreland County

Urban Drilling in the Marcellus/Utica? Yes, in Some Locations
March 31, 2015March 31, 2015

Is Marcellus (and Utica) Shale drilling going urban? Coming to cities and towns? In some cases, the answer to that question is, yes! Don’t look for drilling rigs to pop up in the city limits of Pittsburgh (it’s banned there anyway). But for smaller towns and cities surrounded by farmland and open fields, it’s not only possible, it’s actually happening. At least the leasing of those smaller urbanized areas is happening. Take West Leechburg (Westmoreland County), PA, for example…
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Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA | Taxation

Pittsburgh Economic Leader Says Wolf Severance Tax Really 15% Rate
March 31, 2015March 31, 2015

Last Friday Dennis Yablonsky, the CEO of the Allegheny (PA) Conference on Community Development, had a rather sobering and shocking assessment of PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s high severance tax. He said the effective rate of Wolf’s severance tax is actually 15%, not the 5% touted (lied about) by Wolf and his DEP Acting Secretary John Quigley. According to Yablonsky, the tax as proposed is just too high and will (our words) kill the industry in the state…
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Industrywide Issues | Ohio | Statewide OH | Taxation

OH Gov “Tax Oil and Gas” Kasich Wants to Run for White House
March 31, 2015March 31, 2015

Go Tax Young Man! Er, ah, no. “Go West young man! Land on the moon! Go to Mars!” Those were the words of the very animated, very self-important and very deluded Ohio Gov. John Kasich last week as he spent time…in Ohio, where he’s governor, trying to run his state? No. Kasich spent last week in New Hampshire where he’s trying to gin up excitement for a potential run as president on the GOP ticket. Earth (and conservatives) to RINO Kasich: There’s no way in &@!! conservative Republicans will vote for you in an election. We’re done voting for RINOs (like Bob Dole/John McCain/Mitt Romney/Jeb Bush/Chris Christie/John Kasich). We will only swing the lever for real conservatives, not people who want to tax the oil and gas industry into oblivion as you’re proposing to do Gov. Kasich. If a RINO like Kasich is at the top of the ticket, the Republicans will lose the presidency, once again, because conservatives will stay home–including MDN. Here’s more about John “foreigner hunter” Kasich on the campaign trail, hoping to spark interest in a potential run for The White House…
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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Kinder Morgan | New York | Pipelines | Statewide NY | Tennessee Gas Pipeline

Albany Times Union Says Electric Lines will Corrode NED Pipeline
March 31, 2015March 31, 2015

In an effort to bend over backwards, forwards and in any direction that will help, Kinder Morgan continues to have multiple talks with multiple communities in an effort to build their $6 billion extension to the Tennessee Gas Pipeline, a project called Northeast Energy Direct (NED). The pipeline would stretch from New York State through Massachusetts into New Hampshire before re-entering Massachusetts and terminating near Boston. It aims to bring desperately needed natural gas to New England. Yesterday we told you about the gutsy move by a local gas utility in MA that said if the pipeline isn’t built, no gas new customers (and no new gas appliances for existing gas customers) would be allowed–indefinitely (see Guts: No New Pipeline in MA? Then No New Natgas for Utility Customers). One of the ways Kinder hopes to minimize the project’s impact is by running the pipeline through existing rights of way where electric power lines are run. But ninny nanny anti-drillers have a counter argument even for that. Get this (it’s really quite funny): The anti-drilling Albany Times Union is reporting that the presence of power lines way up in the air will corrode pipelines deep under ground–so say “numerous scientific studies.” The TU refers to just one such study, written for Israel (not even a North American study). We’d say the TU is diggin’ deep in their propaganda advocacy to prevent shale drilling and pipelines…
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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Regulation

Equitable Origin: Another Organization Wants to Regulate Fracking
March 31, 2015March 31, 2015

It seems everybody and his brother (and sister) want to regulate shale drilling in the U.S. The latest group attempting to set itself up as some sort of standard is Equitable Origin (EO), which originated in South America and has offices in both New York City and Bogata, Columbia. EO has been around since 2009 trying to horn in on regulating conventional oil and gas drilling in this country by arrogantly setting up a so-called standard that they hope everybody will just adopt, called the EO100 Standard. Two weeks ago EO introduced an update to that standard called EO100.1 for Shale Oil and Gas Operators (full copy below). It will, of course, go nowhere. The interesting thing to MDN is the increasing number of organizations who want to regulate what is Constitutionally a state’s right to regulate…
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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Regulation

Dem Congress Members Collude with White House to Target Fracking
March 31, 2015March 31, 2015

It was easy to predict–so easy, in fact we did predict it back in 2012. The “it” is the federal effort to regulate all of fracking and oil and gas drilling in the U.S. (see Feds ‘Hope’ States will Use BLM Rules for ALL Fracking). The Obama White House and EPA have desired to control fracking for years. Since Republicans controlled the House, Obama couldn’t push through a complete takeover of fracking (although increasingly he ignores the law and does what he wants anyway, petulant man-child that he is). Obama’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has just released their final rules for fracking on federal lands (see BLM Introduces “Final” Fracking Rules for Fed Lands – 3 Yrs Late). In a well-timed move (collusion), five Congressional Democrats introduced legislation that would put the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in control of fracking–usurping the states and their Constitutional rights to do so. One of the five is, shamefully, Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey…
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Industrywide Issues | New York | North Carolina | Ohio | Pennsylvania | Research | Statewide NY | Statewide OH | Statewide PA | Statewide VA | Statewide WV | Virginia | West Virginia

USGS Says There’s Plenty More Fossil Fuels to Come in Appalachia
March 31, 2015March 31, 2015

There were plenty of fossil fuels in the past 150 years in Appalachia–an area stretching from the northeast to the south–and there’s plenty more where those came from. That’s the conclusion from an updated series of papers collected together in a new U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper (#1708) called “Coal and Petroleum Resources in the Appalachian Basin: Distribution, Geologic Framework, and Geochemical Character” (free access, linked below). The USGS says, “Professional Paper 1708 is a modern, indepth collection of reports, cross sections, and maps that describe the geology of the Appalachian basin and its fossil fuel resources. This publication supplements and updates older USGS regional studies of Appalachian basin coal and petroleum resources.” Here’s an abstract/summary of what’s in the new report…
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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Research | Statewide PA

Syracuse U Study: Fracking Doesn’t Cause Methane in PA Water Wells
March 30, 2015March 30, 2015

You can’t tell us there isn’t political bias in the world of so-called hard science and whether or not important research gets reported. In 2011 Duke University published a shoddy “study” that attempted to show a link between the presence of 68 shale wells and high levels of methane in nearby groundwater supplies (see MDN In-depth: Duke University Study Links Marcellus Shale Gas Drilling with Methane Contamination of Water Wells). That study got all sorts of coverage in the media. After their sloppy work was exposed by a number of scientists, the same group doubled down to try and salvage what little credibility they had left by publishing a second study in 2013 concluding the same thing (see Duke Study #2: Drilling Causes Methane Migration in Water Wells?). More media fanfare of “See, it really is true!” There were several fatal flaws in Duke’s research: they cherry picked the wells they used, they used a small data set (68 water wells in the first study, 141 in the second), and they had no baseline measurements–no “before and after” measurements to know if the methane was already present (as it so often is in northeastern PA). So what if some real researchers were to come along and use a data set hundreds of times larger (data on 11,000+ northeast PA water wells) and what if that data has baseline information–the before picture. Seems like that would settle it, right? That would address the weaknesses and shortfalls of the previous, shoddy research. Such a study was just published in the peer reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology…
Read More “Syracuse U Study: Fracking Doesn’t Cause Methane in PA Water Wells”
Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Pipelines

Guts: No New Pipeline in MA? Then No New Natgas for Utility Customers
March 30, 2015March 30, 2015

Finally the chickens are coming home to roost for New Englanders with their “not in my back yard” attitude. Almost from the first day Kinder Morgan announced a plan to build an extension to the Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) from Dracut, NY to the Boston, MA area to bring cheap, abundant, clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas to New England, there have been strong pockets of resistance from some of the lib Dems along the path of the pipeline. One of the strongest pockets of resistance has been Deerfield, MA where they’ve attempted to illegally ban the TGP’s Northeast Energy Direct pipeline (see Deerfield, MA Hoping Kinder Morgan Sues Them over Pipeline “Ban”). In December, Deerfield got a ban of its own–from the Berkshire Gas Company. Berkshire said their existing pipeline feed from the TGP is very close to full capacity and they’ve done everything they can to get more gas to the area. Until/unless the new Northeast Energy Direct pipeline is built, no new customers for natural gas will be added in the Franklin County communities of Deerfield, Greenfield, Montague and Whately. Oh, and if you are an existing natgas customer in one of those communities and you want to convert your electric hot water heater or electric stove to natgas? Too late. If you do it now without notifying Bershire and they figure it out, they will suspend all of your natgas service. The “moratorium” on any new natgas customers or appliances has just grown from the original Deerfield and surrounding areas to include the Hampshire County communities of Amherst, Hadley, Hatfield and Sunderland. No pipeline? No more natgas. It’s that simple you liberal dopes. Such a move by a company takes guts–kudos to Berkshire and its CEO Karen Zink for fighting fire with fire…
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CONSOL Energy | Crime | Energy Companies | Fayette County | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Washington County | West Virginia

CONSOL Employee Goes to Prison for Stealing $440K in Royalties
March 30, 2015March 30, 2015

A sad story, and one we wish we didn’t have to report, but we do. Scott Hamilton was the manager for CONSOL Energy’s land records department in 2009 when he fraudulently set up a fake company and transferred CONSOL’s ownership interest in land in two counties (Christian County, IL, and Fayette County, WV) to the dummy corporation. He then had royalty checks for the two properties (owed to CONSOL as the royalty owner) mailed to a post box in Washington County, PA. In all, Hamilton stole some $440,000 from CONSOL before he was caught. Hamilton has already paid all of it back and he will now, after pleading guilty, spend the next 30 months in federal prison…
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