The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) recently posted revisions to their well pad construction rules. The revised rules (full copy below) now go through a comment period that ends on October 6th. This is a process that started back in February…
Read More “Final Comments Due on Ohio’s Revised Well Pad Construction Rules”
Torrent Energy Services leases and operates big mechanical refrigeration units used by Utica drillers and pipeline companies in the field–mobile units–that captures and cools natural gas and gas liquids that would otherwise be lost to flaring or as emissions into the air. The technology captures the gas, mostly methane and ethane, so it can be used to power equipment in the field. The one thing Torrent needs more of is money. So CSL Capital Management is investing in the company, providing “growth capital to accelerate its business plan.” The amount of the investment by CSL was not disclosed in an announcement made yesterday…
Read More “Torrent Energy Gets Investment to Fund Residual Gas Capture Tech”
You may have thought snake handling was something done in tiny fringe churches tucked away in the backwoods of Appalachia. Think again. Snake handlers, or wranglers, are very much in demand in the Marcellus Shale to protect oil and gas workers on location, and to protect the snakes themselves–Timber rattlesnakes, a candidate for the threatened species list. Drillers and pipeline companies have to jump through many hoops to drill a well or lay pipeline. MANY hoops. One of those hoops is to ensure their work does not unduly harm a threatened or endangered species, plant or animal (called T&E in the business). When it comes to rattlesnakes, drillers call in the specialists to handle them…
Read More “Snake Handlers in Demand in the Marcellus”
Just in time for the attendees of Shale Insight in Pittsburgh to read, a guest commentary was published in today’s edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by David Peebles, the man helping to build a $3 billion ethane cracker plant in Parkersburg, WV. David waxes eloquent on shale, ethane and energy security…
Read More “A Present for Attendees of Shale Gas Insight – Peebles Column”
An upcoming event in Pittsburgh caught our eye. It’s called the Shale Exchange Workshop, being held Oct 29-31. The event seems to live at the intersection of “let’s do shale drilling” and “let’s be careful with the environment”–striking a balance. The event, as described below, is populated with many top industry speakers, but also will have representatives from at least one environmental organization, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), about the only so-called environmental organization we can personally stomach…
Read More “Upcoming Pittsburgh Event Seeks Balance in Drilling Debate”
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading:
Read More “Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Wed, Sep 24, 2014”
Last Thursday, Precision Pipeline of Waynesburg, Pa was drilling under the Little Mingo Creek behind the Mingo Creek Church on behalf of Sunoco Logistics when the drill bit hit something really solid. It stopped the bit and led to drilling mud, often called bentonite, to leak into the the Little Mingo Creek causing a gray “sludge” to travel down the creek in Nottingham and Union townships (Washington County), PA. Bentonite is non-toxic and used in products from shampoo to deodorant and toothpaste. It’s also used to lubricate the drill bit and carry drill cuttings out of the ground. While non-toxic, a whole lot of bentonite in the water can, of course, suffocate fish and cause problems for wildlife that happen to drink it…
Read More “Mariner East Pipeline Drilling Spills Mud in Local Creek”
According to reports coming from Columbiana County where 24 wells have been drilled and are now connected via pipeline, the Columbiana wells are some of the best producing methane Utica wells in the entire shale play–and that includes the new “it” spot in the southern portion of the play…
Read More “Some of Best Producing Utica Wells are in…the North?!!”
Yesterday MarkWest Energy and their partners The Energy & Minerals Group and Ohio Gathering Company announced they’ve signed up Aubrey McClendon’s new company American Energy Partners (AEP) as a major new customer in the Utica Shale. Ohio Gathering will hook up their pipelines to AEP’s drilled Utica wells and pump natural gas and liquids, and MarkWest will process it all. The natural gas part will be processed in MarkWest’s Cadiz complex in Harrison County, OH and its Seneca complex in Noble County, OH. AEP’s NGLs will be fractionated (separated) at MarkWest’s Hopedale complex…
Read More “MarkWest Signs Up McClendon’s New Company as Utica Customer”
Typically villages and cities have not seen Marcellus or Utica Shale drilling under them because of the numbers. To negotiate leases with hundreds or even thousands of landowners over a relatively small area makes no sense when you have to pay landmen and have all of those leases individually vetted by a lawyer. Signing bonuses are piddly and royalty checks aren’t much either. So most drillers have passed by the small villages and towns that sit next to land they otherwise have leased. However, Range has hit on a unique approach. Range has enlisted the help of the Claysville Borough (Washington County, PA) fire department to approach and get residents in the borough to sign a single, standardized group lease–think landowner coalition lease…
Read More “Range’s Unique Approach to Signing Small Landowners in WPA”
A few years ago drillers in Ohio and Marshall counties in West Virginia would use an average 1 million pounds of frack sand and 4 million gallons of water. Today, because the horizontal portion of the wells are longer (longer “laterals”), those numbers are closer to 13 million pounds of sand and 10 million gallons of water, according to a Wood Mackenzie report…
Read More “Report Shows Dramatic Increase in Water/Sand Usage in WV Drilling”
Clear Creek is a division of Dynamic Structures Inc., a company based in New Waterford (Columbiana County), OH that hauls drilling mud, fresh water and yes, frack wastewater for oil and gas companies throughout Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Clear Creek had constructed a truck washing facility in the city of Columbiana–population 6,384–to clean the trucks that haul the mud and wastewater. Columbiana’s planning commission has shut down the facility until they obtain a permit from the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR). Once that happens, it appears they can reopen. The problem is, the Mayor of Columbiana lives nearby to where the facility is located and he opposes it. Oops…
Read More “Frack Truck Washing Facility Shut Down Until ODNR Permit Issued”
CARBO Ceramics provides a ceramic alternative to sand for use as a proppant in hydraulic fracturing. Proppants, for those new to MDN, “prop open” the fractures created during the fracking process to allow natural gas and natural gas liquids (even oil) to drain out of shale. A special kind of sand called silica, mined mostly in the Midwest, is the most prevalent proppant used. However, CARBO has an innovated ceramic substance–tiny little beads–that are used as an alternative. The problem, from CARBO’s perspective, is that sand is cheaper and more plentiful, plus other ceramic proppant manufacturers have sprung up to compete with CARBO and those twin reasons are why, according to a press release issued by CARBO yesterday, sales for the company in the third quarter have fallen off…
Read More “Ceramic Proppant Co. CARBO Ceramics Sales Falter in 3Q14”
It seems that impoundment hysteria is the newest rage among anti-drillers. An impoundment is nothing more than a pond. As it relates to the drilling industry, the pond (or impoundment) may hold freshwater or it may hold frack wastewater, depending on what kind of impoundment it is. Range Resources was fined last week for leaking impoundments in Washington County (see PA DEP Fines Range Resources $4.15M for Wastewater Impoundments). What better time for an anti-fracking organization like the so-called “SkyTruth” to poke its head up and claim to be mapping impoundments in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. To hear SkyTruth tell it, there’s impoundments hiding just about everywhere…
Read More “SkyTruth Uses Anti-Drilling Volunteers to Count Impoundments”
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading:
Read More “Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Tue, Sep 23, 2014”
Lately it seems like a week doesn’t go by that a new pipeline project is announced. No one should be surprised, but of course we all are. It only makes sense: drillers have sunk a lot of holes in the Marcellus and Utica, and now all of that gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) needs a way to get to market. The northeast alone can’t handle all of the gas and NGLs being produced. Yes, the ethane cracker plants will help with regards to ethane–but there’s still way more ethane that even the planned three cracker plants can handle. And way more methane (natural gas) than the northeast can absorb. How do you get it to market? With pipelines. The first thing pipeline operators do is pick the “low hanging fruit”–in this case reversing pipelines and using loops to increase capacity and change the direction of the flows. But according to the midstream companies themselves, the low hanging fruit is about all picked. Now it’s on to the higher hanging fruit–so-called “greenfield” pipelines that cut through “virgin” land. Below we have a very interesting quote about decisions that will soon be made impacting the rest of this decade, along with a very useful chart of pipeline projects…
Read More “Northeast Pipelines Gone Wild! Making Sense of it All”