Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Tue, Jun 17, 2014
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, Jun 17, 2014”
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, Jun 17, 2014”
Really big news in the midstream (pipelines & processing plants) world, not only for the Marcellus and Utica Shale, but for other major U.S. shale plays as well. Williams announced yesterday (Sunday!) that they are buying Access Midstream for $6 billion (actually $5.995B, but we’re rounding it up). Access, you may recall, is the renamed and former division of Chesapeake Energy called Chesapeake Midstream (see Chesapeake Midstream Changes Name to Access Midstream).Williams says they will pay for half of the purchases with “equity,” meaning ownership via stock and shares in Williams, and the other half with debt borrowing and cash on hand in the kitty. The proposed merger is expected to be completed later this year. What does it mean for the Marcellus/Utica?…
Read More “Big News: Williams Partners Buying Access Midstream for $6B”
The West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) is telling everyone to calm down over so-called radioactive “sludge” being dumped in WV landfills. You may recall not long ago a load of drill cuttings was refused at a southwest PA landfill for being “too radioactive” and sent to a different landfill, owned by the same company as the PA landfill, in WV (see Range Radioactive Containers Sent to WV for Disposal). That got everyone up in arms–that Range was “secretly” shipping stuff that will make those poor hicks in WV glow in the dark. So the WVDEP slammed the door on any more imported “radioactive sludge” (see Curious: Everyone’s Happy with WV Ban on Imported Drilling Sludge). The WVDEP launched and investigation and found the so-called sludge, or drill cuttings, have next to no radioactivity…
Read More “Range “Sludge” in WV Landfill Not So Radioactive After All”
In April, Belmont County officials signed a lease with Rice Energy to allow drilling on 406 acres of county-owned land for a staggering $7,500 per acre and 20% royalties. They liked it so much, they immediately put another 426 acres up for bid (see Belmont County Shopping New Deal to Lease Additional 426 Acres). It didn’t take long for Belmont County to sign a new lease with Rice for the second parcel–for an even higher $8,200 per acre signing bonus with 20% royalties…
Read More “Rice Energy Does 2nd Deal with Belmont County, $8,200/Acre!”
Funny how we euphemize things so often–making up words and using alternative words instead of just saying the honest thing. You find it happening a lot in the political world–like right now in Pennsylvania where the media says PA is likely to “pivot” on the issue of a severance tax on Marcellus Shale gas. According to “insiders.” Pivot actually means “cave” or “throw in the towel” or “admit defeat.” If Republicans allow it to happen, that’s what they’re doing. “Insiders” means “rat-fink leakers”–people who don’t have the guts to go on the record. Some Republicans in Name Only (RINOs) like Sen. Edwin Erickson, R-Delaware County, want to steal the hard-earned money from shale drillers and give it away to those who haven’t earned it–teacher’s unions. No where in the PA budget debate do we see the option of doing with less–like what happens in the real world with real budgets. Instead, the philosophy of PA’s Dems and RINOs is tax a single industry that’s producing money and give it to another industry (Big Education) that vacuums up money like a Hoover…
Read More “Caving on PA Severance Tax Renamed as a “Pivot””
The analysts at Goldman Sachs released a new report earlier this month titled, “Unlocking the Economic Potential of North America’s Energy Resources” (full copy embedded below). The report says the clock is ticking and time is limited for North America to take advantage of the shale oil and gas boom currently under way. And what, pray tell, is holding us back? Certainly not capital (i.e. money) for drilling. Rather, it is money for what the report’s authors say is on the “demand response” side of the equation. That is, the infrastructure (pipelines) to get oil and gas where it needs to go, and manufacturing plants to take advantage of all this cheap, abundant energy, which would provide magnitudes more jobs…
Read More “Goldman Sachs Report on What’s Holding Back the Shale Revolution”
How would you like to earn a cool $100–just for learning about Marcellus Shale drilling? That’s the promise from Penn State to those who live in and around Clearfield County, PA. Penn State, using funding from the National Science Foundation, is offering a 10-week course called Marcellus Community Science Volunteer Program on Monday nights in DuBois. Adults will learn all about the science behind shale drilling, along with its benefits and drawbacks. This is not the first group Penn State has done this with. They ran the same course earlier this year…
Read More “Clearfield County Residents: Get $100 to Learn about Marcellus”
Pittsburgh, PA is located in Allegheny County. So you can imagine that any town, borough or hollow in Allegheny is somehow in the Pittsburgh political orbit–including Jefferson Hills. Most large cities like Pittsburgh lean liberal in their politics, and surrounding neighborhoods often lean that way too. Like Jefferson Hills (population 10,619). Last week Jefferson Hills Borough Council voted 6-0 to lard on new restrictions for shale drilling–on top of the already strict standards set up by the state Dept. of Environmental Protection. The new unnecessary standards create a “conditional use” situation where a driller has to get paperwork signed in triplicate for every minor step in the drilling process…
Read More “New Zoning Law Needlessly Restricts Drilling in SWPA Borough”
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: Mon, Jun 16, 2014”
Once again anti-drillers who were denied the chance to bleat and blat before a microphone behaved like the adult babies they are–by staging a “sit in” and chanting at an open house hosted by Williams to talk to landowners and others about the much-needed and excellent Atlantic Sunrise Expansion pipeline project. This particular misbehaving group was composed of anti-drillers and hippies from Lancaster County, PA, not dissimilar (maybe some of them the same) as those from neighboring Lebanon County (see Lebanon, PA Group Coaches Blind Followers to Oppose Pipeline). When denied a public forum to act like asses, anti-drillers go ahead and make asses of themselves anyway. And that’s just what a group calling themselves Lancaster Against Pipeline did Wednesday night. Meanwhile, the adult and sane-acting Williams representatives announced they heard the concerns about the route in Lancaster County and have changed the route to avoid going through a couple of nature preserves…
Read More “Atlantic Sunrise Changes Course in Lancaster County, PA”
In our strange and nutty world, is there a direct connection between the National Football League and the Marcellus/Utica Shale? Indeed, it seems that there is! The connection also includes the Buffalo Bills, Aubrey McClendon and even the National Hockey League! Let us explain…
Read More “Fascinating Connection Between NFL & Marcellus/Utica”
In 2011 CONSOL Energy had amassed some 750,000 Marcellus Shale acres but didn’t have enough money to drill it all on their own. So they did what many energy companies do–they got a joint venture partner. CONSOL cut a deal with Noble Energy to split the proceeds 50/50, with CONSOL drilling in the dry gas areas and Noble drilling in the wet gas areas (see Noble Energy and CONSOL to Partner on Marcellus in $3.4B Deal). The two jv partners announced yesterday their intent to form a master limited partnership (MLP) that will form a new midstream company (pipelines) to service their vast drilling operations…
Read More “CONSOL & Noble to Form New MLP Midstream Subsidiary”
Yesterday CONSOL Energy and Noble Energy announced a new gathering pipeline company plan (see MDN’s story published today). Not to be outdone, EQT announced yesterday an open season for the Mountain Valley Pipeline project–a new Marcellus/Utica pipeline. According to the announcement, EQT and NextEra US Gas Assets intend to build a 330-mile pipeline from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA to deliver abundant, cheap Marcellus and Utica Shale gas to markets throughout the southeast. An “open season” is a chance for drillers to contract a portion of the pipeline over the long term (15-20 years), commitments needed before companies like EQT will pony up the hundreds of millions needed to build a major project like this one…
Read More “EQT Announces New Marcellus/Utica Pipeline to Southeastern US”
Will Marcellus and Utica Shale gas be exported to places like India and Spain in the next few years? The answer is, quite probably. And it won’t be because of the Marcus Hook terminal near Philadelphia. If it happens in the next few years, it will be from a new LNG export facility under construction right now in Louisiana…
Read More “Marcellus/Utica Shale Gas Exports by End of 2015? Maybe…”
The County Clerk–or in some places County Recorder–is usually a pretty low-key person in a low-key job. It’s that person’s job to keep track of land deeds and official paperwork for the county. MDN has previously pointed out an early indicator of where there will soon be drilling is when the County Clerk/Recorder’s office gets busy. In some cases, land agents have camped out overnight waiting to get in to a deed records office (see Title Researchers Camp Out at Tyler County (WV) Clerk’s Office). Harrison County, OH’s County Recorder is Tracy Boyer. The records office where she works has been hopping busy going on two years now. Tracy is normally a patient person, but her patience, after two years, has run out. She’s threatening to sue Harrison County commissioners over the need to expand the physical space her office needs to accommodate the ongoing flood of people who use it…
Read More “Patience Gone: OH County Recorder Threatens to Sue for More Space”
Waaaaay back in March 2009, when MDN was still in it’s blog infancy, we told you that Westmoreland County, PA supervisors had voted to lease land at the Beaver Run Reservoir to Dominion to drill five Marcellus Shale wells (see Westmoreland County, PA Supervisors Vote to Approve Drilling on County Land). The reservoir provides drinking water to some 60,000+ customers in five southwestern PA counties. What! Marcellus wells next to–even under–a fresh water reservoir? Say it ain’t so!! But it is, and it’s worked out so well (with NO water contamination issues), that over the years those initial five wells have sprouted to become 37 wells with more on the way. The wells at Beaver Run Reservoir are raising so much money for the county they’ve hired a “drilling auditor” to keep track of royalty revenues, which this year will exceed $6 million…
Read More “Muchas Gasias: Beaver Run Reservoir Hires Auditor for Royalties”