Marcellus Drilling News

Shell & Williams Tie the Knot on New Midstream JV for NW PA

April 12, 2013April 12, 2013

tie the knot More pipelines for both dry and wet gas, and perhaps just as important, a new cryogenic gas processing plant is coming to northwestern PA courtesy of a brand new joint venture partnership between midstream giant Williams and exploration & production giant Shell. The new jv will service not only Shell (the first customer to be signed), but also other energy producers in the area. It will be aimed at both the Marcellus and Utica Shale in the region.

Here’s the announcement from the happy newlyweds:

Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Ohio | Statewide OH

New OH Group Agrees with Gov. Kasich: Keep the Foreigners Out

April 12, 2013April 12, 2013

Echoing the same sentiment expressed by Ohio Gov. John Kasich that out-of-state workers are considered "foreigners" (see OH Gov. Kasich Continues Trash Talk Out-of-State Workers), a grassroots group in Ohio has formed to "protect" Ohio workers and lobby and "hold energy companies accountable" for hiring more Ohioans for Utica Shale oil and gas drilling jobs. The group, called Protecting Ohio Workers, Employing Residents (or POWER for short), issued the following press release on Wednesday:

Energy Companies | Range Resources Corp

Range Hits New Record Production for 1Q13 – Thanks to the Marcellus

April 12, 2013April 12, 2013

Range Resources announced first quarter production numbers yesterday and its very good news. Production volume is up 34% over the first quarter of 2012–to a new high of 876 million cubic feeet per day (Mmcfe/d). According to Range, the increase is mostly due to the Marcellus Shale.

The Range announcement:

Punxsutawney Phil Gets a New Neighbor: Marcellus Wastewater Plant

April 12, 2013April 12, 2013

Canadian company Ridgeline Energy Services announced yesterday that it will build a new Marcellus Shale wastewater treatment facility in Punxsutawney, PA. They already have an unidentified customer willing to send 2,500-4,000 barrels of wastewater per day to the new facility when it becomes operational. Construction will begin in about a month.

Ridgeline’s announcement:

Energy Services | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Schramm

New Schramm "Monster" Drilling Rig Almost Ready, Heading to Ohio

April 12, 2013April 12, 2013

West Chester, PA company Schramm Inc. is putting the finishing touches on a new automated drilling rig, the very first T500XD Telemast, that can lift 250 tons of pipe and drill more than 15,000 feet deep. The first new rig of its kind is already spoken for: It’s headed to Ohio where Alpha Hunter will use it to drill in both the Marcellus and Utica Shale…

Another Day, Another Misguided NY Community Bans Fracking

April 12, 2013April 12, 2013

The Oneida County legislature has banned fracking on county-owned lands—even though fracking isn’t currently allowed in the state. Apparently fixing problems that don’t exist passes for doing important legislative work in Oneida County. Must be the taxpayers in Oneida like funding that sort of thing…

Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Regulation | Taxation

API Says Obama Budget Punishes Oil & Gas Industry, Destroys Jobs

April 12, 2013April 12, 2013

The American Petroleum Institute is not impressed with the budget recently released by President Obama. They point out the way Obama (once again) attempts to punish the oil and gas industry. In typical Democrat fashion, Obama wants to slap higher taxes on oil and gas. Of course anything you tax you get less of, which is exactly the wrong thing to do in the jobless Obama economy. Some people never learn.

Since Obama trotted out a retread of last year’s budget, the API decided to simply re-issue their statement from last year too. Clever…

Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Regulation

DOI Sec. Salazaar Says New BLM Fracking Rules Release "Imminent"

April 12, 2013April 12, 2013

MDN has previously chronicled the proposed new rules from the Dept. of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management for fracking on federal lands in the past. Recently BLM floated a copy of those new rules which were roundly criticized by the drilling industry. So they pulled the new rules, revised them, and sent them to the White House for review (see BLM Sends New Draft Fracking Rules to White House for Review).

The release of the revised BLM rules, according to outgoing Secretary of Interior Ken Salazaar, is "imminent"…

Best of the Rest

Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Fri, Apr 12, 2013

April 12, 2013April 12, 2013

The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading:

Uncategorized

Once Again Boys & Girls, Fracking Does Not Cause Earthquakes

April 11, 2013

In cycles of about every six months, we get a new round of stories along the lines that "fracking causes earthquakes too!" Which is not true. Or mostly not true. As with all things shale-related, anti-drillers take a kernel of truth and blow it out of proportion, making it untrue. That’s the case with fracking and earthquakes.

A British scientist leading a research team at Durham University has just published new research analyzing "hundreds of thousands" of cases of fracking to see whether or not they produced earthquakes. What did the researchers find? In hundreds of thousands of cases of fracking, there have been three cases where earthquakes were caused by the fracking that could be felt–and they were extremely mild, on the low end of the Richter scale. Three. Let’s run the numbers. If we assume the sample size was 300,000, 3 divided by 300,000 is 0.00001. Your odds of getting struck by lightening standing on one foot in the middle of a snow storm in Bali are greater. Yeah, fracking does not cause earthquakes–ever. So what about the earthquakes in Youngstown last year?…

Electrical Generation | Industrywide Issues

PJM Case Study: Changing from Coal to NatGas for Power Generation

April 11, 2013August 13, 2015

PJM is a regional transmission organization (RTO) coordinating the movement of wholesale electricity in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia (essentially Appalachia or the northeastern U.S.). SNL Financial has crafted an excellent analysis of natural gas deliveries to the electrical generating plants of the PJM and has found that since 2008, natgas deliveries have doubled to PJM power plants–mostly due to their geography, sitting atop the Marcellus and Utica Shale plays.

The article beings this way:

Flags at Half-Staff Again – Another NY Town (Stupidly) Bans Fracking

April 11, 2013April 11, 2013

Lower the flags at town halls across the state to half-staff once again to mourn the fact that another small misguided group of people have destroyed any chance their neighbors will be able to lease their land and allow safe drilling for natural gas. This time it’s happened in the Town of Otisco, NY. The vote to strip away landowners’ rights was unanimous by five people–we list their names below and when their terms expire just in case you want to vote against them next time around…

Industrywide Issues | NG Vehicles | Ohio | Summit County

Akron, OH Getting First Public Natural Gas Filling Station Soon

April 11, 2013April 11, 2013

On Monday, the Akron, OH City Council approved plans for a new natural gas filling station to be located at the corner of South Arlington Street and Palmetto Avenue. The bonus: It’s being built by a "home grown" Akron company…

Radioactive Frack Waste Regs Coming Out of the Ohio Budget Bill

April 11, 2013April 11, 2013

Three Ohio state agencies requested a change in the way the state regulates and disposes of drilling waste that contains naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) and technologically-enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORM). So new provisions were added to, of all things, the Ohio budget bill. Will politicians never learn?

Looks like the radioactive waste regulations are coming out of the budget bill and will instead be combined into their own, standalone bill. But that won’t happen until sometime this fall…

Update on Chesapeake Energy Well Fire in Brooke County, WV

April 11, 2013April 11, 2013

An update on the Chesapeake Energy well fire in Brooke County, WV that on Monday torched five tractor-trailers and did $8 million in damage:

PA Republicans Introduce Marcellus Tax Credits to Create Jobs

April 11, 2013April 11, 2013

Pennsylvania Republicans want the burgeoning Marcellus Shale industry in the state to create even more jobs for Pennsylvanians–so they’ve introduced legislation that will grant tax credits (not assistance, just a break on high taxes) to companies that do things like convert fleets of vehicles from running on gasoline to running on CNG (compressed natural gas). The amounts add up to a few million dollars, a fly speck in the overall budget, but of course it makes the state’s Democrats apoplectic: