Marcellus Drilling News

Industrywide Issues | Taxation

IRS Provides Helpful Tips on Reporting Shale Drilling Income
April 15, 2013April 15, 2013

Tax day. Yuck. The IRS has issued a helpful guide for landowners in the Marcellus and Utica Shale (or anywhere for that matter) called "Tips on Reporting Natural Resource Income" that will lists IRS publications that can help. It appears their list of resources page (see below) was posted on the IRS site on April 11–not really time enough to do much about it now except to quickly file an amended return (if you’ve already filed) or an extension (if you haven’t filed). As painful as it is, landowners should review the information below—at least scan it—to be sure you’re not overlooking something important.

From lease bonus payments to royalties to "depletion deductions," the IRS has it covered…

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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA | Washington County | Wastewater

PA Rep Jesse White to Introduce Law Banning Open Frack Ponds
April 15, 2013April 15, 2013

PA State Rep. Jesse White, a Democrat from Cecil with an ongoing grudge match with Range Resources (and someone who claims to be in favor of responsible drilling), will soon introduce a bill into the PA legislature that would ban Marcellus Shale wastewater frack ponds. He’s looking for co-sponsors for the legislation and using the new Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD) as his political cover/excuse to push for it.

White incorrectly states the CSSD’s new standards call for the elimination of open impoundments or frack ponds. Standard #3 says no open ponds for fracking fluid, but Standard #4 says open frack ponds are permissible for "produced" or "flowback" water—the deep layer salt water that comes out after the drilling fluid has been removed (see MDN’s summary of the rules here: Important: Drillers & Enviros Form New Group, Launch Cert Program). Although he uses the CSSD for justification, White’s proposal goes well beyond what they’re stipulating…

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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Cumberland County | Education | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Taxation

Brainwash Complete: Dickinson Co-Ed Wants PA Severance Tax
April 15, 2013April 15, 2013

A young college co-ed from Dickinson College has penned an editorial run in the Harrisburg Patriot-News proving what a valuable education one gets at Dickinson—where they teach kids that drilling destroys the environment. (Hint: You may want to re-think sending your children, and your money, to Dickinson College).

Here’s her "brilliance" on display (with snarky MDN comments inserted):

Read More “Brainwash Complete: Dickinson Co-Ed Wants PA Severance Tax”
Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Luzerne County | Pennsylvania | Supply Chain

Air Products in Wilkes-Barre, PA – A Shale Gas Success Story
April 15, 2013April 15, 2013

Air Products is located on the outskirts of Wilkes-Barre, PA. If you’ve ever heard of the Air Products business, you may conjure up an image of small cylinder tanks of helium or other "rare" gases sitting inside a chain fence. Yes, Air Products sells gases by the tank, but they also manufacture the mother of all gas tanks, and that’s where the shale gas business comes in…

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Best of the Rest

Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Mon, Apr 15, 2013
April 15, 2013April 15, 2013

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, Apr 15, 2013”
Energy Companies | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Pipelines | Processing Plants | Shell | Williams

Shell & Williams Tie the Knot on New Midstream JV for NW PA
April 12, 2013April 12, 2013

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:

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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:

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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:

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Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Jefferson County (PA) | Pennsylvania | Ridgeline Energy Services | Wastewater

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:

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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…

Read More “New Schramm "Monster" Drilling Rig Almost Ready, Heading to Ohio”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Oneida County | Regulation

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…

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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…

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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"…

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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:

Read More “Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Fri, Apr 12, 2013”
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?…

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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:

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