Out of the Shadows: Another New Group Wants to Regulate PA Shale
Apparently the announcement that there’s a new kid in town when it comes to “regulating” Marcellus Shale drilling—The Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD)—has prompted another group to stand up and say, “Me too! Me too! Look at me!”
MDN told you about the launch of the CSSD yesterday (see Important: Drillers & Enviros Form New Group, Launch Cert Program). In today’s Pittsburgh Business Times, we learn of yet another group that until now has met in secret, attempting (like CSSD) to craft new guidelines (let’s call them what they really are, regulations) for Marcellus Shale drilling. This new group is being run by the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute on Politics and includes some of the same participants powering the CSSD as well as Gov. Corbett’s energy executive and a representative from the state DEP. They call their group the “Shale Gas Roundtable.”
Perhaps feeling as though their work may have been upstaged by the CSSD’s announcement, the Shale Gas Roundtable came out of the shadows today…
Read More “Out of the Shadows: Another New Group Wants to Regulate PA Shale”
Two years ago, an informal group of high level leaders from both the Marcellus drilling industry (companies like Shell, CONSOL, Chevron and EQT) sat down with high level people from organizations trying to stop shale drilling (organizations like the Heniz Endowment, PennFuture, GASP and the Clean Air Taskforce), to see if both sides could agree on standards that would tell the world, “this activity is safe to do.” There were times, early on, when both sides thought the effort would be fruitless. But somewhere along the way, they “came together” and formed what was officially announced yesterday: 
Yesterday saw the launch of 
So far, we’ve had precious little in the way of well production numbers from the Ohio Utica Shale. The numbers we have had are encouraging. On Monday, Rex Energy released well production numbers for their “Warrior South Prospect” wells in the Ohio Utica, and the numbers look very good indeed. From two wells in Guernsey County and one in Noble County, Rex is reporting an average daily production of around 8 million cubic feet of natural gas, 500 barrels of condensate (natural gasoline), and 1,200 barrels of natural gas liquids (mostly ethane), per day for each well.