A new fracking wastewater injection well in northwest Pennsylvania has just opened for business. Bear Lake Properties in Warren County (near the New York border) is now accepting Marcellus Shale wastewater, although for now they’re only accepting the wastewater produced from their own drilling activities.
Read More “NW PA Frack Wastewater Injection Well Begins Operation”
EXCO Resources reported their fourth quarter and full 2012 numbers yesterday. As part of the update, they also included the following brief update on their Marcellus Shale drilling activities for last year:
Read More “EXCO Resources 2012 Update: Marcellus Production Up 73%”
Southwestern Energy, a major Marcellus Shale driller, issued its 2012 financial and operational update yesterday. Among the highlights: Southwestern spent $507 million on their Marcellus drilling program in 2012, which included drilling and putting into operation 92 wells. Gross production from the company’s operated wells in the Marcellus increased from 133 MMcf per day at the beginning of 2012 to approximately 300 MMcf per day by year-end, and total net production was 53.6 Bcf in 2012, up 130% from 23.4 Bcf in 2011. It’s full speed ahead for Southwestern in the Marcellus Shale.
Here’s portions from yesterday’s update that are relevant to Southwestern’s Marcellus operations:
Read More “Southwestern Energy’s 2012 Report: Marcellus Production Up 130%”
Today Gastar released 2012 numbers and an operational update for their drilling activities in the Marcellus Shale. Among the highlights: Gastar’s proved reserves increased 51% in 2012. By the end of last year, Gastar was operating 38 Marcellus Shale wells—all of them in the wet gas region of Marshall County, WV.
Here’s the rundown on the numbers, including an operational update, for Gastar’s Marcellus activities in 2012:
Read More “Gastar’s 2012 Update: 38 WV Marcellus Wells Now in Production”
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: Thu, Feb 21, 2013”
Last month MDN released Volume 3 of the Marcellus and Utica Shale Databook. We predicted something in the ‘Drilling Update’ section that Databook readers have now known for a month—that Pennsylvania would hit the 2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas production milestone for 2012. The exact quote from the Databook, published at the end of January: “Pennsylvania, which just passed 1 trillion cubic feet of shale natural gas production in 2011, will double that and hit 2 trillion cubic feet of production for 2012. In addition, we believe Ohio’s Utica Shale will achieve 67 billion cubic feet of production for 2012.” We also predicted: “WV will likely double production again, so we’re estimating they will show an increase to 455 bcf for 2012.” (Databook Volume 3, page 10)
We don’t yet have 2012 final numbers for OH and WV, but our prediction for PA was spot on and is now verified by the latest reports just released by the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection:
Read More “MDN Calls It: PA Hits 2 Trillion in NatGas Production in 2012”
The deal by CONSOL Energy to lease 9,000 acres owned by Pittsburgh International Airport for shale gas drilling is a done deal. Yesterday the Allegheny County Council voted to accept the deal. A few nut job protesters turned up in gas masks (as is their way). The vote was 9-4 in favor of the deal. Once County Executive Rich Fitzgerald signs it, the Airport Authority will receive a check for $50 million.
Read More “$50M Check in the Mail: Pittsburgh Airport Lease a Done Deal”
Politicians in Brunswick, OH (near Cleveland) are about to learn a lesson the hard way. The Brunswick City Council intends to pass a resolution that calls shale gas drilling “risky” and asks the state legislature to allow local municipalities to ban it—the implication being they want to ban it in Brunswick. The resolution is outright anti-drilling and hostile to the drilling industry. If it passes, a large local company that’s been located in the city for 100 years says they’ll leave and take a huge chunk of tax revenue with them.
Philpott Rubber held a press conference to discuss their very serious threat. Philpott provides “environmentally friendly” products and services for shale drillers through their subsidiary Philpott Energy & Transportation Company. Philpott is planning a major expansion of their business due to an increase in drilling. If Brunswick persists in passing the resolution, Philpott will build a new wholesale operation outside the city, denying the city a boatload of tax money.
Read More “Big OH Company Will Leave Town if Anti-Drilling Resolution Passes”
Have an extra $400 million to spare? Rice Energy is looking for investors to help it develop their “significant holdings” in the Utica Shale. Rice Energy was founded by Dan Rice, the single most successful mutual fund manager in the United States over the past 10 years. Because the company he worked for, BlackRock, screwed up and didn’t tell investors about Dan’s extra circular activities with Rice Energy, they fired him last summer (see BlackRock’s Screw-up with Dan Rice & Rice Energy). Nice company.
Here’s the story about Rice Energy’s hunt for new investors for the Utica:
Read More “Rice Energy in Hunt for $400M to Develop Utica Shale Acreage”
Pennsylvania State Rep. Jesse White (Democrat from Cecil, PA) held a hearing yesterday in Washington, PA that took aim at practices by the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) over how they test (or don’t test) and report (or don’t report) on water supplies near active shale drilling locations. The DEP was invited to attend their own roasting but declined, calling White’s hearing political theater, unproductive, unprofessional and a waste of time (see PA DEP Not Attending Hearing on Water Testing Near Shale Drilling).
With representatives from anti-drilling organizations like Earthworks and PennFuture scheduled to testify at the hearing, it’s not surprising the DEP declined to show up just to be bullied. The session was apparently a 2 1/2 hour dump-on-the-DEP-fest:
Read More “Hearing on PA DEP Water Testing – 2.5 Hour Gripe Session”
In Ohio, whether or not a state university like Kent State wants to allow drilling for natural gas on or under their land is up to the administrators of that university. Kent State owns over one thousand of acres of land. The main campus, in Portage County, OH, is over 900 acres by itself. Kent State owns eight campuses, a golf course and an airport—all in the Utica Shale region.
Although there is no official position (yet) coming from Kent on whether they want to lease their land for gas drilling, the administration has said there are “no plans to initiate drilling” on the Kent State campus.
Read More “Kent State University: No Plans to Allow Gas Drilling”
NiSource Inc., parent company and operator of the Columbia Gas Transmission pipeline which runs throughout the northeast including Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York and New Jersey, released their 2012 financial and operating statement yesterday. The update and investor phone call (see presentations below) also provides updates on future plans. Among the interesting highlights: NiSource will spend $1.8 billion on pipeline improvements through 2017.
NiSource is not only pipelining natural gas in the Utica and Marcellus, they’re drilling wells too…
Read More “NiSource Spending $1.8B over 5 Years on Pipeline Upgrades”
In December, MDN told you about a complex 3-way deal in which Chesapeake Energy sold off its remaining midstream subsidiary (pipelines, compressor stations and processing plants), including midstream assets in the Marcellus and Utica Shale, to Access Midstream Partners. Access immediately turned around and sold 50% of itself to Williams. In essence, Chesapeake sold its midstream assets to Williams using Access as an intermediary (see Chesapeake, Access & Williams in Complex 3-Way Midstream Deal). No doubt there are certain tax advantages to structuring the deal the way they did. The Chesapeake acquisition netted an additional 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day for Access.
Access issued its fourth quarter and full year 2012 report yesterday. They spent $735 million and made $478 million in revenue for 2012. Access predicts capital spending in 2013 will be $1.6-$1.7 billion and they expect to make around $850 million in revenue. They predict the revenue number will grow to over $1 billion by the end of 2014, more than doubling revenue from 2012 (in just two years).
Read More “Access Midstream’s 2012 Numbers: Chesapeake Deal Nets 1 Bcf/d”
West Virginia has a phenomenally complicated taxation structure when it comes to, well, everything—but especially for oil and gas wells. The severance tax is 5%—that’s pretty easy. But WV also has an ad valorem (property) tax for both drillers and mineral rights owners. The way WV calculates the value of income-producing properties takes a tax attorney to figure out. In Marshall County, tax attorney John Mairs represents both Chesapeake Energy and Chevron. Chesapeake has 29 wells in the county and Chevron has 19.
Mairs was successful in getting Chesapeake’s property assessments on their 29 wells reduced by nearly $60 million, but Chevron’s assessment was reduced by only $20 million and that was due to a clerical error at the state level. Here’s the story on how and why the property assessments were modified in Marshall County for these two drillers:
Read More “Chesapeake’s Property Tax Assessment Lowered in Marshall County”
In August 2012, Geisinger Health System along with a second health system, Guthrie Health, announced they would jointly conduct the first ever study of the health impacts of Marcellus Shale drilling (see Health Care Systems Partner to Study Marcellus Impacts). They were later joined by a third organization: Susquehanna Health (see Third Group Joins Unfunded Marcellus Health Impact Study). Problem was, they didn’t have funding to begin the study (see Much-Ballyhooed Marcellus Health Impact Study Not Funded).
Six months later funding has finally arrived in the form of a $1 million grant from the Degenstein Foundation of Sunbury, PA. Geisinger Health announced the grant yesterday on their website:
Read More “PA Marcellus Health Impact Study Finally Gets Funding”
A $500 million natural gas liquids processing plant in Natrium (Marshall County), WV will go online in the next few weeks—even with a temporary stoppage of construction last Saturday due to a bomb threat (no word on who made the threat or why). The Natrium plant is part of Blue Racer Midstream, a $1.5 billion joint venture between Dominion and Caiman Energy (see Dominion, Caiman in $1.5B Utica JV: Blue Racer Midstream). The new plant was originally scheduled to go online by end of 2012.
Some of the construction for the plant is happening across the border in Belmont County, Ohio:
Read More “Bomb Threat at Natrium, WV NGL Plant Doesn’t Slow Construction”