An oilfield services business that opened a branch office in Zanesville (Muskingum County), Ohio in January to service Utica Shale drilling in the area has now closed the office. Why?
Read More “Edge Oilfield Services Closes Zanesville, OH Office”
The shale drilling boom in the Marcellus and Utica Shale region is one of the best things to happen for trust and estate lawyers in years. Landowners need help in planning how they will pass on royalty income from their property to avoid a huge tax hit in the process. Greedy politicians are always looking for a way to relieve citizens of wealth, to, you know, spread it a round a little bit. Landowners who have signed leases need a plan to reduce the government’s bite as much as possible.
However, simply giving away the royalty rights early in the process, to help you and your heirs, is not always the first and best option, according to experts like attorney R. Douglas DeNardo—a partner at Rothman Gordon in Pittsburgh, chairman of the firm’s estates, trusts and taxation department:
Read More “Tips for Estate Planning for Landowners with Leases”
When Waste Management, the country’s biggest trash hauler, commits to converting 80% of its truck fleet with trucks powered by natural gas—that’s a big deal. Other fleet managers are taking notice and doing the same. Why? The price of natural gas is half the cost of gasoline and diesel:
Read More “Waste Management, Others Converting Fleets to Run on NatGas”
Below are upcoming events for this week and next.
Read More “Calendar of Events for Nov 26-Dec 9, 2012 [Free]”
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, Nov 26, 2012”
Finally, a bit of good news for New Yorkers who want to see fracking come to the Empire State. As MDN has pointed out many times, the situation in New York State (will they or won’t they allow fracking?) is like a protracted death scene in an opera. Die already!
We have a new twist in the drama, as reported by Gannett yesterday. MDN recently told you that one of the three outside experts hired to review the Dept. of Environmental Conservation’s draft drilling regulations from the perspective of impacts on public health—Lynn Goldman of George Washington University—said she was given a mid-February deadline (see this MDN story). She’s since revised her comments and now says her real deadline is December 3rd, although she’ll be on retainer (paid) through mid-February, presumably to provide more consulting or any follow-up work from the report she’ll help write and file by December 3.
Here’s how it was reported yesterday:
Read More “A Glimmer of Hope in NY: Health Review Deadline Now Dec 3”
Hilcorp Energy was hired by Columbia Gas’ parent company NiSouce to drill Utica Shale wells in the Brinker Storage Field, a 35,000 acre area in Columbiana County, Ohio that Columbia has used to store natural gas going back more than 50 years. The original leases with landowners in the Brinker, leases passed down to new landowners over the decades, mean that landowners get zippo from any drilling—no lease payments and no royalties (see this MDN story for background).
Since the MDN story that first appeared in September, about 100 landowners have signed on to a lawsuit against Columbia and Hilcorp over the lease issue. But also since September, Columbia and Hilcorp have cut new leases with landowners not party to the lawsuit. We get the details of the lease terms from a story that talks about Hilcorp setting up a new office in Columbiana to work on land deals:
Read More “Some Brinker Field (OH) Leases Revised, Others in Lawsuit”
CONSOL Energy’s CNX Gas subsidiary is expanding its presence at the Columbiana County Port Authority’s industrial park in Leetonia, Ohio. It’s an indicator of CNX/CONSOL’s commitment to the Ohio Utica Shale.
Although headline stories usually talk about the 1.3 million acres owned by Chesapeake in the Utica Shale, you don’t often hear about the large and growing stake owned by CNX:
Oxford economist and a big-time proponent that man causes global warming, Dieter Helm, has a brand new book out called The Carbon Crunch. He believes, as many people do, that earth faces an urgent need to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere (we’ll save our global warming skepticism for another day). Here’s the surprise: In Helm’s new book, he argues, strongly, that global warmists should support shale gas as the best, most practical option to help cut carbon emissions in the short-term. He also says expensive and poorly performing wind turbines and solar panels have done more harm than good.
From a review of his new book by New Scientist magazine:
Read More “Global Warming Expert Promotes Shale Gas to Cut Carbon”
A Washington Times article talks about how the fracking industry waits with baited breath for the EPA’s draft report on fracking, due in December, as an indicator of how aggressively (or not) the Obama administration will target fossil fuels in the second term. The article contains some interesting quotes, one from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and another from an energy scholar at the Manhattan Institute. Here’s select portions from the article:
Read More “Energy Expert: Obama Would be “Insane” to Stop Fracking”
Binghamton-area landowner Bill Owen has written numerous times to Gov. Andrew Cuomo to encourage the governor to allow fracking in New York State. His reward? To end up on Cuomo’s feckless email list. Earlier this week Bill recently received a “Happy Thanksgiving” email from Cuomo, so Bill thought he would respond. His excellent letter back to Cuomo (who will likely never read it, but hey, you never know!) is reprinted below:
Read More “Binghamton Resident to Gov. Cuomo: Thanks for Nothing [Free]”
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, Nov 23, 2012”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo—someone who apparently has trouble deciding what to have for breakfast, let alone decide a major issue like whether or not to allow fracking—went on the record yesterday saying that the Nov. 29 deadline to release new drilling rules will not be met. Cuomo said the deadline for a new health review, yet another delay thought up by DEC Commissioner Joe Martens and being carried out by State Health Commissioner Nirav Shah, is “open-ended.” The so-called “impartial experts” Nirav Shah has hired to conduct an outside review are anything but impartial, and they’ve been given no firm deadline to turn in a report.
Cuomo’s comments to reporters yesterday:
Read More “NY Gov. Cuomo Says Forget Fracking – At Least by Nov 29”
Many have marveled at the restraint shown by the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY) on the issue of repeated delays and setbacks when it comes to allowing high volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) in New York State. Some have criticized the JLCNY for not being more vocal and more pushy with the governor and the Dept. of Environmental Conservation. Dan Fitzsimmons, president of the JLCNY, regularly takes arrows from both sides of the drilling issue and he walks a fine line—we wouldn’t want to be in his shoes!
Dan sent a letter yesterday, on behalf of the the 77,000 members of the JLCNY, to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and DEC Commissioner Joe Martens expressing, in strong but respectful language, the JLCNY’s disappointment that the Nov. 29 date to release new drilling rules will be missed (a full copy of the letter is embedded below).
Read More “JLCNY Sends Strongly-Worded Letter to Cuomo on Nov 29 Date”
Yesterday the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) provided a detailed update on shale drilling activity in the Utica Shale. They found that the number of drilling rigs in the Utica has doubled from October of last year to October of this year. Also of keen interest: 86% of the active rigs in the Utica (now) are targeting shale oil. Last October the number of 15% of active rigs—which shows a remarkable shift in the Utica. Although the report says “shale oil,” MDN takes that to mean “wet gas,” or shale oil and natural gas liquids. The report finds that Chesapeake Energy continues to be the Big Kahuna in the Utica Shale with 39% of all new well starts in Ohio year-to-date.
Here’s the full EIA Utica Shale update posted yesterday (along with some great charts):
Read More “EIA Report: Rig Count in Utica Shale Doubles in One Year”
On the third quarter earnings call with analysts earlier this month, Chesapeake Energy officials were asked about the Utica Shale and their thoughts, now more than a year in, of how the Utica stacks up against the Eagle Ford, and how Chesapeake’s “core of the core” strategy is working in the Utica. Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon answered the question this way, identifying the three counties in Ohio that are “the core of the core” for the company:
Read More “Chesapeake Says 3 OH Counties are “Core of the Core” in Utica”