One Rubicon was passed just a few weeks ago when Ohio had officially drilled more than 200 Utica Shale wells (see Ohio Passes 200 Drilled Utica Shale Wells, New Permits Keep Coming).
Another Rubicon is about to pass: Ohio had officially approved 498 Utica Shale drilling permits as of Jan. 12, so by now, Ohio has gone over the 500-mark.
Read More “Another Milestone for Ohio: 500 Utica Shale Well Permits”
Yesterday John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono and son Sean Lennon, along with reliably left movie star Susan Sarandon, boarded a Mercedes tour bus in New York City (burning gobs of diesel, a hated fossil fuel) and headed to the Montrose area of northeastern PA to “tour” drilling and compressor plant sites, visit with the commoners, and make pretentious pronouncements about how gas drilling is killing everyone and everything.
Ono and Lennon, in a bid to boost their non-existent public profiles, started a group last year called “Artists Against Fracking,” which is really kind of funny. Neither Ono nor Lennon can hold a tune in a bucket (see this hysterically funny video of them singing a song about fracking). But perhaps the “art” in “artists” comes from the pornography the 79 year-old Ono creates (see this story about her 2012 “fashion line for men”).
Read More “Looney Toons Anti-Fracking Celebrities Visit Montrose, PA”
CONSOL Energy, the country’s largest coal mining company, is an important (and big) driller in the Marcellus/Utica Shale region. Today CONSOL released an operations update which covers details from the fourth quarter of 2012 and looks forward to their plans for 2013. The update does a deep dive on their Marcellus/Utica drilling business, including details of their drilling activity with joint venture partners Noble Energy (in the Marcellus) and Hess (in the Utica). Although CONSOL drilled and completed fewer wells in 2012 than they did in 2011 (see the table below), the wells they did drill produced far more natural gas than previous wells. Each year they get better.
Here’s the update from CONSOL:
Read More “CONSOL 4Q12 Operations Update: NatGas Up 5%, Coal Down 6%”
IGS Energy, America’s largest independent supplier of retail natural gas, believes natural gas is no longer the “fuel of tomorrow” when it comes to vehicles, but instead is “the fuel of today.” One of the biggest issues for the adoption and use of natural gas-powered vehicles is lack of fueling stations. IGS announced yesterday they are building a string of CNG (compressed natural gas) fueling stations along Interstate 79 from Charleston, WV to Mount Morris, PA—an area they have dubbed the “CNG Fueling Corridor.”
IGS says this is just the beginning…
Read More “CNG Fueling Corridor for Motorists Comes to WV – Fill ’er Up!”
In what seems to be a flood of news about CNG (compressed natural gas) filling stations popping up for vehicles, a convenience store chain in the Marcellus-rich area of northeastern PA is in the process of installing CNG filling pumps at three (so far) of it’s 70 stores in PA and NY.
One of the three locations—Towanda (Bradford County), PA—is having its “grand opening” today, but the new pump has already been operating for about month. Towanda is the very first public CNG filling location in northern PA:
Read More “Northeast PA Convenience Store Chain Installs CNG Pumps”
In what can only be called an act of utter stupidity, a 21-year-old man from Trout Run, PA, vandalized and damaged a bunch of expensive equipment and the environment last August at a drill site in Lycoming County, PA. Was he drunk? An anti-drilling crusader? Showing off for his girlfriend? We don’t know the details or his motivation—but at a sentencing hearing yesterday (where he got probation), the judge told him to “grow up.”
The punch line? “He recently got work with another natural gas company, court records state.” Let’s name names:
Read More “PA Marcellus Drilling Site Vandal Gets Probation, Told “Grow Up””
Yesterday a one-year temporary moratorium on fracking in New Jersey expired—hardly anyone noticed. Nobody wants to drill in New Jersey. The Marcellus Shale that clips one small corner of the state most likely has no gas in it (being on the outer fringe of the Marcellus). But that doesn’t stop anti-drillers from continuing their insistence that the state adopt a full-out ban on fracking.
RINO NJ Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon, Jr. (“Junior”) is still pushing his “ban it until the EPA says it’s OK” bill in the legislature (see NJ Bill Would Ban Fracking Until EPA Report is Done). Of course the real aim for Junior and other anti-drillers, as expressed by Environment NJ’s Doug O’Malley, is a permanent ban that will “send a strong message.” The now expired one-year moratorium? That was just a “fig leaf” according to O’Malley…
Read More “NJ Fracking Moratorium Expires (Yawn) – Junior Still Wants Ban”
Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy is mailing an anti-fracking brochure (killing precious trees from the Catskills to provide the paper, no doubt) to 190,000 residents throughout the Southern Tier area of New York—a region that desperately wants and needs drilling, and the area that will see drilling when/if the current moratorium is lifted. The brochure is pure propaganda and full of outright lies, but hey, this is still Ameritopia where the First Amendment is alive and well, for people on the left anyway.
An electronic copy of the brochure is embedded below so MDN’s fellow NYers know what they can use to line the bird cage with when it arrives.
Read More “Anti-Fracking Group Mails Propaganda Brochure to 190K NYers”
A very important legal decision in New York potentially affects all New York landowners with and without drilling leases who have seen a sharp jump in their property assessments. A Broome County, NY Supreme Court judge has just ruled in favor of four Tioga County, NY landowners who sued to have their property assessments reduced, believing their assessments were unfairly raised because of the perceived increase in land value from the possibility (i.e. “speculation”) that the land may one day see Marcellus Shale drilling.
Read More “Important Decision in Court Case Affects all NY Landowners”
Want to work for a great company in the energy industry? Hilcorp, Chesapeake Energy and Devon Energy (all three drillers in either the Marcellus or Utica Shale plays) should be on your short list of prospective employers, at least according to FORTUNE Magazine and their just-released annual list of ‘100 Best Companies to Work For’…
Read More “Top 3 Best Energy Companies to Work for in the U.S.”
One of the charges leveled against shale drilling by anti-drillers is that chemicals used during drilling—in greatly diluted quantities—will somehow rise up from a mile or more below the surface and contaminate groundwater sources like water wells and springs. However, in over 50,000 horizontally drilled and fracked shale oil and gas wells across the country, and in over two million vertically fracked wells, groundwater contamination from deep drilling has never happened. Nada. Not once.
That’s not to say activities related to drilling have not affected (i.e., “contaminated”) groundwater supplies. Groundwater is affected from time to time, but it’s rare and when it happens, it’s fixable. Case in point: Harrison County, Ohio. Limestone used in a drill pad constructed by Chesapeake Energy at their Dodson well site is likely the cause of discolored (“contaminated”) storm water discharging into a local stream and lake, the source of water for some area residents…
Read More “Chesapeake Well Pad Likely Source of Water “Contamination” in OH”
In an interview with the Charleston Daily Mail, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s vice president for policy, Christopher Guith, called the soon-to-be-released third part of a study looking at the impact of the Marcellus and other shales “mind blowing” when it comes to the economic impact from midstream (pipelines) and downstream (petrochemicals) as they heat up in the coming years. In other words, you ain’t seen nothing yet…
Read More “Part 3 Chamber’s Shale Study: “Mind Blowing” for Jobs, Economy”
The stumbling, bumbling governor of Maryland, Socialist/Democrat Martin O’Malley, finally figured out that if the fracking study he himself ordered back in 2011 is ever going to get done by 2014, he’ll need to find money in the budget to do it. So in a blinding acknowledgement of the obvious, he included $1.5 million in the proposed budget he delivered to the legislature yesterday.
Of course, $1.5 million in Maryland is a rounding error in the state budget, but until now anti-drillers in the state have used lack of funding for the study as a convenient excuse to continue a moratorium on drilling. Look for the state’s Dems to neuter out the $1.5 million and then throw up their hands and say “no funding, no study, no drilling.” Typical.
Read More “Maryland Gov Finally Allocates Money for Fracking Study in Budget”
Want to kill something? Just keep studying it. So says a very perceptive Maryland State Delegate, Wendell Beitzel, who represents Garrett County, MD. Beitzel wants to move forward with Marcellus drilling in Maryland. He faces an uphill battle. There’s a movement on right now to delay drilling by studying it to death (apparently Maryland is taking their cue from New York in that regard)…
Read More “Maryland Shale Drilling Moratorium to be Debated in Legislature”
Spectra Energy, a U.S. midstream (transmission and storage) company is excited about the possibilities of the Marcellus and Utica Shale and shipping shale gas from the northeast to the south and southwest U.S. They’re so excited, in fact, they’re hard at work and spending more than $4 billion on infrastructure projects in the northeast to do just that, according to Spectra president Bill Yardley…
Read More “Spectra Energy Makes $4B Investment in Marcellus/Utica Infrastructure”
Kinder Morgan, a powerhouse midstream (pipeline) company, issued their fourth quarter 2012 earnings report yesterday. It included a great amount of detail on the financials for the company, including stock price, dividends and such like. Of interest to MDN is, of course, what KM is saying about their investments and plans for the Marcellus/Utica region, including their expansion plans for the Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP). KM plans to spend a whopping $2.7 billion on major pipeline projects throughout the U.S. this year, some of which has been allocated for completing TGP projects in the Marcellus/Utica region.
Here is the relevant section of their report dealing with TGP plans for the Northeast:
Read More “KM Pushing Forward with Tennessee Gas Pipeline Projects in 2013”