Rumors are leaking that Marathon Oil Corp. has put 80,000 Marcellus Shale acres in West Virginia and Pennsylvania up for sale in an effort to trim back on “non-core” assets. Here’s what’s being reported:
The Pennsylvania townships that sued the state over the newly enacted Act 13 shale drilling law are feeling a little picked on at the moment. The lawsuit brought by seven townships earlier this year is about to go before the PA Supreme Court in a few weeks (see this MDN story). The case revolves around the right of local municipalities to pass and enforce their own zoning laws with respect to oil and gas drilling within their borders. The new Act 13 law provides a consistent set of zoning rules for all townships, replacing and superseding local laws. Some towns in western PA didn’t like it and sued.
Under Act 13, the Public Utility Commission (PUC) is empowered to review and decide whether or not towns are living up to the provisions of Act 13. If they are in violation, the towns won’t receive money from the new impact fee collected under Act 13 (part of a $200 million pot for this year). The current bone of contention is that the PUC is moving forward with reviews of zoning law in select towns, including four of the seven towns that brought the lawsuit. And those towns don’t like it—not one little bit.
Read More “PA Towns Complain about PUC Act 13 Zoning Review”
Is the commodity price of natural gas heading up? Heading down? Depends on who you ask. Lately, it seems the overwhelming consensus is the price will go higher starting early next year, and indeed prices have been up recently from their historic 10-year lows (right now the NYMEX price is $3.25 Mbtus, it was just $1.90 not long ago). Natural gas is a commodity, and like any commodity, price is determined by supply and demand. If there’s more supply with steady demand, that equals lower prices.
A new article by Bloomberg (a perennially anti-drilling news service) predicts prices will go lower again—soon—because new Marcellus pipelines are coming online by the end of this year that will add an additional 30% capacity to supplies in the marketplace. How low will they go? One analyst quoted says prices may head back to the $2 range:
Read More “New Marcellus Pipelines May Keep NatGas Prices Low”
Linda Woggon, executive vice president of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and executive director of the Ohio Shale Coalition, said at a meeting yesterday that shale drilling in Ohio is on track to pump a total of $17.5 billion into the Ohio economy from 2011 to 2014 and generate 65,000 jobs. It will also bring in an additional $795 million in taxes over the same time period—with no increases on taxpayers.
Here’s a few of the highlights from her talk at a breakfast hosted by the Salem Area Chamber Area of Commerce on Wednesday:
Read More “Ohio: $17.5B in Economic Activity from Drilling 2011-2014”
MDN wonders: Do organizations like the anti-drilling Earthworks and the Associated Press share the same office space so they can coordinate their attacks on the natural gas industry? Yesterday MDN told you about the shameful new “study” issued by Earthworks attacking the hard and diligent work of state regulators in overseeing oil and gas drilling (see this MDN story).
At the same time Earthworks was lobbing their bomb into the public discourse, a seemingly related media attack was launched by the AP aimed against New York’s oil and gas regulators at the Dept. of Environmental Conservation. The gist of the piece is that regulators are doing such a poor job of overseeing drilling now, how could they possibly handle new shale drilling should the governor (stupidly) allow it to begin. Here’s how the article starts:
Rex Energy announced initial production results from their first Utica Shale well—the Brace #1H well drilled in Carroll County, Ohio. Rex’s CEO, Tom Stabley, says the initial results are among the best in the county to date (see the numbers below). The company plans to drill an additional nine wells in 2013.
From the Rex announcement:
Read More “Rex Energy Reports Results from First Utica Shale Well”
Everyone seems to be providing an update on what’s happening with their drilling operations in the Marcellus—all at once! And it’s not even time for quarterly updates. The latest announcement is from Magnum Hunter Resources—a statement as to why they aren’t producing more (must be investors are asking questions). Magnum Hunter reports that storms knocked a lot of their production offline in July, and currently, lack of processing capacity at a Dominion Transmission facility is holding them back.
Here’s Magnum Hunter’s explanation for lack of production:
Read More “Magnum Hunter’s Explanation for Lack of Production”
Seneca Resources, the exploration arm of National Fuel Gas Company, issued the following update on the results they’re getting from recent wells drilled in the Marcellus and Utica Shale (all them in Pennsylvania):
Read More “Seneca Resources Reports Recent Marcellus/Utica Well Results”
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, Sep 27, 2012”
It’s fascinating to MDN how a single so-called researcher at a single anti-drilling organization (funded by Teresa Heinz Kerry) can write a 124-page “report” that’s critical of the shale drilling industry and the hard-working people who regulate it, and the mainstream media (MSM) swoons and heralds such shameful propaganda as an important new “study” presenting the gospel truth. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening (once again) with a just-released report from Earthworks titled, “Breaking All the Rules: The Crisis in Oil & Gas Regulatory Enforcement” (copy embedded below).
This so-called study was written by a single Earthworks staffer, reviewed by a couple of other staffers, and “peer reviewed” (our words) by several others outside of Earthworks, all anti-drilling organizations. In other words: It’s propaganda beginning to end. The theme of the study can be summed up in a single sentence (saving you a lot of dreary reading): State regulators don’t visit well sites often enough and fines for violations aren’t punitive enough.
In their press release announcing the study, Earthworks quotes the discredited former mayor of DISH, Texas, Calvin Tillman—that’s how deep they have to dig to support this drivel. Here’s the press release:
Read More “Earthworks Releases Faux Study Bashing State Regulators”
A pipeline fabrication and installation company located in Marietta, Ohio can’t find enough new welders and because of it turned away more than $20 million of business just last month, so the company—the Pioneer Group of companies, including Pioneer Pipe—has started their own program to train new welders to meet the demand. Why the sudden uptick in demand, and where is all that new business coming from they’ve had to turn away? The shale drilling industry, of course.
Once students going through the training, are certified and become union members, they’ll immediately start making $30 per hour. Not bad wages for 16 weeks of training. Pioneer is looking to hire 100 new welders.
Read More “Ohio Pipe Company Desperately Needs $30/Hr Welders”
Anti-drilling Pittsburgh Councilman Patrick Dowd, one of nine people on City Council that voted to enact a drilling ban in Pittsburgh in 2010, is introducing new legislation that he hopes will make drilling so difficult in the city, drillers won’t bother. But wait, didn’t you just say there’s a ban? Yep. Which means Councilman Dowd is seriously concerned that the ban will be ruled illegal once a case now before PA Supreme Court is ruled on later this year (the “Act 13” case, see this MDN story).
In preparation for a ruling against the Pittsburgh ban, Dowd and City Council want to have Plan B ready to go—restrict any possible drilling to as few locations as possible (not that drillers would want to drill inside city limits anyway). Hence the new legislation from Dowd.
Anti-drillers in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio decry fracking and it’s “hazards” saying it could never be done near populated areas. They don’t want it done in any location, to be sure! But especially not near a heavily populated area. Can’t be done safely, they say. Is drilling in general and fracking in particular really hazardous when done near or (gasp) in a city?
Read More “Beverly Hills 90210 and Fracking – A Connection?”
The latest permits issued in Mahoning, Harrison, Portage and Monroe counties in Ohio:
Read More “ODNR Issues New Permits in Mahoning, Other OH Counties”
For some reason MDN just loves a railroad-related story. The shale drilling industry has single-handedly resurrected short line railroads in this country. This is a story about a new railroad terminal opening today—in Chemung County, NY.
A former oil trader who became a private equity investor, Ray Bartoszek, along with private-equity firm Carriage House Partners, invested $20 million in buying and building the Horseheads (NY) Sand and Transloading Terminal (HOST), a 200-acre site in New York’s Southern Tier area that will handle fracking sand for area drillers. Bartoszek’s plan is to ship in Montana fracking sand for drillers in Pennsylvania and (he had hoped) New York. The New York part isn’t working out so well, but Bartoszek says with the grand opening of HOST, he’ll still turn a profit by shipping sand to PA—just a smaller profit.
Read More “Fracking Sand Terminal Opens Today in Horseheads, NY”
Coming soon to a Pennsylvania college campus near you: Marcellus Shale drilling? Yep.
Read More “PA Lawmakers Pass Bill to Allow Shale Drilling at Colleges”