The rumor mill continues to churn with regard to Carl Icahn’s investment in Chesapeake Energy. The latest rumor, being circulated by the venerable Bloomberg News, says that Icahn has taken a 4 percent stake in the company. Is that good? Is it bad? Meaningful or not? Let’s give you the “news” (or rather rumor) first, and then some perspective…
First the news:
Read More “Rumor Mill: Who Owns How Much of Chesapeake’s Stock?”
Chesapeake Energy has put a lot of its western U.S. acreage up for sale—some 500,000 acres in Wyoming and Colorado—in a bid to raise $9-$10 billion in cash to cover funding shortfalls and repay loans.
Read More “Chesapeake Puts 1/2 Million Leased Acres Up for Sale”
A potential case of methane migration from nearby Marcellus Shale gas well drilling is being investigated by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in Bradford County, PA. Three residential water wells and two streams have high levels of methane. A Chesapeake drilling operation is located about a half mile from the residential water wells.
Read More “Possible New Case of Methane Migration Near PA Gas Wells”
Staffers at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Powdermill Nature Reserve say they have assembled the most accurate database of Marcellus Shale gas wells in Pennsylvania, having worked on it for the past 10 months. However, they aren’t releasing their results to the public. Not yet at least.
Because of the heavy volume of permitting and drilling activity in PA over the past several years, it’s well known that the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) data is not 100 percent accurate. Powdermill sought to create a database that was as close to 100 percent as possible and believe they have achieved it.
In the aggregate, here’s the numbers they are reporting:
Read More “Important New PA Marcellus Shale Database Public Soon”
Ohio’s new shale oil and gas drilling legislation (SB 315) has now passed both the House (73-19) and the Senate (21-8) and is on the way to Gov. John Kasich’s desk for his signature, which it will receive. The bill as passed is 220 pages long and wide-ranging in its scope, covering not only shale oil and gas extraction, but renewable energy, water conservation, and wastewater treatment. The bill reportedly contains some of the strictest rules in the nation for hydraulic fracturing.
So what’s in the bill? MDN doubts you want to read through 220 pages to find out. Embedded below is the 70-page summary overview version. However, here’s a few brief highlights of what’s in it:
Read More “Ohio Passes New Drilling Law, Gov. Kasich Will Sign”
The Japanese have a huge appetite for U.S. shale gas and they’re investing big money to get access to it. Two Japanese and a French firm are putting up $1 billion of the $5 billion cost to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal in Louisiana. Now all they need is government approval for the exports.
Last October, the Ben Franklin Shale Gas Innovation & Commercialization Center (SGICC) announced its Shale Gas Innovation Competition. The results are now in and two organizations in State College, PA are the winners, receiving $25,000 each.
Polymics LTD won for their design of a lightweight, reusable and leak-proof mat system that is used at drill sites to contain mud and fluids while the drill pad is under construction. The second winner was the Thomas D. Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute at Penn State University for their development of a “patch box” system that converts diesel truck fleets to use natural gas.
Ten additional finalists were also named. In all, 12 new innovative technologies were identified that will help propel the shale drilling industry forward, making drilling safer and more efficient. From the SGICC press release:
Read More “Shale Gas Innovation Contest IDs 12 New Technologies”
FracFocus.org, the hydraulic fracturing chemical registry website, is now just over one year old and contains detailed information on the fracking chemicals used in over 18,000 hydraulically fractured wells. FracFocus.org is an independent organization that enjoys both drilling industry and environmental group support. With over 200 drillers now submitting data to the FracFocus.org website, it has become the de facto standard source for fracking chemical data, expanding rapidly each month as more and more drillers use the service.
A press release issued today describes FracFocus.org in more detail and links to online training offered by the organization along with a video of highlights from the past “wild ride” year:
Read More “FracFocus.org Chemical Reporting Service Expands Rapidly”
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, May 25, 2012”
Ohio legislators have been working to craft new shale oil and gas drilling rules that will do more to protect the environment, and at the same time, help protect the fledgling shale drilling industry in the state. New legislation passed in committee yesterday that will now go to the full House includes a provision to help prevent frivolous lawsuits brought by deep-pocketed anti-drilling groups, like the Ohio Environmental Council and the Sierra Club. These groups, who are opposed to expanded use of fossil fuels, use the legal system to tie up shale drillers in court and force them to spend huge sums of money as a tactic to reduce fossil fuel mining and use.
When the Ohio House added a protection against such shenanigans, predictably the anti-drillers objected.
Read More “Anti-Driller Groups in Ohio Don’t Like Being Legally Neutered”
Finally, one thing that Joe Martens has said publicly that MDN fully agrees with. Martens, for those new to the drilling debate in New York, is the Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation—the organization that is tasked with regulating oil and gas drilling in the state. Martens is also the former long-time president of the Open Spaces Institute, an organization dedicated to stopping development of land. Strange choice by Andy Cuomo to run the organization tasked with developing the state’s land. But whatever.
Here’s what Martens said at a conference yesterday in New York City:
Read More “NY DEC Chief Martens Says Fracking Can be Done Safely”
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has created a very cool animated map showing the transition from conventionally drilled, vertical natural gas wells to unconventional, horizontally fracked natural gas wells (Marcellus wells) from January 2005 to April 2012 (a copy of the video is embedded below). Just as cool—and startling—are a couple of bar charts (also embedded below) showing the dramatic increase in the volume of natural gas production in PA while at the same time the number of gas wells, the number of holes drilled in the ground, has gone down! How can that be?
Fracked horizontal wells drilled in shale formations are far more productive than conventional, vertically drilled wells.
Read More “Animated Map Shows Vertical vs Horizontal Gas Wells in PA”
Chesapeake Energy posted its monthly investor PowerPoint slide presentation on its website Tuesday morning. Slide number two in the presentation got a fair amount of attention from the media, who pays attention to these presentations. That slide blames an “unprecedented negative media campaign” for the steep drop in Chesapeake’s stock price over the past month or so. An attack which another bullet point on slide two says has failed.
Funny thing—the original PowerPoint was pulled within a few hours of being posted and a new version uploaded with a different slide two—nothing to do with negative press. However, MDN has the original version (embedded below).
Residents gathered in West Wyoming (Luzerne County), PA to hear about plans from UGI Energy Services, subsidiary of UGI Utilities, to build a natural gas compressor plant in the township. The compressor plant will help bring Marcellus Shale gas through a new 28-mile pipeline UGI is building from Wyoming County to Luzerne County. Getting shale gas to the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area will lead to a 40 percent reduction in natural gas bills for customers over the next four years, according to UGI.
But the compressor plant is not without its critics…
Read More “Proposed Compressor Plant Near Wilkes-Barre Criticized”
Two days ago MDN reported that New York City Comptroller John Liu had written an open letter to Chesapeake Energy shareholders encouraging them to vote down the re-election of two board members (see this MDN story). Chesapeake has now responded, strongly, to Liu’s letter with a letter of their own.
From a Chesapeake press release:
Read More “Chesapeake Responds to NYC Comptroller on Board Election”
Amazingly, if you were to add up the volume of available shale gas in Europe, it totals an estimated 639 trillion (with a “t”) cubic feet of natural gas, more than four times the estimates for the Marcellus Shale in the U.S. Yet equally amazing European countries are either banning fracking or have instituted moratoria—they don’t want to use their own natural resources. No problem! The U.S will be happy to sell them some of ours.
Read More “U.S. Shale Gas Exports to Europe Will Grow 74% by 2035”