Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Thu, Aug 2, 2012
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading:
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Energy Companies | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Lenape Resources | Litigation | Livingston County | New York | Regulation
NY Driller Threatens DEC with Lawsuit over Town Bans
In the misguided attempt to ban hydraulic fracturing in New York, one town took their ban vote too far. MDN reported about the bone-headed vote by the Town of Avon (Livingston County, NY) on June 28 to ban drilling activity in the town with a broadly worded zoning ordinance (see this MDN story).A local driller with wells in Avon, Lenape Resources, warned Avon that the broad language they intended to use in their zoning ordinance would cause Lenape to shut down 16 existing conventional (vertical-only) gas wells they operate in the town along with a gas pipeline. Avon town board members didn’t listen and passed the new ordinance. Lenape president John Holko promptly shut down all of his wells in the town, ending free gas for some local residents, and low cost gas for the town itself. A really dumb move on the part of Avon.
There is a new development in this ongoing situation.
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Chesapeake Energy | Columbiana County | Energy Companies | Lease & Royalty Payments | Mahoning County | Ohio | Statewide OH | Trumbull County | Utica Shale
Chesapeake Buys 28K Acres of OH Leases from Everflow
MDN reported on Monday that Chesapeake Energy had purchased the rights to leases and had transferred ownership of those leases for more than 14,000 acres from two counties in Ohio—Trumbull and Mahoning (see this MDN story). We now know that’s only half of the number of acres they transferred. We now also know who they bought the rights from and how much they paid for those rights.
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Aither Chemicals | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Processing Plants | Statewide WV | West Virginia
Aither: 5 Compounds Customers Want from a Cracker Plant
Aither Chemicals remains committed to building an ethane cracker plant somewhere in the Marcellus/Utica Shale region, preferably in the Kanawha Valley region of West Virginia. An ethane cracker plant uses ethane (from wet gas) to “crack” it into other chemical compounds. Ethane is most commonly cracked to make ethylene, a raw material used in plastics.
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WV Working on Another New Shale Drilling Law
West Virginia passed a new oil and gas drilling law in December of last year. The “Horizontal Well Act” was overwhelmingly passed by both houses of the WV legislature and signed into law by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. The law contained a number of new provisions—and as happens many times, nobody was especially happy with it (see this MDN story). However, the new law, according to some, has provided predictability and uniformity across the state for the drilling industry.
Don’t look now, but the legislature and state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) is working on yet another new drilling law in advance of next year’s legislative session (sessions are held every two years in WV). At a meeting held last night about the proposed new law, anti-drilling environmentalist groups sounded off about proposed new rules and the changes they want, as well as a representative from the drilling industry.
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Poll: 63% of Ohioans Have Heard Little/Nothing on Fracking
A new poll by University of Cincinnati researchers for the Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati asked 834 randomly selected Ohioans their opinions about fracking. A copy of the poll results is embedded below.
Perhaps most surprising is that a combined 63% of Ohioans claim they have heard little or nothing about hydraulic fracturing. Asked about whether or not they believe fracking poses a threat to health, respondents were evenly divided.
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Butler County | Energy Companies | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | MarkWest Energy | NGLs | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Processing Plants | XTO
MarkWest Signs Deal with XTO to Process NGLs in PA
MarkWest has just signed a deal with XTO Energy (XTO is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Exxon Mobil) to extend MarkWest’s natural gas liquids (NGLs) gathering pipeline in Butler County, PA to XTO’s processing plant. Previously MarkWest announced plans to extend the same pipeline from its Houston, PA complex to the Bluestone complex in Butler County. With this announcement, MarkWest will further extend the pipeline from Bluestone to XTO’s plant.
This deal will grant MarkWest the right to fractionate and market NGLs from XTO. Adding this new pipeline to other recently announced pipelines by MarkWest, when everything is built and running, MarkWest will have 3 billion cubic feet of gas processing capacity and 270,000 barrels per day of fractionation capacity throughout the Marcellus and Utica Shale.
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EXCO’s 2Q12 Results: Continues Commitment to the Marcellus
EXCO Resources reported their second quarter results yesterday. Current production in the Marcellus for EXCO was 146 million cubic feet of gas per day, a 28% increase since the end of 2011. Their 2012 plan is to drill a total of 49 wells in the Marcellus, the majority of them in Lycoming County, PA where EXCO says it is “realizing our best returns in the Marcellus shale.” EXCO is currently using only one rig for Marcellus drilling.
Below are the Marcellus-related portions of yesterday’s announcement:
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Bet You Didn’t Know Fracking Causes STDs & Satanism ;-)
A column in Philadelphia Weekly takes a somewhat tongue-in-cheek look at the claims anti-drillers make about fracking. Claims like fracking causes bird deaths, and fish deaths, and even human deaths. And fracking causes earthquakes, dontcha know. The column is clearly poking fun, but we can’t quite figure out if the author is also giving credence to some of the claims, hinting they might be true.
However, the final two claims he lists are laugh-out-loud funny and we though you would enjoy a smile. Grab a cross and read on…
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Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Wed, Aug 1, 2012
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading:
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Village of Owego, NY Votes to Ban Fracking for 1 Year
Last night the Village of Owego (Tioga County, NY) became the second municipality in the Marcellus gas-rich Southern Tier area of New York state to vote for a temporary ban on fracking. The village board voted to ban fracking for one year to give the village a “time out to look at the documentation,” referring to the village’s master plan for not only drilling but flooding.Towns, villages and cities across the state expect new drilling rules will soon be released by the Dept. of Environmental Conservation. In anticipation of that, many are voting to either ban fracking, or voting to support the DEC’s forthcoming rules. Owego is only the second municipality in the rumored five county area likely to receive permits for fracking when the time comes. Those counties (in what is referred to as the Southern Tier) are Broome, Chemung, Chenango, Tioga and Steuben.
The City of Binghamton—with a Democrat Mayor and an all-Democrat city council—rammed through a fracking ban last December, while they still had a stacked deck (before new incoming Republican council members were seated in January).
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Belmont County | Carroll County | Guernsey County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Jefferson County (OH) | Mahoning County | Noble County | Ohio | Utica Shale | Wayne County (OH)
The Permits Keep Coming for New OH Utica Shale Wells
According to the Daily Jeffersonian, Ohio’s Utica Shale drilling shows no signs of diminishing based on the number of new permits issued for horizontal wells in June:
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Officials Ask PA Supreme Court to Hurry Up with Act 13 Case
A court filing by state officials yesterday—including the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, the Attorney General and the Dept. of Environmental Protection—asks the PA Supreme Court to expedite an appeal of the Act 13 zoning case. Last week the appellate court in PA ruled against the state’s new Act 13 law zoning provisions (see this MDN story). According to Gov. Tom Corbett, without the zoning portions of Act 13, the new law will be gutted.
Read More “Officials Ask PA Supreme Court to Hurry Up with Act 13 Case”
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Encore Energy Shopping 175K Utica Shale Acres in OH
Encore Energy, a drilling company formed just last year and headquartered in Bowling Green, Kentucky, is acting as a leasing agent and shopping 175,000 Utica Shale acres in Ohio to larger drillers, trying to catch their interest in drilling for wet gas and oil.
Encore issued the following press release yesterday:
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Lawyers Look at Court Cases that Challenge Fracking
The Legal Intelligencer, the oldest law journal in the U.S., publishes an article in the current issue titled “Shale Development and Fracking Litigation Trends.” It takes a look at court cases filed on the basis of supposed harm from hydraulic fracturing. The authors say of the 40 plus cases filed in state and federal court related to fracking, most remain unresolved at this time. Of the ones that are resolved, the cases against fracking cited by the authors were dismissed for lack of proof that fracking caused harm.
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Guest Post: Anti-Drilling Bias at Lebanon, NY Town Board Meeting [Free]
The following guest viewpoint was written by Bryant La Tourette, a Chenango County landowner, businessman and member of one of the largest landowner coalitions in the Marcellus and Utica Shale region. Bryant has attended 19 town board meetings throughout the shale region, most recently the Town of Lebanon, NY just last week (see this MDN story warning of the impending meeting).
Bryant provides an eyewitness account of what happened at the meeting, including an anti-drilling bias by the town supervisor running the meeting.
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In the misguided attempt to ban hydraulic fracturing in New York, one town took their ban vote too far. MDN reported about the bone-headed vote by the Town of Avon (Livingston County, NY) on June 28 to ban drilling activity in the town with a broadly worded zoning ordinance (
Last night the Village of Owego (Tioga County, NY) became the second municipality in the Marcellus gas-rich Southern Tier area of New York state to vote for a temporary ban on fracking. The village board voted to ban fracking for one year to give the village a “time out to look at the documentation,” referring to the village’s master plan for not only drilling but flooding.