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”
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, May 24, 2012”
A cautionary story for landowners comes from Columbiana County, Ohio. Some landowners, like Patrick and Jill McNicol, own land encumbered by old gas leases going back fifty years they knew nothing about. What does it mean? They’ll get $4 per acre for their land (and no royalties), while their neighbors will get $5,800 per acres and 12-20 percent royalties.
Is there any recourse for the McNicols? Maybe.
Read More “Some OH Landowners Get $5,800/Acre While Neighbors Get $4/Acre”
In what can only be described as idiotic, the Sierra Club is actively preventing utility companies from converting electrical generating plants from coal to natural gas—because they don’t like fracking. This kind of stuff has to stop.
Read More “Sierra Club Hindering Change from Coal to Natural Gas”
Spectra Energy’s proposed $1.2 billion natural gas pipeline for New York City finally won approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Monday. The 20-mile new pipeline to be built will connect New York to New Jersey and deliver 800 million cubic feet of natural gas per day to homes and businesses in New York. Most of the gas will come from the Marcellus Shale. It will ease the energy needs of New York because starting in 2015 the City will no longer allow No. 6 fuel oil to be burned.
The new pipeline and the energy it will deliver by saving all that oil burning will be the equivalent of taking 1 million cars off the road. That’s a good thing, right? So how have some New Yorkers responded? Thankful that they too will be able to access cleaner burning, lower cost natural gas? Thankful that this new pipeline will result in cleaner air? You guessed it—they don’t want it!
Read More “FERC Approves Spectra Energy’s $1.2B NYC Natural Gas Pipeline”
The Columbiana County (OH) Port Authority voted on Monday to lease 43.9 acres of its property in Beaver County, PA to Chesapeake Energy.
Read More “Columbiana County Port Authority Leases Land to Chesapeake”