It seemed for a while like passing Marcellus drilling bans was all the rage for cities in West Virginia. Now it seems they can’t repeal those bans fast enough. The latest to repeal a previous ban is Wellsburg:
Read More “Another WV City Repeals Previous Marcellus Drilling Ban”
Even though New York still has not adopted new drilling regulations, and likely won’t until late this year, and even though drilling will not begin until 2012 at the earliest, New York politicians are lining up to dip their hands into driller’s and landowners’ pockets. The latest example is New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli who has proposed a bill to the state legislature to create a driller-funded pool of money (i.e. a new tax on drillers) to cover the cost of any future accidents that may (or may not) happen because of drilling.
The problem, of course, is that any pool of money in Albany—home of politicians with sticky fingers—has a half-life of about 30 minutes before it will be borrowed, moved from one side of the ledger to the other, or otherwise disappear.
Read More “NY Comptroller Wants New Tax to Cover Gas Drilling Accidents”
Laser Northeast Gathering recently broke ground is quickly working to complete a new 30-mile shale gas pipeline, called the Susquehanna Gathering System, that spans much of Susquehanna County in northeastern Pennsylvania and crosses the southeast corner of Broome County in New York State where the pipeline will connect to the larger Millennium interstate pipeline (see this MDN story).
But Laser is having troubles with drilling underneath Laurel Lake Creek, a waterway considered to have “exceptional value” by the PA Department of Environmental Protection. In the span of just a few weeks, drilling under the creek resulted in three separate incidents of non-toxic drilling mud being spilled into the creek, the latest incident occurring on Monday.
Read More “Three Mud Spills in PA Creek from Laser Pipeline Construction”
Individual landowners and landowner groups are looking to organize into a large coalition in northeastern Pennsylvania in an effort to promote Marcellus Shale gas drilling in a safe, responsible way and to counter those who want to stop drilling. A small group of landowners met on Tuesday in Wysox (Bradford County), PA to discuss strategy. Tom Shepstone from Energy in Depth Northeast Marcellus Initiative (inaccurately referred to as Tom Shepp in the media article below), addressed the group on the need for large coalition of PA landowners—like the 70,000-member Joint Landowners Coalition of New York.
Read More “Northeast PA Landowners Discuss Forming Large Gas Coalition”
Even though the economy is in the dumper, the price for oil and gas is dropping and unemployment is at record highs, the natural gas industry—shale gas in particular—is adding jobs at a rapid pace. The entire energy sector including oil and gas is on track to add 200,000 jobs in 2011—an astonishing number given economic conditions.
Read More “Shale Gas Industry Continues to Add Jobs at Rapid Pace”
Just how big a deal is shale gas in the U.S. in general, and the Marcellus Shale in particular? According to a mergers and acquisitions report for the energy sector just released by PricewaterhouseCoopers, shale gas is driving most of the energy deals happening right now:
Read More “Shale Gas Drives Most Energy Company Deals in Past 3 Months”
A new set of rules governing pipeline construction permits issued by the U.S. Army Corps or Engineers is causing extreme delays in getting gas from wells to market according to Chesapeake Energy. The new rules have turned what was an average 45-day process to file paperwork into a 300-day process.
The bottom line is that wells that are drilled and completed sit idle because gathering pipelines aren’t being built to them, and consequently landowners are not receiving royalty checks.
Read More “New Pipeline Permit Rules Delay Landowner Royalties in PA”
On Monday, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley, the head of Gov. Tom Corbett’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission, did a Q&A session via text chat with readers of the Philadelphia Inquirer to answer questions about the final report of 96 recommendations filed by the Commission and about the work they performed to arrive those recommendations. The questions covered jobs, taxes, regulation, pollution and more. Among the Q&A was this excellent exchange on taxes that puts to bed the widespread misunderstanding that the drilling industry is not paying taxes and “if only PA had a severance tax it would solve the budget problems in the state”:
Read More “PA Lt Gov Cawley Addresses Severance Tax in Chat Session”
Lawrence County, a western Pennsylvania county which borders Ohio, has just had its first Marcellus Shale gas well drilled, with hydraulic fracturing of the well under way now. With 815 land leases signed since last year, it’s a pretty safe bet more wells are coming to Lawrence County soon.
Read More “Lawrence County, PA Gets its First Marcellus Shale Well”
MarkWest Energy Partners and its subsidiary companies concentrate on what the industry calls the “midstream” area of natural gas drilling—that is, gathering, processing and transporting natural gas. MarkWest’s quarterly report includes an update on their expanding capacity to process natural gas and natural gas liquids in the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania and West Virginia as well as news about a new pipeline to Canada:
Read More “MarkWest Processing Plants in PA & WV Ramp Up Output”
Just an observation, but you know the New York Times is in trouble when political blog sites like the Politico, a popular (and leftist) website has to write puff pieces to prop up the journalistic malpractice being printed by the Times against the natural gas industry. Case in point:
Politico: New York Times vs. natural gas industry
Don’t forget to vote in this week’s MDN poll, which asks the question:
With respect to shale gas drilling, is the New York Times a reliable source of information?
The poll is found on the right-hand side of any page on the MDN website.
The New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) leased 19,000 acres of state forestland to Chesapeake Energy and Fortuna Energy (now Talisman Energy) in 2006 to allow gas drilling. The deal provided state coffers with $9 million and the promise of 12.5 percent royalties on any gas produced. Those leases are due to expire Nov. 15 of this year, but Chesapeake has let the DEC know it believes the leases for its share (15,472 acres) should be extended, a legal phrase called force majeure, because of the moratorium that has been in place since 2008 on hydraulically fractured gas drilling. In a letter to the DEC, Chesapeake implied they will sue the state to extend the lease agreements if the state does not willingly agree to an extension.
Read More “Chesapeake Threatens NY with Lawsuit on State Land Leases”
Norse Energy, an Oslo (Norway)-based gas drilling company has just announced they are “betting the farm” on drilling in New York State’s Marcellus and Utica Shales. They’ve even decided to suspend other types of gas drilling favor of New York’s shale gas. Recently, Norse became the first company to file a permit with the state DEC to drill in the Utica Shale once permits start to be issued (see this MDN story).
Read More “Norse Energy Bets Big on New York’s Utica & Marcellus Shale”
In response to a study released in May by Duke University showing elevated levels of methane in water wells near active gas wells being drilled, Chesapeake Energy has released its own water testing data. One of the chief criticisms of the Duke study is that baseline measurements were not taken—that is, Duke did not test water wells before active gas drilling took place to eliminate the possibility that methane in those water wells was naturally occurring. Chesapeake has that data for wells close to its active drilling sites. The results are indeed interesting.
Read More “Methane Present in 11% of WV Water Wells Before Drilling Begins”
Pennsylvania municipalities have found a new market in the Marcellus drilling industry for excess fresh water and for treated sewage wastewater. The going rate they receive, depending on whether it’s fresh water or treated wastewater, is between $2 and $6 per 1,000 gallons. In some cases, the sale of water used in hydraulic fracturing of Marcellus gas wells is netting millions of dollars in extra revenue for state and local organizations.
Read More “PA Municipalities Profit by Selling Water for Fracking”
In a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, Cal Dooley, president and CEO of the American Chemistry Council commented on the critically important (and huge) contribution shale gas drilling is having on the chemical industry in the United States. He said:
Read More “ACC Says Shale Gas will Produce 400K New Jobs in Chemical Industry”