Late last year, the City Council of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania rejected drilling for natural gas inside the city limits. But another city of similar size, Arlington, Texas, allows it within city limits. In an article talking about the pros and cons of “urban drilling” we get this information about the Arlington experiment:
Read More “The Impact of Shale Gas Tax Revenue for Local Municipalities”
Drilling in West Virginia is heating up, but according to state Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Randy Huffman, it’s not “out of control”—yet. Huffman and others do see a critical need for more inspectors, something they hope will soon be approved by the WV legislature.
This is a new, regular post on MDN. Below I list the five most viewed stories from last week, two weeks ago and the past 30 days. There is also a list of any events MDN is aware of happening this coming week (from the MDN Calendar). Be sure to send your event announcements to jim@marcellusdrilling.com.
Coming this week! A new special report exclusively from MDN titled: Will There Be Marcellus Shale Drilling Near Me? Subtitled, Drilling Permits for Marcellus Shale Gas Wells from January 2010 to February 2011. This new report, created by MDN, shows how many permits have been applied for or issued by county and in most cases by local municipality for New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The report not only details the number of well permits, but also lists the numbers by drilling company. Leases are being signed in many locations—landmen are on the move. Although signing a lease can yield a good source of income now, the real money is when an energy company drills on or near your property. You need a permit in order to drill, so permits are a good barometer of the intentions of drilling companies. If you’re a landowner, you can use this special report to see who’s “serious” about drilling near you. If you’ve already signed a lease, use this report to see if drilling may be coming in your area in the near future. Many other interested parties will use this report as well, to see when and if drilling is happening in their communities (local business owners, government officials, residents concerned about traffic, etc.). Keep watching this week for how you can get your copy of this important new special report.
Also coming this week: MDN attended an informational meeting hosted by the Joint Landowner Coalition of New York. Some of the things that came out of the Q&A session at the end are important for landowners in New York State. Watch for a post on Monday.
Happy reading,
Jim Willis, Editor
If you live anywhere near the Binghamton, NY area, Marcellus Drilling News editor Jim Willis invites you to attend a local meeting on drilling in the Marcellus tonight, Friday, March 4. Be sure to hello! I’ll wear a big MDN badge so you can recognize me.
And if you’d like to admit reading MDN 
, I’d like to snap a picture of you to post on this website.
Below is the meeting announcement. MDN thanks Dan Fitzsimmons, President of the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, for organizing the meeting and sending us the announcement.
Read More “Join MDN in Attending a Landowner Community Forum Tonight, March 4, in Binghamton”
The latest fallout from The New York Times story is about how wastewater from Marcellus Shale drilling operations in Pennsylvania is tracked as it is disposed. Supposedly the Times has found that there is a conspiracy:
Former PA Governor Tom Ridge has a new role as spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition. In that role, he met yesterday with local political officials and reporters in Canonsburg, PA, near Pittsburgh. He had some common sense words for those in the audience:
“You cannot eliminate the risk from anything you do,” said Ridge, who was casually dressed in jeans, a blue turtleneck and a blue button-down shirt. “Airplanes crash because pilots make bad judgments, but we don’t stop flying.”(1)
Read More “Former PA Gov. Tom Ridge Says NYT Spreading Disinformation”
There was a fire earlier this week at a MarkWest Liberty Midstream natural gas compressor station in Mount Pleasant (Washington County), PA. No one was injured and the fire was quickly extinguished. It is now known that a faulty water heater caused the fire.
Read More “Cause of Fire at MarkWest Compressor Station in Western PA was Faulty Water Heater”
It looks like new PA Gov. Tom Corbett’s pick to head the Department of Environmental Protection will soon be confirmed by the State Senate. Michael L. Krancer, 53, of Bryn Mawr in Montgomery County, answered Senators’ questions at his confirmation hearing yesterday. In particular he responded to questions about the recent stories in The New York Times alleging PA has been lax in testing drinking water supplies that The Times claims are now contaminated with high levels of radioactivity from drilling wastewater.
Krancer took the opportunity to set the record straight on a few facts The Times got wrong:
Read More “New PA DEP Secretary Krancer Sets the Record Straight, Corrects NYT Errors”
Range Resources, one of the largest drillers in the Marcellus Shale, recently released year-end results (yes, more earnings statements!). And they have some big news about the Marcellus buried in their report. Namely, Range currently produces 260 million cubic feet of of natural gas per day from their Marcellus Shale operations, and they are on track to produce 400 million cubic feet by the end of 2011. Range says by the end of 2012 they will be producing 600 million cubic feet. Eventually? They think they can reach billions of cubic feet of gas per day.
Chesapeake Energy is one of the largest drillers for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale, period. And they are a big driller in Bradford and other counties in Northeastern PA. With so many wells being drilled in the area, roads have been damaged. Many of the roads are what Chesapeake refers to as “pie crust” roads – nothing more than 2 inches of asphalt laid on clay or dirt – the kind of roads that don’t hold up well to any kind of traffic. Chesapeake is not only repairing the damage, but in many cases making the roads better than they originally were:
Pittsburgh City Councilman and Council President Doug Shields (Democrat-District 5) was the driving force behind legislation passed late last year that banned drilling for Marcellus Shale gas inside city limits. Energy companies hold leases on 362 acres, or 1 percent, of land in the city proper. Shields worked with the environmentalist and anti-drilling law firm Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund to craft that legislation.
It seems that recent stories from The New York Times about potential wastewater contamination are an opportunity too good to “waste” for Councilman Shields.
The fallout from The New York Times series of articles claiming radioactive contamination from Marcellus Shale drilling wastewater is finding its way into water supplies continues:
Read More “Pittsburgh to Test for Radioactivity in City Water Supplies, Wastewater Scare Continues”
The Bayer CropScience plant in Institute, WV is rumored to be downsizing. Currently 500 people are employed there, but the plant will soon stop making and storing the same chemical (MIC) that leaked in the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India killing thousands back in 1984. If that happens, some 200 people will lose their jobs. But there may be hope to keep those jobs because of Marcellus Shale drilling:
Read More “Marcellus Drilling May Help Save 200 Jobs at Bayer Plant in WV”
The New York Times continues its vendetta against drilling in the Marcellus Shale—it sells papers and God knows they sell far fewer today than they did even a year ago. MDN wonders what made-up quotes pulled from past public statements adorn this new article? The theme of the new article: “Yes, yes, drilling companies say they’re recycling more wastewater (some even approaching 100 percent), but not all of them do! And even recycling produces nasty stuff that pollutes water supplies anyway. So pay no attention to all that recycling talk.” And of course, Pennsylvania continues to be the whipping boy.
Public relations firm Gregory FCA recently used the Nielsen BuzzMetrics service to conduct a study of traditional media, as well as social media, to determine whether public sentiment or perception on the whole is pro, neutral, or anti-drilling with respect to drilling in the Marcellus Shale. Gregory FCA’s survey included more than 100 million online and traditional media comments as part of the study.
The results for traditional media—newspapers, television, and radio:
Pittsburgh is located in the middle of some of the most active drilling in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania. Many drilling and other related companies have located either branch or even headquarters offices in the Pittsburgh area, making it the defacto capital of drilling in the Marcellus Shale. So plenty of news comes out of Western PA to do with drilling in the Marcellus.