Columnist Bill Hammond in the New York Daily News has some advice for his fellow New Yorkers: Stop freaking about fracking. In a column published Tuesday, Hammond says, among other things:
The Antero Resources board of directors approved a $126 million increase in the company’s capital budget for 2011. Antero’s revised capital budget for 2011 is $685 million and includes $519 million for drilling and completion, $86 million for the construction of gathering pipelines and facilities and $80 million for leasehold acquisitions. The budget was revised to fund increased drilling in core areas in the Marcellus and Piceance, the expansion of gathering infrastructure in the Marcellus and the acquisition of additional leasehold opportunities in Antero’s core area in the Marcellus. The $126 million increase was allocated 53% to drilling, 35% to gathering pipeline expansion and 12% to leasehold.
Cabot Oil & Gas recently boosted it’s daily output of natural gas from the Marcellus in Northeastern PA by a full 35 percent in just 24 hours when new sections of a compressor station went online. Cabot is now producing 420 million cubic feet (Mmcf) of natural gas per day from the Marcellus—up from 310 Mmcf. They also have two new wells producing nearly 30 Mmcf per day each—a new daily high in output for single wells for Cabot.
Southwestern Energy plans to construct a well pad and drill six to eight Marcellus Shale wells on the border of a former hazardous waste landfill in New Milford (Susquehanna County), PA. A local group has started a letter-writing campaign to stop the project.
Interesting comments about the scope of natural gas reserves in both the Marcellus and Utica Shales under Pennsylvania, from a state DEP official:
Read More “Is PA Sitting on the Largest Natural Gas Reserves in the World?”
Road damage from truck traffic to Marcellus Shale drilling sites has overwhelmed the West Virginia Department of Highways (DOH) ability to respond, according to one DOH official.
Read More “Road Damage from Gas Drilling in WV Overwhelms Highway Department”
In an interesting development, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has sent along marching orders to the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to complete the next version of the draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (dSGEIS)—the new guidelines to be used in drilling in the Marcellus Shale in New York—by July 1st. The previous deadline was a soft deadline issued by former Gov. David Paterson of “on or about June 1st.” The new deadline issued by Cuomo is July 1st—no waffling. Cuomo has also instructed the DEC to visit a well blowout site in Bradford County, PA to see what can be learned and incorporated into the final document from that accident.
The Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry has just released new employment data and with it, the number of people hired in the past 12 months to work in the Marcellus Shale drilling industry. And the numbers are startling:
Read More “PA Hires 48,000 People in Past 12 Months to Work in Marcellus Shale Drilling Industry”
The new wealth that leasing and drilling in the Marcellus Shale brings on, can also bring on a new set of challenges for landowners, many of whom are farmers who have struggled to pay the bills for years.
A case in point are the issues faced when there are multiple owners of a family farm, as told by Stuart “Buzz” Hutchison, an estate and trust attorney:
Read More “Money Problems for Landowners with Marcellus Shale Lease & Royalty Payments”
Thank you to those who voted in last week’s online poll. Here are the results:
Should Marcellus Shale pipeline companies be granted public utility status (i.e. eminent domain)?
No (74%, 151 Votes)
Yes (23%, 47 Votes)
Not sure (3%, 6 Votes)
Total Voters: 204
This Week’s Poll
This week I wade into waters few dare to go: the global warming (or climate change or whatever you want to call it) debate. I do so because of the interest in the story I posted this past week about the Cornell study recently published by Profs. Howarth, Ingraffea and Santoro. That study says, among other things, that using shale gas—not only burning it, but also the process of drilling it and transporting it—is a bigger contributor to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than mining and burning coal. A writer on the Council on Foreign Relations website pointed out new findings from the Department of Energy that refutes the methodology and resulting conclusions from the Howarth study.
Many who oppose drilling for Marcellus Shale gas do so because of their philosophical viewpoint, a viewpoint that believes (oversimplification here) that burning fossil fuels are bad because they cause an increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere resulting in an increase in the average temperature on the earth with potentially catastrophic effects. That line of thinking or viewpoint is represented in the work by Howarth et al. Those who hold that viewpoint generally support alternative sources of energy like wind and solar and believe that humans should, more or less, be forced to change to those sources of energy.
There are others, MDN among them, who do not believe man is contributing in any meaningful way to an increase in global warming—at least not to the extent that it endangers anyone or anything on planet earth. Can and does air pollution exist? Of course. Do carbon-based fuels contribute to said pollution? Yes. But is mankind’s burning of carbon-based fossil fuels leading to doomsday for life on earth because of greenhouse gases? No. Not in my opinion. And not in the opinion of many scientists and experts.
Maybe you think man does contribute to the “problem” of global warming, but man’s contribution is not dangerous. Maybe you think all fossil fuel use should end asap. Maybe you think using natural gas, because of lower carbon emissions than oil and coal is the best solution for now, but not for the long-term. People come down on all sides of the debate. I’ve tried to word the poll this week to get at the root philosophy or belief that may or may not lead people to support or oppose drilling. It’s not a perfect question, but hopefully will do the trick.
Do you think burning fossil fuels like natural gas causes dangerously high levels of global warming?
If you believe there is a direct connection between burning fossil fuels and dangerously high global warming, my guess is that you oppose drilling for shale gas. You may have other reasons to oppose drilling (impact on water supplies, etc.). But fundamentally, if you believe the planet is endangered by carbon, my guess is you don’t want drilling. Am I right?
Go to any page on the website and click to vote on the right-hand side of the page in this week’s poll. I’ll report the results next week.
Below you’ll find the “top 5” lists and this week’s calendar listings.
Happy reading,
Jim Willis, Editor
When the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) recently told Marcellus Shale drillers in the state to stop hauling wastewater from fracking to municipal sewage treatment plants that are not equipped to fully treat the wastewater by May 19 (see MDN story here), they all committed to comply and indeed did comply. But the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) jumped in and demanded detailed plans from six drillers as to just how they planned on treating and disposing of the wastewater once the they stopped using the municipal plants.
The EPA’s deadline for the six drillers to file plans was Wednesday, May 25. Five of the six complied by the deadline:
Read More “PA Drillers Comply with Federal EPA’s Request for Information on Wastewater Disposal”
Wilkes University held a Marcellus Shale drilling forum on Wednesday. According to press reports, the upshot of the meeting was that it will not be impossible, but will certainly be difficult, to get a consensus on natural gas drilling that uses horizontal hydraulic fracturing. Read an excellent roundup of the meeting by clicking the link below.
One bit of information offered during the meeting is interesting to note:
Dominion Transmission, the pipeline transport subsidiary of energy giant Dominion, is being sued over a lease deal in Preston County, West Virginia signed in 1955. Dominion drilled a single well in 1959 which let it retain rights to develop more wells in the future in perpetuity. According to the lawsuit, Dominion assigned the lease rights to its subsidiary Dominion Transmission with plans to someday use the geological formations of the land as a natural gas storage field. Such activity would yield no royalties for the landowners who want to nullify the lease and find someone who will actually drill gas wells on the property, specifically tapping the Marcellus Shale.
A somewhat technical, but informative article on how hydraulic fracturing technology is getting more environmentally friendly was recently published in Drilling Contractor. Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Schlumberger, Weatherford International, GasFrac Energy Services, Universal Well Services and Frac Tech Services went on the record with Drilling Contractor about the environmental aspects of hydraulic fracturing and “green” developments.
From the introduction of the article we see the critical role fracking plays in natural gas development:
Read More “Technology Advances Lead to “Greener” Hydraulic Fracturing”
Earlier this year, a group of 40 Town of Windsor (NY) landowners with a cumulative 3,000 acres signed a gas lease agreement with Denver-based Inflection Energy to allow Marcellus Shale drilling when New York’s moratorium is eventually lifted. The landowners expected their signing bonus checks by March 3rd, but that didn’t happen due to delays by the lawyers (see MDN story here). The delays are now over the the Windsor landowners have started receiving their bonus checks totaling $8.25 million.
The Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia has just kicked off a new advertising campaign to educate the public to the benefits of natural gas drilling in the state.
Read More “WV Natural Gas Industry Already Employs 35K People with Average Salaries of $60K”