SWPA Olympus Well Becomes Longest Marcellus Onshore Lateral
A well in the Marcellus Shale in (of all places) Plum Borough in Allegheny County, PA (a suburb of Pittsburgh) has become the longest onshore lateral drilled in the Marcellus Shale. Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley Exploration) has drilled and completed a well with a 20,060-foot lateral–3.8 miles long!
UPDATE: This post was revised from the original. See our note below.
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What if we gave the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) a $2.5 million grant to study a link between peanut butter and childhood cancer. Researchers could only use the money to study any potential link between peanut butter and kids getting rare cancers. Sounds absurd, right? What if there is NO link between peanut butter and cancer in kids? What if there IS a link to some other environmental factor like, say, an old uranium dumpsite nearby? But the remit is ONLY to research peanut butter. Sound silly? Sound stupid? Substitute “shale drilling” for “peanut butter” and you can see how absurd it is for Pennsylvania to announce awarding $2.5 million to Pitt to study a single potential cause for rare childhood cancers in southwestern PA.
Last week Pennsylvania issued 25 new shale well drilling permits in both northeast and southwest PA, although most of the permits for SWPA. Ohio issued 4 new shale well permits, all of them to the same company (Encino Energy) and the same well pad (in Harrison County). West Virginia issued 6 new shale well permits, one in Lewis County and the rest in Tyler County.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: WV Gov. Jim Justice acknowledges Biden presidency, says U.S. is not ready to move away from coal and gas; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Broadway Mill kicks coal after transition to natural gas completed; NATIONAL: The worst may be over for U.S. oil; U.S. shale oil just had its worst year and the pain could bleed into 2021; Biden’s Cabinet picks could fuel EPA, FERC pipeline wars; US natural gas in storage forecast to post another triple-digit withdrawal; INTERNATIONAL: Russia to U.S. President-elect: don’t upset the oil market.
Nuverra Environmental Solutions (formerly Heckmann) is one of the largest companies in the United States that handles transportation and disposal of shale drilling wastewater and leftover rock and dirt from drilling (drill cuttings). The company has major operations in the Marcellus/Utica region. Yesterday Nuverra announced its board of directors has approved the adoption of a “limited duration stockholder rights plan” (i.e. poison pill provision) to “protect stockholder interests.”
The Ohio Supreme Court just delivered a decision that affects one particular landowner (and former mineral rights owner), but also has implications for all Ohio landowners and rights owners. And by extension, implications for drillers that pay royalty payments. The Supremes found in Gerrity v. Chervenak that the landowners in the case (the Chervenaks) did enough due diligence when searching for the rights owner who had moved out of the area. The Supremes said the landowner performed the proper steps to reclaim ownership of the severed mineral rights under their land.
Anti-fossil fuelers love to protest things. Fine. Let them protest. This is (still) America. But when antis tip over into illegal acts like blocking legal activities of building pipelines or drilling wells, or when antis tip over into acts of vandalism like destroying equipment, that’s NOT okay. Antis call it “protesting.” We call it criminal behavior. A bill just passed in the Ohio legislature calls such activity what it is–crimes. And now (provided Gov. DeWine signs the bill into law, which is expected), such miscreants will pay stiff fines and in some cases do jail time for their crimes.
From the “With friends like this…” department, we have some upsetting news to report. The incoming chair of the American Gas Association (AGA), David Anderson, president and CEO of Northwest Natural Holding Co., says it’s time to “think big and think differently” about the end of natural gas. Anderson likes hydrogen and methane from landfills and the buttholes of animals, instead of natural gas that comes out of the ground. Go figure.
Wood Mackenzie, also known as WoodMac, is a global energy, chemicals, renewables, metals, and mining research and consultancy group. WoodMac writes reports and dishes out expert advice to investors dealing with the energy industry. WoodMac analysts have put their heads together to predict what we should expect in the energy space in the coming year, from oil markets to solar costs and coal exports to electric vehicles.
During the Williams third-quarter 2020 update in early November, CEO Alan Armstrong shared some interesting and relevant (to the Marcellus/Utica) comments (see 
In March 2019 MDN told you about National Fuel Gas Company’s (NFG) FM100 Project in northwestern Pennsylvania that will beef up and extend an existing pipeline network to flow an extra 330 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of Marcellus gas to Williams’ mighty Transco Pipeline (see 
Oaktree Capital Management, a huge investment firm with 1,000 employees and $140 billion in assets under management, is investing some of its considerable stach in BKV Corporation. BKV (which stands for Banpu Kalnin Ventures) is the American shale drilling arm of Banpu, Thailand’s largest coal mining company. BKV/Banpu has invested ~$500 million in the PA Marcellus, going as far as building a regional office in northeastern PA a year ago (see