The Daily Digger

by Jackie Stewart, Energy in Depth The  Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF)  has been targeting Ohio for six straight years, attempting to pass a total of 35 illegal and unenforceable ballot measures aimed at banning fracking and day-to-day commerce across the state, costing taxpayers across the state hundreds of thousands along the way. Now eight months after CELDF co-founder Thomas Linzey was  slapped with sanctions  for similar “bad faith” efforts in Pennsylvania, two Ohio boards of elections have hit him with a two-punch combo, as the  Franklin County Board of Elections  and the  Lucas County Board of Elections  recently voted to toss CELDF’s Columbus and Toledo “Community Bill of Rights” measures off their respective ballots this fall, citing Ohio Supreme Court precedent. CELDF’s fail rate has reached epic proportions in the Buckeye State, as these recent decisions swell the CEDLF Ohio loss record to 86 percent! In...

From Business Journal Daily: The oil and gas industry across the state of Ohio is on the rebound and is searching for workers to staff positions representatives say will be in demand for the future.  Pipeline construction workers, rig operators, welders and thousands of assorted jobs connected with oil and gas processing and end use are among the areas where industry specialists see the most opportunity for employment, industry specialists add.  “We’re coming out of a downturn, which is really exciting and starting to see some reinvestment,” Mike Chadsey, director of public relations for the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, told about 25 guests during a question-and-answer session with representatives of organized labor, faith-based groups and educators. The event was held at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 322 in Youngstown and organized by Strategic Resources Consulting.  Critical job shortages at the moment are evident in transportation, Chadsey s...

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: After rescheduling its bankruptcy auction four times in a week, Rex Energy Corp. called off the event all together and declared PennEnergy Resources LLC the winning bidder.  Moon-based PennEnergy has agreed to pay $600.5 million for Rex, a State College-based shale driller that filed for bankruptcy protection in May .  The acquisition must still gain the approval of the bankruptcy judge. A hearing on the sale agreement is scheduled for Thursday.  PennEnergy’s CEO Rich Weber said Rex’s acreage, mostly in Butler County, is contiguous to his company’s assets “and we’re very familiar with it.” Click right here to read more.  Connect with us on Facebook and Twitter! Follow @EnergyNewsBlog

From The Herald Star: Rich Wright is taking his administrative and coaching talents to another level as the newest director of the Utica Shale Academy. Wright, who has been head football coach at Southern Local High School for four years and was its assistant principal for the past three years, assumed his newest duties on Aug. 1. He replaces Eric Sampson, who was director of the community school since its inception in 2014 but departed for another role in education. Wright said he was eager to guide high school students towards success in the growing energy field.  “You wear a lot of hats, and there are plenty of administrative duties with attendance, testing, graduation points and career opportunities,” he said. “We have welding with the New Castle School of Trades and courses involved with the gas and oil industry. There are a lot of opportunities in the industry and you can get a lot of verifications here.” Read on by clicking here. Connect with us on Facebook and Twitte...

From WTOV: Leaders across the Ohio Valley continue to prepare for a possible cracker plant in Belmont County. The preparations are happening on both sides of the river. City leaders in Moundsville said they believe a change is coming and they want to be ready for it. "This Valley is going to be something very, very special, but we have to get ready and we can't wait,” said Moundsville Vice Mayor Philip Remke. “We have to be prepared, and if for some reason this $10 billion project doesn't come, there is ground and room for something else very special.” Meanwhile, Ohio Rep. Andy Thompson had this to say at a meeting of the Ohio Mid-Eastern Governments Association: “What the study revealed was the strategic financial advantage we have over building on the Gulf Coast. … It was a wake-up call for a lot of folks down there,”  Thompson said, referring to a conference in Texas.  “We had one meeting with Dow Chemical, and they were not exactly happy to hear about that study....

From an ETP press release: Energy Transfer Partners, L.P. (NYSE: ETP) announced today that Rover Pipeline, LLC received approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to commence service on the Burgettstown and Majorsville supply laterals effective immediately. FERC also approved the associated compressor and metering stations. This latest approval allows for 100 percent of the long-haul contractual commitments on Rover to begin September 1, 2018.  Rover is a 713-mile natural gas pipeline that transports domestically produced natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica production areas to markets across the United States as well as to the Union Gas Dawn Storage Hub in Ontario, Canada. When in full operation, Rover will transport gas from processing plants in West Virginia, Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania for delivery to pipeline interconnects in West Virginia and Eastern Ohio as well as to the Midwest Hub near Defiance, Ohio, where up to 68 percent of the gas ...

From NGI: Utica and Marcellus shale operators Eclipse Resources Corp. and Blue Ridge Mountain Resources Inc. agreed to merge on Monday, an all-stock combination to create an Appalachian-focused enterprise with combined 4Q2018 output of 500-560 MMcfe / d, 227,000 net undeveloped core acres and an estimated 20 years of oil and natural gas inventory.  Blue Ridge will become a subsidiary of Eclipse. Blue Ridge stockholders for each share are to receive 4.4259 shares of Eclipse, a deal that values ​​Eclipse stock at $ 7.44 / share based on the Friday (Aug. 24) closing price.  Eclipse shareholders would own about about 57.5% of the combined company, with Blue Ridge owning 42.5%.  Eclipse CEO Benjamin Hulburt, who served as chairman, CEO and president Since its inception, called the merger "compelling" and a "combination that both both of us to consolidate premier assets company's production and cash flow, seamlessly fit into a consolidated drilling program, "a...

From the ODNR: During the second quarter of 2018, Ohio’s horizontal shale well produced 4,488,104 barrels of oil and 554,306,916 Mcf (545 billion cubic feet) of natural gas, according to figures released today by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR).   Natural gas production from the second quarter of 2018 showed a 42.25% increase over the second quarter of 2017, while oil production increased 10.98% for the same period.   2017 Quarter 2 (Shale) 2018 Quarter 2 (Shale) Percentage Change Barrels of oil 4,044,072 bbl 4,488,104 bbl 10.98% Mcf of natural gas 389,662,485 Mcf 554,306,916 Mcf 42.25% The ODNR quarterly report lists 2,035 horizontal shale wells, 2,002 of which reported oil and natural gas production during the quarter. Of the wells reporting oil and natural gas results:   The average amount of oil produced was 2,242 barrels. The average amount of natural gas produced was 276,877 Mcf. The average number of second quarter days in produc...

New permits issued last week:   8   (Previous week:  6 )  +2 Total horizontal permits issued:  2873  (Previous week:  2865 )  +8 Total horizontal wells drilled:  2402  (Previous week:  2392 )  +10 Total horizontal wells producing:  1957  (Previous week:  1957 )  +-0 Utica rig count:  20  (Previous week:  19 )   +1 Connect with us on Facebook and Twitter! Follow @EnergyNewsBlog

by Dan Alfaro, Energy in Depth A  new report  by researchers from Duke University has triggered some unnecessarily alarmist media reports. Popular Science, for example, ran a story under the  headline   “New fracking wells are using hundreds of times more water than their predecessors.”  While headlines about the report are alarmist, most media accounts fail to put the data into context or note the cause of the increase in water use. Though it’s true that today’s horizontal wells use more water than their predecessors they also produce  significantly  more energy.  Record-breaking energy , in fact. And despite the alarmist headlines,  the data still confirm that water usage from oil and natural gas development amounts to a remarkably small percentage overall usage. Water Usage for Hydraulic Fracturing The Duke report stresses the increase in the amount of water used per well from 2011 to 2016 — years when the U.S. was producing muc...

by Jackie Stewart, Energy in Depth An “ eye-opening ” new  report  from the  Ohio Education Policy Institute  (OEPI) finds a direct correlation between Utica Shale development and increased funding for Ohio schools, particularly in “Ohio’s lowest wealth school districts.” More importantly, the Ohio School Boards Association and Buckeye Association of School Administrators-commissioned report highlights how  fracking-generated tax revenue has bridged the gap between low wealth and high wealth school districts , particularly in Appalachia. Report author Howard Fleeter, an economist and “ widely respected school funding scholar ,”  states clearly  in the report that,  “Fracking has dramatically raised up some poorer district is in eastern Ohio.” Based on local and state revenue from more than 600 K-12 public schools from FY 1999 to FY 2019, the report is particularly significant coming on the heels of a  1997 Ohio Supreme Court ruling ...

From the Mansfield News Journal: Officials of Cabot Oil and Gas Company said they are looking at a test site in Richland County to determine if horizontal hydraulic fracturing wells may produce a viable source of natural gas and or oil deep underground. The officials did not give a specific location when they met Tuesday with the Richland County commissioners to give an overview of current operations in a neighboring county.  The Houston-based company, which has a new local information office in Jeromesville, is drilling vertical exploratory wells on Township Road 2375 in Green Township north of Perrysville, and in Mohican Township south of Jeromesville. They are planning a third in Vermillion Township. In Richland County, Cabot officials said they have talked with officials in Monroe Township and the villages of Lucas and Butler, as well as an area landowner coalition.  “We’re evaluating an area and we believe we’re going to be submitting a permit in the near term,” sa...

From StateImpact Pennsylvania: Water use for fracking by oil and gas operators in the Marcellus Shale region rose 20 percent between 2011 and 2016 as longer laterals were drilled to fracture more gas-bearing rock, even though the pace of well development slowed in response to low natural gas prices, a Duke University study said on Wednesday.  The rise was the smallest of any of the six U.S. regions studied, including the Permian Basin area of Texas, where water use surged by 770 percent over the period.  The study also said the volume of fracking waste water produced in the Marcellus – which includes Pennsylvania, West Virginia, eastern Ohio and southern New York, where fracking is banned — rose four-fold to 600,000 gallons in 2016, forcing energy companies to rely increasingly on holding the waste in underground injection wells.  But the Marcellus waste water increase was also significantly smaller than other regions, where it rose as high as 1,440 percent during...