The Daily Digger

WEEK ENDING 01/25/20 New permits issued last week:   11  (Previous week:  2 )   +9 Total horizontal permits issued:  3184  (Previous week:  3184 )    +-0 Total horizontal wells drilled:  2711  (Previous week:  2711 )   +-0 Total horizontal wells producing:  2434  (Previous week:  2431 )   +3 Utica rig count:  11  (Previous week:  11 )   +-0

by Nicole Jacobs, Energy in Depth Rolling Stone  author Justin Nobel has been spending a lot of time in the Appalachian Basin recently, and not because some of the biggest bands in history will be touring here this year, as one would expect from the music magazine. Instead, Nobel has been conducting a  tour of his own , amplifying “Keep It In the Ground” research and messaging, and writing his  latest misleading hit piece  on the oil and natural gas industry. His latest article claims that the industry is knowingly exposing workers and communities to high levels of radiation through the produced water and solids that result from drilling. And while he peppers in statements from regulatory officials, the overall image he paints is a false one, of an unregulated industry, despite this being one of the most regulated industries in the country. Here are three key things to keep in mind when reading the  Rolling Stone  article: Fact #1: This isn’t the ...

WEEK ENDING 01/18/20 New permits issued last week:   2  (Previous week:  4 )   -2 Total horizontal permits issued:  3184  (Previous week:  3184 )    +-0 Total horizontal wells drilled:  2711  (Previous week:  2711 )   +-0 Total horizontal wells producing:  2431  (Previous week:  2423 )   +8 Utica rig count:  11  (Previous week:  11 )   +-0

From The Times Leader: For some of the nearly 50 people who turned out to view a documentary film screening, the film not only provided a new perspective about how widespread the plastic waste problem is worldwide — but it also validated their concerns about the proposed PTT Global Chemical America plant for Belmont County. The Ohio Valley citizens group, Concerned Ohio River Residents, made the educational documentary prerelease screening of “The Story of Plastic” available Saturday afternoon at the Grave Creek Mound Historical Site theater in Moundsville. The group invited dozens of invited local “decision makers” and politicians in an effort to showcase the global plastic pollution crisis that the world now faces, according to Bev Reed, an organizer of the group.  She said while the 90-minute film still has still not been released to the public by its creator, Deia Schlosberg, she is hopeful the film will be made available to the public as soon as possible. Reed said the fil...

From The Oklahoman: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday it has reached an agreement to end an enforcement action against Gulfport Energy that accused the company of violating air emissions standards at 17 well pad locations it operates in eastern Ohio’s Utica Basin.  EPA officials said the settlement, which includes an agreement by Gufport to pay a $1.7 million penalty, addresses Clean Air Act violations regulators assert they found at the locations during inspections they conducted in 2015.  The company, investigators found, failed to capture and control emissions from storage vessels on the pads.  It also failed to comply with associated inspection, record-keeping and reporting requirements related to operations at those locations. The violations were issued in December 2016. You can read the rest of this article by clicking here. 

From Law360: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to review a Sixth Circuit ruling that a TC Energy Corp. unit didn’t need landowner permission to access an underground natural gas storage facility with a valid Federal Energy Regulatory Commission operating certificate.  Landowners whose property sits atop Columbia Gas Transmission LLC’s storage field near Medina, Ohio, claimed the Sixth Circuit wrongly held in July that the Natural Gas Act doesn’t require companies that hold FERC certificates for storage fields to acquire the property they need for those fields. That means companies have the right to use that land without getting the go-ahead from landowners first, the appeals court said.  In urging the Supreme Court to reject the landowners’ petition, Columbia argued that the dispute is a matter of state law, not the NGA, and that the landowners never even raised the federal law issue in the lower court.  The dispute stretches back to 2013, when 29 landowner...

From World Construction Network: Gemma Power Systems, a subsidiary of Argan, has secured an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services contract from Harrison Power to build the 1.08GW Harrison Energy Center in Ohio, US. Harrison Power’s parent firm EmberClear is developing the natural gas-fired power plant in Harrison County. Construction works are due to begin this year with commercial operations planned in the first quarter of 2023. Being developed at a total cost of $900m, the 1.08GW Harrison Energy Center It will be located 50 miles west of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the Village of Cadiz, Harrison County, Ohio. The project will be constructed in the Harrison County Industrial Park on a 100-acre site allocated for a power plant. It is expected to create nearly 600 construction jobs and 30 permanent jobs. EmberClear president and CEO Raj Suri said: “Harrison Energy Center will be a reliable, highly efficient world class power generating facility offering stab...

From a UC San Diego news release: The decommissioning of coal-fired power plants in the continental United States has reduced nearby pollution and its negative impacts on human health and crop yields, according to a new University of California San Diego study.  The findings published this week in Nature Sustainability use the U.S. transition in recent years from coal towards natural gas for electric power generation to study the local impacts of coal-fired unit shutdowns. While the shift from coal to natural gas has reduced carbon dioxide emissions overall, it has also changed local pollution levels at hundreds of areas around the country. In particular, the burning of coal creates particulate matter and ozone in the lower atmosphere—often experienced as “smog” —which can affect humans, plants and regional climate. These pollutants (aerosols, ozone and other compounds) from coal burning can wreak havoc on human health when inhaled, and also have damaging effects on plant life....

From the Marysville Journal-Tribune: The Union County Commissioners are filing an appeal to a project that would bring nearly five miles of gas line from Jerome Township and into Marysville.  “While we are not so much opposed to what they are doing, we just don’t feel it goes far enough,” said Tim Hansley, Union County Administrator.  In December, Columbia Gas submitted a Letter of Notification, indicating they intended to construct a 4.78 miles natural gas pipeline, known as the Marysville Connector, beginning at Watkins-California Road between U.S. 42 and Derio Road and ending on Industrial Parkway near Veyance Technologies.  While Columbia Gas says the majority of the 12-inch natural gas main will be constructed within permanent private pipeline easements, paperwork from the company says it does not actually have any of those easements yet. In addition to the 4.78-mile length of the pipeline right-of-way, Columbia Gas says it will obtain land rights for staging...

WEEK ENDING 01/11/20 New permits issued last week:   4  (Previous week:  2 )   +2 Total horizontal permits issued:  3184  (Previous week:  3182 )    +2 Total horizontal wells drilled:  2711  (Previous week:  2709 )   +2 Total horizontal wells producing:  2423  (Previous week:  2423 )   +-0 Utica rig count:  10  (Previous week:  11 )   -1

WEEK ENDING 01/04/20 New permits issued last week:   2  (Previous week:  2 )   +-0 Total horizontal permits issued:  3182  (Previous week:  3187 )    -5 Total horizontal wells drilled:  2709  (Previous week:  2706 )   +3 Total horizontal wells producing:  2423  (Previous week:  2422 )   +1 Utica rig count:  11  (Previous week:  12 )   -1

From The Columbus Dispatch: The Ohio Supreme Court has agreed to rule on federal-court questions that could revive the failed referendum campaign seeking to repeal the ratepayer-financed House Bill 6 bailout of a pair of nuclear power plants in the state.  U.S. District Judge Edmund A. Sargus in Columbus ruled on Oct. 23 that Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts turned to the wrong court in its bid for additional days to gather more signatures for its petition drive to place a ballot issue before voters.  Sargus sent the case to the state Supreme Court, which agreed Tuesday by a 4-0 vote to hear the lawsuit filed by opponents of the new law.  Justices Judith French, Patrick Fischer and Patrick DeWine did not participate in the vote because they have conflicts of interest involving their past campaign managers having served roles in the referendum campaign. State appellate court judges would be appointed to replace them in hearing arguments.  Ohioans Against...

From the Canton Repository: The Ohio Department of Natural Resources is still seeking contractors to plug the state’s backlog of orphan and idle wells.  ODNR’s Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management wants to award up to $25 million in contracts to plug some 200 wells before the fiscal year ends in June.  Contractors who wish to bid have until Jan. 20 to be certified through the state’s Department of Administrative Services.  ODNR spokesman Adam Schroeder said the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management has been focused on enlarging the pool of contractors eligible to bid.  “We certainly have budget dollars in the Orphan Well Program to plug more wells and there’s definitely an inventory of wells to be plugged,” Schroeder said. “So, the more contractors we can have bidding on these projects, the better.”  Orphan wells are oil and gas wells that weren’t plugged properly in the past and don’t have an owner who could pay to have them plugged n...

From JDSupra: The Tenth District Ohio Court of Appeals recently applied a statutory amendment clarifying the oil & gas exemption for Ohio sales & use tax retroactively. Interestingly, while this appeal was pending at the Board of Tax Appeals , the legislature amended the statute to clarify the scope of the exemption for fracking equipment. Although legislation is generally applied prospectively, this amendment was considered remedial and expressly stated that it clarified existing law and applied retroactively, including to current appeals. R.C. 5739.02(B)(42)(q). Stingray Pressure Pumping, LLC v. Tax Commr. of Ohio, 2019-Ohio-5198. This decision opens up refund opportunities for taxpayers in the oil & gas industry, even those currently appealing an assessment.  The particular issue in this case was whether a sales tax exemption applied to certain equipment used by Stingray Pressure Pumping, LLC in the production of crude oil and natural gas by fracking. The B...

WEEK ENDING 12/21/19 New permits issued last week:   2  (Previous week:  15 )   -13 Total horizontal permits issued:  3192  (Previous week:  3205 )    -13 Total horizontal wells drilled:  2710  (Previous week:  2725 )   -15 Total horizontal wells producing:  2422  (Previous week:  2422 )   +-0 Utica rig count:  13  (Previous week:  12 )   +1 WEEK ENDING 12/28/19 New permits issued last week:   2  (Previous week:  2 )   +-0 Total horizontal permits issued:  3187  (Previous week:  3192 )    -5 Total horizontal wells drilled:  2706  (Previous week:  2710 )   -4 Total horizontal wells producing:  2422  (Previous week:  2422 )   +-0 Utica rig count:  12  (Previous week:  13 )   -1

From KDKA News: An Ohio appeals court this week upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by the state against the builders of a natural gas pipeline over spills of drilling fluid into wetlands during construction in 2017.  A three-judge panel for the Fifth District Court of Appeals in Canton said the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency lacked the authority to enforce regulations against Rover Pipeline LLC because it failed to act within a year’s time on the company’s 2016 application for a clean water certificate.  The $4.3 billion Rover Pipeline consists of twin 42-inch high-pressure lines that span 713 miles (1,147 kilometers) miles from northern West Virginia into Michigan. They are capable of carrying 3.25 billion cubic feet (92 million cubic meters) of natural gas per day, an amount that can serve the needs of 30,000 homes for a year. The pipelines began carrying gas in August 2017.  The project developed by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners drew the atte...

From the Star Beacon: Dozens of people gathered in North Kingsville on Friday to celebrate the ribbon cutting for a new natural gas pipeline.  Seven people cut the ribbon on the Risberg Pipeline, which runs from Meadville, Pennsylvania, to North Kingsville. The pipeline, which was expected to cost $86 million, is comprised of 30 miles of existing pipeline and 28 miles of new pipeline, 12 of which was built in Ashtabula County.  “We have known for a long time that this part of Ohio was in need of natural gas supply, to support not only existing businesses, but also new business opportunities,” Oivind Risberg, owner and CEO of RH energytrans, said to the assembled crowd. “I’m very happy that we spent the last few years 100 percent dedicated to get gas in here, because I got tired of listening to the need for natural gas supply when we have so much of it underneath us,” Risberg said.  Risberg praised the state of Ohio, and how welcoming the state is to businesses. C...

From the Pittsburgh Business Times: Chevron is getting a quick start on its plans to divest its assets in the region. A few days after announcing it was divesting of its assets in the various shale plays of the Appalachian region, the California energy giant closed on selling a 38.5 acre parcel once expected to be the new home of a regional office campus to Green Tree-based Burns Scalo Real Estate Services. The sale of the property closed late this week after Chevron (NYSE:CVX) first opted to drop its headquarters campus plan in June 2016 when it listed the property for sale with Cushman & Wakefield Grant Street Associates. Jim Scalo, president and CEO of Burns Scalo, plans to revive the kind of ambitious office development plans which motivated Chevron to buy the property and others in the first place. Burns Scalo paid a total of $8 million for the Chevron site as well as a three-acre former Gander Mountain store that fronts onto MarketPlace Boulevard and is considering an e...

From CNN: In February 2018, a blowout at a natural gas well in rural Ohio forced nearby residents to evacuate , but the incident received little national attention at the time.  A new analysis of satellite data shows that the leak was far more significant than previously thought.  In just 20 days, the damaged well platform spewed an estimated 60 kilotons of the potent planet-warming gas methane into the atmosphere, scientists say.  That's more methane than European countries like France, Spain and Norway release in a year.  It appears the peak emission rate was twice as great as the second largest leak ever measured in the United States, the scientists say.  The discovery was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and was made by a group of Dutch and American scientists, who used new satellite technology to detect and measure the size of the leak during a routine global survey. Read the whole article by clicking righ...

From the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program: Eight out of 10 Ohio voters support natural gas and oil development and say the industry is important to their community, and nearly two thirds of Southeastern Ohio voters oppose banning development in the Ohio Valley, according to newly released public polling sponsored by the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP).  A survey of 400 registered voters in eight southeastern counties found strong approval across all age groups and political affiliations for Utica and Marcellus Shale development. Six in ten voters support continued development in and around the Wayne National Forest, according to the poll conducted by FTI Consulting.  The results align with those from a statewide OOGEEP-commissioned poll conducted earlier this year by Saperstein Associates, which found six out of 10 voters have positive impressions of the natural gas and oil industry. The statewide poll of 2,102 voters found at least 80 percent...

From a Gulfport Energy press release: Gulfport Energy Corporation (NASDAQ: GPOR) (“Gulfport” or the “Company”) announced today that the Company has entered into agreements to divest certain non-core assets and provided an update on the continuation of discounted debt repurchases. Non-Core Asset Divestitures  Gulfport recently entered into a definitive agreement to divest its water infrastructure assets across its SCOOP position to a third-party water service provider. Gulfport expects to receive $50 million in cash upon closing and has an opportunity to earn potential additional incentive payments in excess of $50 million over the next 15 years, subject to Gulfport’s ability to meet certain thresholds which will be driven by, among other things, the Company’s future development program and future water production levels. The agreement contains no minimum volume commitments. The Company anticipates closing the transaction during January 2020. Scotiabank served as financial advis...

From Times Online: A ban on hydraulic fracturing would hit Pennsylvania’s economy hard, according to a study released Thursday by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  Researchers predict the state would lose roughly 609,000 jobs and $261 billion in gross domestic product by 2025 if lawmakers were to issue an outright ban on fracking. The average Pennsylvania consumer would see his cost of living increase by $4,654, while household income would decrease by $114 billion by 2025, according to the study.  A number of Democratic presidential candidates, including front-runners Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and U.S Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, say they’d eliminate the process of fracking if elected in 2020. This has alarmed industry and labor leaders, although environmental groups remain firm in their opposition to the practice — arguing it increases the risk of contaminated groundwater, air pollution, gas explosions and man-made earthquakes.  U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-L...

From Kallanish Energy: Local natural gas distribution company Columbia Gas is proposing construction of a new $135 million pipeline to be built in central Ohio, Kallanish Energy reports.  The company says a new supply of gas is needed in order to keep providing reliable service to old and new customers in the region.  The Columbus Northern Loop project is designed to bring natural gas from pipelines east of Ohio's capital city of Columbus, where supplies are plentiful, to areas north and west of Columbus.  A company spokesperson told WBNS TV-10 in Columbus the project is in the early planning stages. Members of the public will have the chance to review the plans and offer input that will help decide the final route. Click here to read the rest of that article. Columbia Gas has set up a webpage with details about the project.  Click here to check that out. 

From WSKG: The region’s Marcellus and Utica shale gas producers had a banner year in 2019. Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia together accounted for one-third of the nation’s natural gas production. But a likely slow-down is ahead in 2020.  Marcellus and Utica shale drillers produced 30 billion cubic feet of gas in 2019. The increased supply has driven down prices to about $2 per million British thermal units . Compare that to the previous decade, when gas was selling at about $8 per million Btu.  Penn State geologist Terry Engelder first reported on the abundance of shale gas in 2008.  “These companies made their investments, anticipating six- to eight- to 10-dollar gas,” Engelder said. “No one ever dreamed it would stabilize at two-dollar gas. There’s just so much of it, particularly here in Pennsylvania, that the companies can’t sell it.” Read more by clicking here.