Category: Shale Gas

A spike in earthquakes across Oklahoma is forcing the state’s energy regulator to urgently consider tougher restrictions on drilling activity, a spokesman said on Wednesday, calling it a "game changer." From June 17 to 24, there have been 35 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater in the state, according to the Oklahoma Geological Survey. Particularly worrying for regulators, some of the recent quakes occurred in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, where there are no high-volume wastewater injection wells. The spike in quakes comes roughly two months after new rules governing the disposal of briny wastewater from drilling took full effect. Drillers were directed by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC), which regulates the oil and gas industry, to stop disposing wastewater below the state’s deepest rock formation, believed to be one of the main causes of the quakes, and to reduce the depth of wells that already go that deep. […]

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Natural gas is flared off at a plant outside of the town of Cuero, Texas. U.S. energy companies are taking their foot off the natural-gas pedal, slowing down their production growth after years of furious pumping. In the past eight years, a combination of improvements in drilling techniques and high energy prices stoked natural-gas production to all-time highs. The boom quickly sent natural-gas prices to historic lows, but output kept rising because high oil prices made it profitable for producers to keep tapping fields that yielded both oil and gas. Now, the global collapse in oil prices has producers and analysts rethinking the gas boom, too. Both gas and oil prices are down about 40% in the past year, cutting the incentive to keep drilling. A flurry of recent forecasts from government and private-sector experts suggest monthly gas production will flatten and possibly even begin to decline in 2015. […]

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May 28 (Reuters) – Natural gas production in the Marcellus shale, which has grown over the past decade from next to nothing to the source of about a fifth of U.S. output, may decline for the first time if prices in the basin remain low for much longer, according to federal government data. Such a reduction may be worrisome since the United States is counting on the Marcellus to continue producing vast amounts of cheap gas needed to meet growing demand from industrial customers and power generators, and to enable the country to transition into a net gas exporter by 2017. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says production in the fast-growing field in Pennsylvania and West Virginia is set to remain flat for the next few years before beginning a very slow decline primarily because of depressed gas prices. Recent data supports signs of a slowdown. The number of […]

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State report from New York finds uncertainty surrounding hydraulic fracturing and may pave the way to making the governor’s ban formal law. File Photo by UPI/Kevin Dietsch. ALBANY, N.Y., May 14 (UPI) — Parts of the Marcellus shale natural gas play in New York may be off limits to hydraulic fracturing because of potential adverse risks, a state review found. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo banned the use of hydraulic fracturing , or fracking, as a means of extracting natural gas after a years-long study by environmental and health officials. His December move triggered a review from the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which found "significant uncertainty remains" regarding the risks to public health and the environment that would result from fracking in the state. Interstate movements on fracking have been fluid since a moratorium was first introduced in 2008. A federal report finds that, while the amount of […]

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New York has released its long-awaited report on high-volume hydraulic fracturing, which appears to cast doubt on whether the state will ever give a green light to the drilling completion practice, which essentially has been prohibited since 2008. The Department of Environmental Conservation released Wednesday the final supplemental generic environmental impact statement on fracking "that identifies and examines continued major uncertainties about potential significant adverse health and environmental impacts associated with the activity," according to a statement. The DEC will issue its formal findings statement after a required 10-day period in accordance with the state’s Environmental Quality Review Act. In a statement, DEC Commissioner Joe Martens said he would rely on the conclusions of the FSGEIS when he issues his findings statement. New York has had a de facto moratorium on fracking since 2008 while it first began to develop rules and regulations to govern the practice, which has […]

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HOUSTON, May 7 A proposed natural gas severance tax in Pennsylvania would have negative economic consecutives for the state, according to a Natural Resource Economics Inc. study released May 7 by the Associated Petroleum Industries of Pennsylvania (API-PA). “Higher energy taxes could put a damper on energy activity, and the commonwealth could be worse off with a new severance tax,” said Stephanie Wissman, API-PA executive director. “Natural gas development supports hundreds of thousands of jobs in Pennsylvania, contributes $34.7 billion annually to the state economy.” The report, “The Economic Impacts of the Proposed Natural Gas Severance Tax in Pennsylvania,” analyzed the impact of Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposal to implement an additional gas severance tax. Proposals include adding 5% on the gross market value of production plus a fixed fee of 4.7¢/Mcf produced and establishing an artificial floor of $2.97/Mcf regardless of the actual gas price ( OGJ Online, Mar. […]

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Has Well Productivity Peaked in the Nation’s Largest Shale Gas Play? The Marcellus shale gas play of Pennsylvania and West Virginia came onto the scene in 2007 in a big way and has grown to become the nation’s largest. It has accounted for much of the growth of U.S. shale gas production, and made up for declines in former shale gas giants like the Haynesville and Barnett plays of Louisiana and eastern Texas. Companies have scrambled to build pipeline infrastructure to connect the Marcellus to consumers in the U.S. northeast. Canadians, once supplied by gas from western Canada, are also looking to the Marcellus (and the much smaller Utica play in Ohio) for future supply; the pipelines that delivered gas to the east might be converted to instead deliver bitumen from the western tar sands. Companies in both the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada are looking to build LNG […]

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Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2015 (interactive table viewer) In its recently released Annual Energy Outlook 2015 (AEO2015), EIA expects the United States to be a net natural gas exporter by 2017. After 2017, natural gas trade is driven largely by the availability of natural gas resources and by world energy prices. Increased availability of domestic gas or higher world energy prices each increase the gap between the cost of U.S. natural gas and world prices that encourages exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), and, to a lesser extent, greater exports by pipeline to Mexico. The AEO2015 examines alternate cases with higher and lower world oil price assumptions, which serve as a proxy for broader world energy prices given oil-indexed contracts, as well as with higher assumed U.S. oil and natural gas resources. These assumptions significantly affect projected growth in annual net LNG exports after 2017. […]

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