A new Texas study has found that horizontal oil wells fractured by the injection of high volumes of chemicals, sand, and water contaminate nearby water wells with a variety of Continue Reading
LNG Imports After French media accuses government of hypocrisy, French Energy Minister Segolene Royal is discussing with French parliament a potential ban on the import of U.S. shale gas. The Continue Reading
For decades, hydraulic fracturing had been referred to as an unconventional completion technique, but over the past 10 years it has become the technique by which most natural gas is Continue Reading
The second-largest producer of natural gas in the United States, Chesapeake Energy Corp., has announced plans to sell part of its Oklahoma shale acreage in order to prop up finances Continue Reading
The Norwegian oil and gas producer said Monday the divestment includes 62,500 acres of operated properties in West Virginia with a production of about 9,300 barrels of oil equivalent a Continue Reading
In a win for climate activists and the anti-fracking movement , and a blow to fossil fuel polluters and the federal regulatory agencies that enable them, the New York State Continue Reading
The last year has been a bumpy one for Chesapeake Energy. When natural gas prices collapsed several years ago, many firms across the industry moved towards liquids as a panacea. Continue Reading
Natural gas producers are finally realizing that the age-old adage is true: If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Explorers have idled drilling equipment at historic rates — Continue Reading
Cheap natural gas has slashed coal traffic across the U.S. rail network and in turn hit demand for diesel, demonstrating the interlocking relationship between the country’s energy and transport systems. Continue Reading
Natural gas is drilled in Pennsylvania. U.S. natural-gas production hit its highest level ever over the winter even in the face of low prices, a conundrum at the heart of Continue Reading
Money managers never saw the six-day rally in U.S. natural gas futures coming. Hedge funds missed out on the biggest rebound so far this year, boosting their net-short position in Continue Reading
The indicted, and now deceased, natural gas pioneer was a primary funder of the Sierra Club’s anti-coal campaign. by Richard Martin March 3, 2016 Aubrey McClendon, the former Chesapeake Energy Continue Reading
The U.S. Justice Department moved to dismiss an indictment against Aubrey McClendon a day after the shale-drilling pioneer died in a fiery car crash , casting uncertainty over a broader Continue Reading
Aubrey McClendon was killed in a car crash in Oklahoma City Wednesday, police said. His death comes a day after he was charged with rigging bids for oil and natural Continue Reading
Chesapeake Energy, the second-largest gas producer in the US, on Wednesday, announced a cut of up to 69 percent in its capital spending for this year, as it seeks to Continue Reading
Chesapeake Energy Corp. lost more than $14 billion in 2015, as it wrote down the value of its oil and gas fields amid a protracted downturn in energy prices that Continue Reading
U.S. natural gas company Chesapeake Energy said it would focus on divestments as it trims its spending forecast for 2016 by more than 50 percent. Chesapeake in early February said Continue Reading
U.S. oil and gas pipeline companies including Williams Companies Inc and Kinder Morgan Inc have contracts worth billions of dollars that might be at risk as Chesapeake Energy Corp aims Continue Reading
All opinions expressed in this post are his and do not necessarily reflect those of Ron Patterson. The U.S. Empire is in serious trouble as the collapse of its domestic Continue Reading
The U.S. government has objected to Swift Energy’s Co.’s (SFY) proposed sale of most of its oil and gas assets in Louisiana, saying the company can’t transfer rights to drill Continue Reading
A state regulator in Oklahoma said it was proposing new plans for how oil and gas operators work in shale basins given the recent occurrence of earthquakes. The U.S. Geological Continue Reading
A financially strapped Oklahoma oil company is defying the state regulator’s request that it shut down six wells used to dispose of wastewater, despite fears they may be contributing to Continue Reading
Cheniere Energy Inc. began production at what will become the first terminal to export natural gas from America’s shale formations, according to ING Capital LLC, which helped finance the project. Continue Reading
Chesapeake Energy Corp. is having its worst year since 1998 after halting dividend payouts, slashing drilling budgets and cutting one of every six employees failed to rescue the energy explorer Continue Reading
The natural gas drilling frenzy is grinding to a halt, as the industry struggles with excess supply. Natural gas prices have plunged to their lowest levels in more than a Continue Reading
The U.S. Geological Survey said its review of the Barnett shale basin in north-central Texas led it to double the estimated reserve potential. “We decided to reassess the Barnett Shale Continue Reading
The Chesapeake Energy campus in Oklahoma City. The company is trying to rework its debt…. The Evercore bankers are advising the natural-gas producer on potential measures to reduce its $11.6 Continue Reading
Cubic Energy Inc., CBNR 0.00 % the latest Texas oil company brought down by falling oil prices, filed for bankruptcy protection after reaching a deal with its lenders to hand Continue Reading
A new scientific study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , coordinated by EDF, reports findings from the most comprehensive examination of regional methane emissions Continue Reading
Preliminary figures provided by DrillingInfo, which monitors rig activity, showed drilling permits issued for the 90,000-square mile (233,100 sq km) reservoir beneath Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, slumped to 68 Continue Reading
Firewood on the front porch of Terri and Bob Tomchak’s home in Bridgton, Maine on Friday, Oct. 23, 2015. FACEBOOK TWITTER GOOGLE+ LINKEDIN PRINT E-MAIL Text Size: A | A CONCORD, N.H. — Northeasterners who are digging deeper into their pockets to pay for firewood this season can add a new scapegoat to the roster of usual market forces: fracking. Yep, a timber industry representative in New Hampshire said those hydraulic fracturing well sites in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale formation to suck natural gas out of the ground are using construction "mats" made of hardwood logs — think of the corduroy roads seen in sepia-toned photographs from the 1800s — to get heavy equipment over mucky ground, wetlands or soft soils. That increased demand has crept down the chimney into fireplaces. Prices in parts of New England are averaging $325 a cord and can even push past $400 for a […]
Range Resources betting on Utica and Marcellus shale after selling off acreage in Virginia that accounted for about 7.5 percent of output. Image courtesy of Range Resources FORT WORTH, Texas, Nov. 4 (UPI) — U.S. shale leader Range Resources said it was selling off its holdings in Virginia to bring value forward at a time when the industry is in a downturn. Range said it was selling off its holdings in the Nora basin in southwestern Virginia, where the company held about 460,000 net acres and operated around 3,500 wells. "While these are great assets operated by a talented team, bringing the value forward through a sale was the best decision for our shareholders," Range Resources top executive Jeff Ventura said in a statement. The company said it produced around 109 million cubic feet per day from its Nora assets, which represented about 7.5 percent of its total output […]
Expectant mothers who live near active natural gas wells operated by the fracking industry in Pennsylvania are at an increased risk of giving birth prematurely and for having high-risk pregnancies, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests. The findings, published online last week in the journal Epidemiology, shed light on some of the possible adverse health outcomes associated with the fracking industry, which has been booming in the decade since the first wells were drilled. Health officials have been concerned about the effect of this type of drilling on air and water quality, as well as the stress of living near a well where just developing the site of the well can require 1,000 truck trips on once-quiet roads. “The growth in the fracking industry has gotten way out ahead of our ability to assess what the environmental and, just as importantly, public health impacts are,” […]
Photographer: Eddie Seal/Bloomberg The oiliest county in Texas has seen its new natural gas production capacity more than double as drillers home in on their most profitable acreage. The peak output rate from new gas wells in Karnes County has surged 134 percent since January, estimates from Drillinginfo show. The only other county in Texas’s Eagle Ford shale patch where new gas capacity’s gaining is Live Oak, about 50 miles southwest of Karnes, the Austin-based energy data provider said. Gas producers are focusing on the most prolific parts of their plays as they grapple with the worst price collapse since 2008, and Karnes County has long been a sweet spot in Texas’s Eagle Ford shale. The 20,000-square-mile shale formation supplies about one-sixth of the nation’s crude. Karnes County, southeast of San Antonio, is home to “top-tier acreage," Chris Smith, senior research analyst at Drillinginfo , said in a telephone […]
(Bloomberg) — For the first time since America’s shale boom began, the flow of natural gas from the nation’s biggest reservoir is close to dropping below year-ago levels. Output from the Marcellus basin in Pennsylvania and West Virginia is faltering as pipeline capacity fails to keep up with the surge in production. While space on Appalachian pipelines has more than doubled this year, it hasn’t been enough to keep the flow moving freely, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. That has some producers “choking back” the output from wells in the play, said Charles Blanchard, an analyst at BNEF in New York. “They’re saying it’s not even worth it day to day to keep my wells online because I’m losing money on every molecule that I sell.” Marcellus production has surged more than 14-fold in the past eight years. Now drillers are waiting on seven new Appalachian pipeline projects […]
Natural gas is so abundant and cheap in much of the U.S. that producers want to export it overseas. Except in New England, where gas is so hard to get that companies are importing it from as far away as Yemen. The U.S. shale boom that has produced a glut of gas—and helped lower many Americans’ home heating bills—has largely bypassed the energy-starved New England. Few pipelines are available to ferry gas from Pennsylvania and Ohio to Connecticut and Maine, and new lines proposed in the region won’t go into service until 2018, or later. Gas plants currently supply 44% of New England’s electricity, up from just 18% in 2000. Consumers and businesses are also swapping their old furnaces that burn heating oil for newer models that run on gas. So as the weather cools, problems loom. When brutal cold hits this winter, energy prices will soar. In Massachusetts, […]
Just as gas export-terminals are preparing to start up along America’s Gulf Coast, the oil-price crash has made it unprofitable to send the U.S. fuel abroad, according to the North America head of power and natural gas supplier Engie. It costs about $2 to liquefy gas and another $3 to take it from the U.S. to Asia, said Zin Smati, president and chief executive officer of Engie’s GDF Suez Energy North America. Engie changed its name from GDF Suez SA in April. Those costs used to leave plenty of profit margin when the gap between LNG prices in Asia and natural gas in the U.S. was more than $14 per million British thermal units. Now, the spread is less than $5, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “You cannot ship gas from the United States anymore,” Smati said at the Council of the Americas energy conference at Rice University […]
Something exciting is happening and it involves dragon ships that will transport Marcellus Shale gas to European markets as an alternative to Russian gas. Range Resources and INEOS have partnered to export Ethane from Marcellus Shale across the Atlantic Ocean, to European Countries, via ship. At 2:43 in the video following they show the Markwest cracker plant, here in Houston, Pennsylvania (Washington County), where they will be supplying Ethane for this. The Ethane is being shipped via the Mariner East I Pipeline , which recently opened, to the Marcus Hook facility in Philadelphia, where “dragon ships” will be loaded for transport to Europe. INEOS also partnered with Danish Shipping Company Evergas in 2013 to transport it to the European Countries who need Ethane to keep their chemical plants in operation. This project is employing ten’s of thousands of workers, in several countries to build the ships. some four ships […]
While everyone is watching the oil bust, there is another bust going on – one for natural gas. Before there was a boom in oil production in the United States, there was the “shale gas revolution.” That is where we all became familiar with terms like “fracking.” And the Marcellus, Haynesville, and Barnett Shales were famous long before the Bakken or Permian. The surge in natural gas production crashed prices, fueling a huge increase in activity in petrochemicals and causing a major switch from coal to natural gas in the electric power industry. Aside from a few brief moments (such as the winter of 2014), natural gas has mostly traded around $4 per million Btu (MMBtu) or lower since the financial crisis of 2008. (Click to enlarge) But unlike oil, the boom in shale gas did not stop with plummeting prices. U.S. natural gas production continued to climb. For […]
America’s shale gas boom hasn’t exactly been booming lately. Natural gas production from the seven largest U.S. shale deposits will drop for a fourth straight month in October to average 44.784 billion cubic feet a day, the lowest since March, based on an Energy Information Administration forecast released Monday. That’s the longest streak of monthly declines in government data going back to 2007. The pullback follows a decade of surging gas production that created a glut of the heating fuel and sent prices plunging to record lows in some regions. The biggest declines forecast for October are in oil-rich deposits such as the Eagle Ford shale formation in Texas, where drillers are idling rigs in response to a collapse in crude prices. Pipeline constraints in Appalachia aren’t helping either. Yield from the Marcellus shale of the eastern U.S., the nation’s biggest gas field, will fall 0.5 percent, the EIA […]
The U.S. may have even more—and much cheaper to get—supplies of natural gas than anyone imagined. The trick is applying supersize versions of the horizontal-drilling and fracking techniques that worked successfully elsewhere to an area that hasn’t seen this approach yet. The gains come from extending the lateral portions of wells by thousands of feet and pumping them full of enormous volumes of sand, chemicals and water to flush out more hydrocarbons. So far, the impressive results have been confined to a small area in a single Louisiana parish near the Texas border. But if the approach works across the giant Haynesville Shale, which spans 120 miles across both states, the era of low American gas prices could extend for decades into the future, experts say. “There’s a large likelihood that the United States will be enjoying very low gas prices for a very long time, maybe 20 years,” […]
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Federal U.S. report finds only one of seven shale natural gas basins are expected to post gains in overall short-term production. Photo by photostock77/Shutterstock WASHINGTON, Aug. 26 (UPI) — A drilling productivity report from the United States finds the Utica shale basin in Ohio is the only one of seven reviewed that’s expecting more production. The U.S. Energy Information Administration finds production from seven shale basins in the United States reached 45.6 billion cubic feet per day in May for an all-time high. That’s expected to drop 1.5 percent by September. The report finds net natural gas production from new wells drilled into U.S. shale reserves is not enough to counter the expected decline from legacy wells. EIA attributed that phenomenon to the decline in the number of drilling rigs deployed across the country. "Given the substantial drop in rig counts since the fourth quarter of 2014 in each […]
Canadian energy company Encana sells shale acreage in Louisiana in an effort to ease debt burden. Photo by Christopher Halloran/Shutterstock CALGARY, Alberta, Aug. 25 (UPI) — In an effort to cut debt, Canadian energy company Encana Corp. said Tuesday it was selling its shale natural gas assets in Louisiana for $850 million. Encana said it was unloading its assets in the Haynesville shale basin to GEP Haynesville, LLC, a joint venture formed by fund manager GSO Capital Partners and GeoSouthern Haynesville. The Canadian company said it would use the cash from the sale, as well as savings from the footprint reduction, to cut debt. "By further focusing our portfolio, we are making Encana more efficient as we proceed through the second half of 2015 and into 2016," Encana President and Chief Executive Officer Doug Suttles said in a statement. "This transaction delivers significant proceeds that we’ll use to strengthen […]
WAYNESBURG, Pa.—As fracking took off here over the past eight years, so did Gary Bowers’s business supplying everything from Gatorade to replacement valves to crews drilling into natural-gas reserves a mile underground. This year, however, the good times at his firm, Producers Supply Co., came to a screeching halt. Since January, the company’s monthly sales have declined by more than half, as the number of drilling rigs operating in the Marcellus Shale has plummeted to 70 from 131 at the end of last year. “This thing is spiraling down, and we don’t know how long it’s going to last,” said Mr. Bowers, who expects the rig count to keep falling. “It’s new territory for Appalachia.” The economic pain from lower oil and gas prices is spreading to small towns and businesses across Pennsylvania and parts of Ohio and West Virginia that had been riding a wave of prosperity from […]
Eight years ago, a group of companies led by Kinder Morgan Energy Partners began building a $6.8 billion pipeline to carry natural gas from America’s Rocky Mountains to fuel-hungry markets in the East. Then came the shale gas revolution. The eastern U.S. is now home to the country’s most productive formation, the Marcellus, and the 1,698-mile Rockies Express is carrying lower-cost gas in the opposite direction. On Aug. 1, the pipeline was partially reversed, shrinking the market for Colorado and Wyoming drillers who’ve seen their share prices fall as much as 93 percent from 2008 highs. The burgeoning supply from Pennsylvania and West Virginia has transformed the U.S. gas market, redirecting pipeline flows and sending prices plummeting. Output from the Niobrara shale formation in Colorado and Wyoming has dropped 12 percent from an all-time high in 2012 as production from the region competes with the Marcellus, where output is […]
An ocean of ink has already been spilled on pros and cons of using Hubbert curves to model production from a large collection of wells in one or many reservoirs. In 2010, I published together with my last graduate student in Berkeley, Dr. Greg Croft, a highly cited paper on this subject. I have also commented multiple times in this blog on the different aspects of the Hubbert curve analysis, its limitations, and predictive power. Since I cannot out-talk or out-convince the numerous critics of this type of analysis, let me give you a simple example of its robustness. This particular story is as follows. At the end of the year 2010, Greg Fenves, at that time Dean of UT’s Cockrell School of Engineering in Austin, asked me to make a presentation to the School’s Engineering Advisory Board (EAB). Using the results of our recent paper with Greg Croft, […]
Natural gas-fired combined-cycle units, which have emerged as perhaps the most important elements of utility and independent power generation fleets, have been costing less than was initially expected to build, and per-kW costs of less than $1,000/kW of installed capacity have become common. Duke Energy Progress said Tuesday that the final cost of its 625-MW Sutton combined-cycle project near Wilmington, North Carolina, was $551 million, or about $882/kW of installed capacity, about 18% less than the company’s original $671 million estimate, or a per-kW cost of about $1,073. Duke Energy spokeswoman Lisa Parrish said DEP and its sister utilities have built six gas-fired units over the last five years. "All have come in under budget," she said. "As we begin to build two new natural [gas-fired] facilities in the Carolinas, we will take advantage of efficiencies and best practices we’ve learned." Parrish said the project costs include associated transmission […]
For the past several weeks, the drilling industry — hammered by bad financial results — has begun promoting its next big thing: the Utica shale, generating the sort of headlines you might have seen five years ago, when the shale drilling rush was gaining speed. “ Utica Shale Holds 20 Times More Gas Than Previous Estimates ”, read one headline. “ Utica Bigger Than Marcellus ”, proclaimed another. The reason for the excitement was a study, published by West Virginia University, that concluded the Utica contains more shale gas than many estimates for the Marcellus shale, a staggering 782 trillion cubic feet. “This is a landmark study that demonstrates the vast potential of the Utica as a resource to complement – and go beyond – what the Marcellus has already proven to be,” Brian Anderson, director of West Virginia University’s Energy Institute, told the Associated Press. But those considering […]
graph of natural gas production in selected regions, as explained in the article text The productivity of natural gas wells in the Marcellus Shale and the neighboring Utica Shale is steadily increasing because of ongoing improvements in precision and efficiency of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing occurring in those regions. Since January 2012, natural gas production in the Marcellus and Utica regions has accounted for 85% of the increase in natural gas production reported in EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report (DPR) and has driven recent growth in total U.S. natural gas production. The DPR provides a month-ahead projection of both oil and natural gas production for the seven most significant shale formations in the United States. Although the DPR regions are grouped according to the name of the predominant shale formation, the report analyzes all drilling and production within each geographic area. In practice, this means natural gas production activity […]
