Free Republic

Energy: Industry leaders gathered in Houston say rising fuel output comes in spite of, not because of, the president's policies and the pain at the pump will soon be excruciating. Energy executives and other industry players gathered for the North American Prospect Expo (NAPE) in Houston shredded administration assertions that it is opening up areas for oil and gas exploration and that its policies are responsible for increased oil and gas production on President Obama's watch. "These have been the most difficult three years from a policy standpoint that I've ever seen in my career," Bruce Vincent, president of Houston...

UGI cus­tomers’ nat­ural gas rates will decrease by about 13 per­cent, begin­ning next month. Announc­ing the decrease today, the utility’s vice pres­i­dent cred­ited Mar­cel­lus Shale drilling for the price cut. Read­ing, PA, Novem­ber 30, 2011 – UGI Util­i­ties, Inc. – Gas Divi­sion (UGI) announced today that its pur­chased gas cost rates will decrease on Decem­ber 1, 2011 due to lower whole­sale nat­ural gas costs. As a result, the aver­age res­i­den­tial heat­ing customer’s bill will decrease approx­i­mately 13.5% per­cent, from $108.39 to $93.75 per month. With this rate decrease, nat­ural gas costs for UGI cus­tomers will be about 27% less than...

State police arrested a man who worked at a Marcellus Shale drilling site in Bradford County for dumping 800 gallons of dangerous materials. Troopers says Josh Foster, 27, from Georgia admits he dumped the chemicals on state game lands in Warren Township. State police said the man worked for Talisman Energy at one of its drill sites near the dump location on Regan Hill Road. Troopers said Talisman was cooperating completely with the investigation. In arrest papers it said a drilling superintendant from Talisman met a state trooper at the scene of the spill. He told the trooper that someone...

New Energy: The latest salvo in the administration's war on energy may be new rules and permits to regulate a process to get oil and gas from porous rock, sacrificing jobs and economic growth while under review. There are a few areas of the U.S. that are booming. Two of these are in North Dakota and Pennsylvania, states that sit atop two massive shale rock formations, the Bakken and the Marcellus. Extraction of oil and natural gas from these formations have created jobs and economic growth in the midst of a stagnant and parched economy. The oil and gas is...

It has recently come to our attention that a lawsuit in Pennsylvania over the ownership of Marcellus shale gas rights could put many leases in jeopardy and slow the development of this huge natural gas resource. The case is John E. and Mary Josephine Butler v. Charles Powers Estate et al, filed in the Superior Court of Pennsylvania. The Butlers are relying on previous rulings that established ownership of oil or gas doesn't change hands unless it's specified in a deed. In opposition, the Powers' heirs argue that the deed gave them the right to other minerals such as coal,...

Mining has, without question, seen the most growth out of any industry as of late. Pennsylvania is fortunate for being located in the wake of the oil-and-gas rich Marcellus Shale formation. In the next few years (by 2015), that wake will provide more than 12 billion cubic feet of gas per day. This boom in natural gas drilling is giving manufactures reason to hire new workers. Youngstown, Ohio, is a great example of what seemed to, for years, be a depressed town until natural gas drilling became a new means for work and economic prosperity. Employment has more than doubled...

For anyone who's played the game "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral," it might seem obvious that the Marcellus shale isn't alive and doesn't grow -- it's a rock layer in the ground, so it's a mineral. In the Pennsylvania courts, the answer is not so clear. A Susquehanna County Common Pleas court is headed for a hearing to determine whether the gas-rich Marcellus shale is a mineral, and therefore, included in mineral rights. The state Superior Court ruled this month that case law is unclear, leaving big questions over who legitimately controls drilling rights and the valuable natural gas in the mile-deep...

Power: Despite efforts in the media and Congress to shut it down through fear and falsehoods, a new estimate of America's most promising energy source portends even more gas, oil — and jobs. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) announced Tuesday that the Marcellus Shale formation that straddles the northeastern United States may hold a staggering 84 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of recoverable natural gas, up significantly from the last official government estimate of 2 tcf made in 2002. The USGS said the estimate came from new information about the gas-rich formation underlying New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, and...

The Marcellus Shale contains about 84 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas and 3.4 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas liquids according to a new assessment by the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS). These gas estimates are significantly more than the last USGS assessment of the Marcellus Shale in the Appalachian Basin in 2002, which estimated a mean of about 2 trillion cubic feet of gas (TCF) and 0.01 billion barrels of natural gas liquids. The increase in undiscovered, technically recoverable resource is due to new geologic information and engineering data, as technological developments in...

Every Marcellus shale drilling citation will need a review from the new Department of Environmental Protection chief before final approval, said an agency spokeswoman. All violation notices for gas drillers and the enforcement actions the agency plans must be e-mailed to Acting Secretary Michael Krancer, spokeswoman Katherine Gresh said. The department's six regions each enforce rules differently, and Krancer is trying to improve consistency across the state, she said, noting the policy may be temporary. But putting a political appointee in a position to micromanage regulatory enforcement could lead to unfair interference on behalf of campaign donors, said Myron Arnowitt,...

The Legislature is unlikely to pass a bill this session to regulate the development of Marcellus shale, said House Judiciary Chairman Tim Miley... "The odds are against the bill passing,"

Energy: The brightest hope for America's energy independence has been shut down by an Interior Department that says it wants to review the rules for leases. It really wants to kill off oil altogether. The game is this: Say that you want to find domestic oil and gas in a "smart" way, so you have to study things for a while. Then let enviros tie you up in court to block what you really don't want to do anyway, increase America's supply of domestic energy, keeping jobs and money here. On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the Obama...

Stories keep rolling in about the booming economy in a faraway land. Tales of jobs, new construction on every corner, more jobs, hotels booked for a year, office space — long vacant — now renting for the highest prices ever fetched, and even more jobs. Yet despite years of growth, the influx of foreign capital hasn’t subsided, but in fact, continues to exponentially increase. Combined, all these things have created a climate so healthy that taxes haven’t risen in eight years. As with Doubting Thomas, something this good must be seen to be believed. So as my trip was being...

Shale gas plays in the United States are commercial failures and shareholders in public exploration and production (E&P) companies are the losers. This conclusion falls out of a detailed evaluation of shale-dominated company financial statements and individual well decline curve analyses. Operators have maintained the illusion of success through production and reserve growth subsidized by debt with a corresponding destruction of shareholder equity. Many believe that the high initial rates and cumulative production of shale plays prove their success. What they miss is that production decline rates are so high that, without continuous drilling, overall production would plummet. There is...

HARRISBURG -- Gov. Ed Rendell has carried out an executive order placing 1.5 million acres of state forest land off-limits for natural gas drilling, getting praise from environmental groups but sharp criticism from Senate Republican leader Joe Scarnati. Brickbats were flying Tuesday between Democrat Rendell and Republican Scarnati over the moratorium order, which bans any more drilling pads from being located in state forests, other than on the 700,000 acres of forest land already designated for gas drilling by the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Penn Future's leader Jan Jarrrett and Sierra Club Director Jeff Schmidt applauded the decision....

Recovery: While states like Nevada wallow in recession, tiny North Dakota becomes the first state rated as expanding by a leading service. Could it be the state's burgeoning energy industry? The recession — induced by Democrats and activists meddling in the housing market through the Community Reinvestment Act and then whistling past the bad-loan graveyard of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — officially ended in June 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. For much of the country, mired in a jobless recovery with job losses so great and prospects so bleak that it will take decades just...

WASHINGTON, DC, Sept. 10 -- The US Environmental Protection Agency asked nine service companies to voluntarily supply information about chemicals in their hydraulic fracturing fluids for its study of the completion process’s possible effects on subsurface drinking water. It asked the companies to provide the information within 30 days and to report within 7 days whether they will be able to comply. EPA undertook its study in response to a 2009 congressional directive and has held public hearings, the final two of which are scheduled for Sept. 13 and 15 in Binghamton, NY. In its request, it also asked BJ...

Kathryn Klaber, the executive director of Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group, said, "Our understanding, based on previews of the film, is that it’s loaded with misleading claims and untruths, and completely fails to recognize the well-known fact that hydraulic fracturing has been used in this state for a half-century, and according to state and federal regulators, has never once been found to adversely impact the public’s underground drinking water supplies."

A company drilling in the Marcellus Shale region in southwest Pennsylvania has been fined $97,350 for allowing "fracking" wastewater to overflow a pit and contaminate a watershed in Hopewell Township, Washington County. The state Department of Environmental Protection said that Atlas Resources L.L.C., a wholly owned subsidiary of Atlas Energy Inc., based in Moon Township, Allegheny County, corrected the problem once it was discovered. The wastewater was a by-product of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," during which millions of gallons of high-pressure water, sand, and chemicals are injected into a well to shatter the shale to release trapped natural gas. In...

Pittsburgh City Council this morning passed a resolution demanding the state impose a one-year moratorium on Marcellus Shale drilling while it considers tighter regulations for the drilling industry. State Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Highland Park, has introduced a bill that would require a moratorium on new drilling. Under his bill, existing drilling operations would be allowed to continue. Though no drilling is occurring in the city now, drilling company representatives have been negotiating for access to properties in Lawrenceville.