Posts Tagged ‘gas deposits’

• Marcellus production providing “a bright spot for Pennsylvania’s construction companies”

• “The region has benefited from the jobs created by the natural gas industry”

• Marcellus production “could bring hundreds of jobs to the area”

Marcellus development “a boon to local businesses”: “Activities around the Marcellus Shale have provided a bright spot for Pennsylvania’s construction companies in the midst of a recession that flatlined commercial and residential construction. In rural Lycoming County, construction crews are working around the clock to develop the infrastructure — usually in the form of improved gravel roads and large, stone drilling pads — to access the gas deposits deep under the ground. The building activities in the rural northern tier have been a boon to local businesses, as well as the region’s larger industrial contractors. … Outside of Waterville, Hawbaker’s crews are working night and day to keep pace with the gas exploration activities. “We’ve been able to provide a good wage to our truck drivers … and these guys are getting 50, 60 hours a week,” he said. Even more dollars are filtering into other companies that provide the storage containers and water for drilling. (Centre Daily Times, 7/26/10)

Area jobs ‘picture getting better’ thanks to the Marcellus: “The Pittsburgh region continued to show signs of economic recovery in June, with employers adding jobs for the third consecutive month and the unemployment rate falling by 0.3 percentage point, the state said. Moderate gains in jobs over the past three months “tells us that the picture is getting better,” said Robert Dye, vice president and senior economist at PNC Financial Services Group Inc., Downtown. The region has benefited from the jobs created by the natural gas industry as it explores the Marcellus shale reserves, Dye said Monday. (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 7/27/10)

Annual meeting spotlights benefits of gas industry: “A Penn State study, released May 26, updated a study on the industry that was completed last year. Some of its conclusions included that for every dollar the gas community spends in the state, nearly $2 in economic output is generated. Also, the study shows that natural gas production in the state could generate more than $8 billion in economic benefits this year alone and another $10 billion in 2011. In addition, it could add more than 88,000 jobs in the state next year, doubling the number created in 2009. … The influx of the gas industry couldn’t have come at a better time, with the major job losses the county experienced because of the recession, along with cutbacks in state funding for many of the grants the corporation has depended upon to cover its operating expenses, said board President David E. Cummings. (Williamsport Sun-Gazette, 7/27/10)

New Study Shows Positive Effects From Marcellus Shale Drilling: “A new study says natural gas production in the Marcellus Shale region — if developed — could create 280,000 new jobs and add $6 billion in new tax revenues to local, state and federal governments. … Natural gas production in the Marcellus grew considerably during 2009, adding 57,000 new jobs mostly in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. (WOWK-TV, 7/24/10)

Marcellus development creating real jobs now: “The opportunity for jobs and money and all the collateral growth that goes along with a booming industry is real and is happening now. (Washington Observer-Reporter Editorial, 7/27/10)

“Marcellus Multiplier” creating new jobs across the Pennsylvania’s supply chain: “A new joint venture in Hanover Township may yield up to 50 new jobs, with some related to the gas drilling industry. In what could be the first local sign of the natural gas industry’s economic impact, Plains Township-based Medico Industries Inc. is teaming up with Venezuelan company Equipetrol to expand to a manufacturing site in the Hanover Industrial Estates business park. … The two companies plan to introduce a new product to the Marcellus Shale region, a multi-port valve and production system that allows up to seven wells to be connected to the same system. (Citizens Voice, 7/27/10)

“Hydrofracking has safe record and spurs economy”: “Hydrofracking is an environmentally responsible way to stimulate the flow of energy from new and existing oil and gas wells. It is well-regulated and has been employed over 1 million times without a single incident of drinking water contamination. … Having the gas industry present is bringing in jobs, money and has improved many aspects of the local economies. President Barack Obama and New York Gov. David Paterson both fully support natural gas development as a means of reaching energy independence, while reducing the population’s carbon footprint. Drilling the Marcellus shale is an important aspect in reaching this goal. (Syracuse Post-Standard, IOGA-NY’s Michelle Blackley, 7/24/10)

“There are plenty of jobs available on drilling rigs across the border in Pa.”:”Drilling in the Marcellus shale for natural gas could bring hundreds of jobs to the area. That’s why Corning Community College’s Office of Workforce Development and Community Education has created a training program designed to help people get jobs in the field. “For the actual person who is going for the curriculum, they have an awareness of the job they’re going for to be getting in to. They have some basic knowledge about blueprint reading, safety, those types of things that they’re able to demonstrate as they’re interviewing,” said Brenda English, director of the center. (YNN-TV, 7/26/10)

DAVID WETHE Bloomberg News

HOUSTON — Halliburton Co. and Schlumberger Ltd., trying to forestall a regulatory crackdown that would cut natural-gas drilling, are developing ways to eliminate the need for chemicals that may taint water supplies near wells.

At risk is hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process that unlocked gas deposits in shale formations and drove gains in U.S. production of the fuel. Proposed regulations might slow drilling and add $3 billion a year in costs, a government study found. As one solution, energy companies are researching ways to kill bacteria in fracturing fluids without using harmful biocides.

“The most dangerous part in the shale frack is the biocide,” said Steve Mueller, chief executive officer at Southwestern Energy Co., the biggest producer in the Fayetteville Shale of Arkansas. “That’s the number-one thing the industry is trying to find a way around.”

House and Senate bills introduced in 2009 would force producers to get permits for each well. That and other proposed environmental measures would cut drilling by as much as half and add compliance costs of $75 billion over 25 years, according to the U.S. Energy Department.

Biocides are employed because the watery fluids used to fracture rocks heat up when they’re pumped into the ground at high speed, causing bacteria and mold to multiply, Mueller said. The bacteria grow, inhibiting the flow of gas.

“You basically get a black slime in your lines,” he said. “It just becomes a black ooze of this bacteria that grew very quickly.”

Halliburton said March 9 that it’s testing a process using ultraviolet light to kill bacteria in fracking fluid.

About 80 percent of gas wells drilled in North America, including virtually all of those in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, are stimulated or fractured in some way, Tim Probert, corporate development chief at Halliburton, said.

“It’s incumbent on the industry to continue to develop tools and technologies that are compatible with minimizing the environmental impact of the stimulation process,” Probert said.

Copyright: Times Leader

Growing number of landowners hope to gain income by allowing gas drilling on their property.

By Rory Sweeneyrsweeney@timesleader.com
Staff Writer

FAIRMOUNT TWP. – Scarring Michael Giamber’s 74-acre forested spread with gas wells and pipelines might seem like a nightmare to some, but that’s the fairytale ending for which he’s hoping.

Giamber is part of a growing number of landowners in Northeastern Pennsylvania who have leased their land for drilling in the Marcellus Shale, a gas-laden layer of rock about a mile underground that runs through the northern part of the state. They hope to collect not only lucrative bonuses paid upfront for signing a lease – one offered locally last week was $5,750 per acre – but long-term income from royalties on the gas pumped from their property and rent from hosting needed infrastructure.

Early estimates for some properties put earnings well into the millions of dollars over the life of their gas deposits.

Giamber isn’t necessarily expecting that, but he wants to give his property every chance to succeed. He signed a lease with Denver-based WhitMar Exploration Co., which has locked up more than 22,000 acres in, among other places, Fairmount, Ross, Lake, Lehman, Union, Hunlock, Huntington and Dallas townships. The company offers a relatively negligible sign-up bonus – $12.50 per acre – in exchange for 19.5-percent royalties, a short lease period and stipulations that require expedited permitting and drilling.

“As we all know, the real money is in the gas royalties, not the bonus money,” Giamber noted. “Getting a well with a 20-percent royalty is better than a high bonus and no well.”

Opponents of drilling, however, cite a slew of potential environmental indignities from overt destruction of bucolic rural lands to more insidious but less-proven threats, such as groundwater contamination, overuse of regional water supplies and geologic shifting that might cause earthquakes.

Giamber sees much of that as hypocritical moralizing, and he has but to look down his road for an example of it. Every time he drives from his yard to state Route 118, he passes what he calls a homemade scrap heap on a neighbor’s property that’s filled with abandoned cars, rusted appliances and other items long beyond their usefulness. “It blows my mind how they just abuse the land, and now we’re going to bring in some money, and they get all up in arms,” he said.

If people truly cared about the earth, he reasons, they’d be outraged by such overgrown trash piles. But it’s been there for years, and no one’s complained about it. There are no doubt more just like it, too, he says.

In fact, in that context, Giamber sees his use of the land as beneficial. At least it has a positive purpose – providing a cleaner alternative to oil and coal, creating jobs and providing wealth – instead of just being a place to throw trash.

That said, Giamber has reservations. A few months ago, he visited a well site in Susquehanna County, where he found natural gas bubbling from the watery area at the base of a wellhead. He was told by a WhitMar representative that another company had made a mistake that wouldn’t happen in their work. “We’re all trying to rationalize it right now, and not get upset about it.”

While not necessarily an issue, recent lease agreements as close as Wyoming County make his deal look “anemic,” Giamber acknowledges. Chesapeake Energy, one of the largest companies in the industry, announced last week an agreement with the Wyoming County Landowners group for a 5-year, 20-percent royalty lease with a $5,750 sign-on bonus.

A landowners’ group near Giamber, the South West Ross Township Property Group, says it’s in talks with an undisclosed company whose offer is in the same “ballpark,” according to Ken Long, a member of the group’s executive committee. Long would neither confirm nor deny that it’s Chesapeake.

Still, Giamber believes the math of his deal could work better. “The fat lady hasn’t sung yet,” he said in an e-mail. “Let’s say I get a well three years before my neighbor that signed with Chesapeake at $5,500 (per-acre bonus). I’m still ahead. The variables are many and the future too hard to predict. I am just happy that WhitMar is moving forward by drilling the first wells in Luzerne County.”

Copyright: Times Leader