Drilling Down 11,000 Feet

Both Gastar Exploration and Stone Energy drilling into WV Utica Shale formation

From an Article by Casey Junkins, Wheeling Intelligencer, May 12, 2014

Moundsville, WV – Stone Energy Corp. and Gastar Exploration join Fossil Creek Ohio in digging into the Utica Shale formation underlying much of Marshall, Wetzel and Ohio counties.

For several years, companies drilled into the Marcellus shale in West Virginia and the Utica in Ohio, but the Utica blitz is now on in the Northern Panhandle. The Utica shale sits below the Marcellus, more than two miles beneath the Earth’s surface.

“In West Virginia, we are currently drilling our first Utica/Point Pleasant exploration well in Marshall County and expect to have results early in the third quarter of 2014. Based on nearby operator activity, we are highly optimistic about the potential of this formation and believe that it underlies our entire acreage position in both Marshall and Wetzel counties,” J. Russell Porter, Gastar president and CEO, said.

According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the Point Pleasant formation lies very near the Utica Shale. Gastar hopes to drill its Simms 5H well 11,100 feet vertically before turning it to go another 4,200 feet horizontally.

Last year, Gastar officials said each Marshall County Marcellus well cost them about $7 million to drill and frack. However, Fossil Creek President Chris Rowntree has said his company plans to pay about $22 million to complete each Utica well in the county.

The highest known offers for Marcellus Shale leases in the Ohio Valley would pay $7,300 per acre, along with 20 percent in production royalties. Landowners who have signed Marcellus leases may or may not have also leased their Utica rights, depending upon the individual agreements.

“We expect 2014 to be marked by further realization of the growing value of our assets as we test new formations and expand the areas in which we are developing our currently producing formations,” Porter said. “Later this year, we will be moving both of our Marcellus and Utica drilling programs south to Wetzel County, where we expect results to be equally as attractive as our Marcellus wells and pending Utica well in Marshall County.”

Louisiana-based Stone Energy works mostly in Wetzel County. Chairman, President and CEO David Welch said the company plans to produce over 100 million cubic feet of natural gas per day from its Marcellus wells by the second half of this year.

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BP America Says It’s Pulling Out of Utica Shale

BP America is the second energy company to formally announce it would suspend drilling operations in the northern Utica in Ohio. In March, Halcon Energy said that it would hold off further exploration in Trumbull County OH and western Pennsylvania.

Still, Halcon’s Kibler well in Trumbull County OH is thus far the most productive oil well in the northern tier of the Utica shale. The Kibler 1H produced 10,235 barrels of oil over 65 days. Average oil production across the entire Utica stood at 4,089 barrels over an average of 62 days.

The highest producing oil well in the Utica was Gulfport Energy’s Boy Scout well in Harrison County OH at 26,095 barrels over 80 days.

Large Marcellus Trucks in WV

Trucks Are Tearing Up The Roads in West Virginia

From the Article by Casey Junkins, Wheeling Intelligencer, July 7, 2013

CAMERON – Mayor Julie Beresford and Delegate David Evans, R-Marshall, support the Marcellus Shale drilling boom, but they want to see that U.S. 250 and other roads around the city remain safe.

“The roads are really getting beat up because of the constant truck traffic,” Beresford said. “Even when the trucks are not overweight, it is the constant pounding that the roads take from multiple trucks that go one right after the other.”

Nestled in the southeastern corner of Marshall County with about 1,000 residents, Cameron is at the heart of the shale gas play, Beresford said, acknowledging that this has both positive and negative effects. “I just want to see the people’s way of life respected,” she said. “With the number of oil and gas sites escalating, our infrastructure is truly being affected.”

When Evans recently saw five drilling industry water trucks traveling east through Cameron on Green Valley Road, he decided to follow them to see where they would go. “They went to a drilling pad over in Pennsylvania,” he said. “When I got over there, I saw five more water trucks leaving the site to come back through Cameron.”

During the approximately 17-mile southward journey from Moundsville to Cameron, there were several drilling-related trucks passing by going northward. These trucks included some so-called “sand cans,” which transport fracking sand to the gas well sites, frack water trucks, pickup trucks with Texas license plates, trucks carrying drilling equipment to the sites, and the lead “escort” vehicles that guide the oversized trucks down the road. “These roads are terrible,” Evans said.

Last year, former Marshall County Sheriff John Gruzinskas told the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that he saw a “disrespectful attitude and disregard for the residents of this county by some of these subcontractors.”

Most natural gas production companies such as Chesapeake Energy, CNX Gas Corp., Gastar Exploration, Chevron and others hire subcontractors to perform services such as well drilling, fracking, construction and transportation. The trucks could be carrying equipment, water, sand, chemicals, propane, butane or various other materials.

Evans said U.S. 250 from the area between Fort Beeler and the new Cameron High School is particularly bad, noting he hopes the West Virginia Division of Highways will soon resurface this stretch of highway. “Part of the problem is the DOH is running short on people right now,” Evans said. “The funding is also going down because collections from the gasoline tax are down.”

Evans said he will continue telling legislators and administrators in Charleston that something needs to be done to ensure that roads are repaired in a timely manner when they are damaged by heavy truck traffic working in the oil and gas industry.

Beresford believes the state and federal governments need to get more involved to help small cities such as Cameron when they are inundated with so much drilling activity and traffic.

“I know that there are very good things coming out of this shale boom for this whole area. I just feel there needs to be a more structured monitoring of our roads to make sure they are being repaired,” she added.

See also: www.wcag-wv.org  and www.marcellus-shale.us

Caiman Energy will be able to process 520 million cubic feet of natural gas per day at its Fort Beeler facility by next summer, as the company invests $500 million in the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia, according to the Wheeling Intelligencer.  

The Fort Beeler cryogenic plant, near Cameron along U.S. 250 in Marshall County, now processes about 120 million cubic feet of gas per day, some from the near-by Whipkey pad of TransEnergy. By the end of this year, an additional 200 million cubic feet per day of processing capacity is expected. Then an additional 200 million more by next summer is planned, bringing the total capacity to 520 million cubic feet per day. Also, construction of Caiman’s pipeline network is ongoing, with much of the system set for completion by the end of this year.

Much of the Northern Panhandle Marcellus gas is of the “wet” variety containing ethane, propane and butane in addition to methane. Caiman’s 25-mile pipeline – designed to carry these natural gas liquids from the Fort Beeler site to its fractionation facility on the Ohio River – is also scheduled for completion this year.

The fractionation facility is currently under construction, just north of the Marshall-Wetzel county line on the Ohio River. This plant will separate the ethane, butane and propane from each other so they can be marketed. Once the pipelines and processing facilities are finished, Caiman’s total investment in Marshall and Wetzel counties will be more than $500 million.

Caiman and NOVA Chemicals signed an agreement on March 8th for the supply of 20,000 barrels per day of ethane on a long-term basis from the Fort Beeler Plant to feed the Corunna cracker plant, for the Sarnia, Ontario (Canada), petrochemical market. This arrangement is subject to NOVA Chemicals finalizing a pipeline transportation agreement to transport ethane from Fort Beeler into Ontario.

The Wetzel Chronicle reported today that a press conference was held to announce that county commissioners from six Northern Panhandle counties had signed a joint resolution to bring an ethane cracker plant to that panhandle.  Commissioners from Ohio, Tyler, Wetzel, Marshall, Brooke and Hancock counties signed a joint resolution committing to “secure maximum investment for this region of West Virginia to the absolute best of their ability.”   Bayer Corp. has land and facilities at Institute, WV, near Charleston, and at New Martinsville in Wetzel County, and has previously expressed interest in participating in the development of a cracker plant.  The commissioners are concerned that a cracker plant would be built at Institute rather than in the panhandle where the gas is rich in ethane, the raw product converted to ethylene at a cracker plant.

From the Chronicle, “State Sen. Orphy Klempa, D-Ohio, later commended the commissioners for supporting the Northern Panhandle’s natural gas business. “We are in the area of the so-called ‘wet gas,’“ he said. “The Northern Panhandle should be rewarded for having the gas extracted here.” However, Corky DeMarco, executive director of the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association, hopes more than one cracker will come to the state. “ I hate to see this become some sort of north-south struggle,” he noted. “We have plenty of room for two or more crackers here.”

In other news from the Northern Panhandle, the Weirton Daily Times reported on July 20 that the Wellsburg City Council had voted on a first  reading to repeal the ban on fracking within the city limits and one mile beyond following the governor’s announcement of emergency rules going into effect.  Chesapeake Energy had threatened a legal challenge to the ban.

Scott Rotruck, Vice President for Corporate Development for Chesapeake Energy, has stated to FrackCheckWV that the pledge for band funding to the Wellsburg Middle School (Brooke Co.) will be honored conditional upon the Wellsburg City Council voting on the second reading on August 9 to repeal the ban.