12-12-12 – What A Date!

Good will hydraulic fracturing. Wall Street Journal, Op-Ed. After a decade of war and half-century of costly military involvement in the Middle East, the United States stands on the brink of "energy independence." Then a shadowy Canadian billionaire coupled with Mideast oil interests sponsor a Hollywood propaganda movie aimed at luring Americans into throwing away the instrument of their deliverance: shale energy.
 
Matt Damon Unaware Oil-Rich Nation Helped Fund His Anti-HF Film. Big Hollywood, Blog. McAleer, the director of the upcoming film "FrackNation," reached out to Damon during a Q&A connected to the new movie. 
 
HF Companies Find Greener Solutions. Energy and Capital. Halliburton and three other major oil-field service providers collectively invested some $2.04 billion in 2011 to try and make their services (increasingly), environmentally-friendly.
 
Shale gas set to give US plastics sector a boost. Plastics & Rubber Weekly. “The United States has gone from being the highest cost major gas producer four to five years ago to the current lowest cost producer,” said ACC president and chief executive Cal Dooley, who said extensive shale gas deposits have flipped the cost equation.
 
Shale Gas Spike Is Aiding Westlake Chemical’s Margins. Investor’s Business Daily. Ethane, a component in natural gas, is used to make ethylene and plastics. The tremendous output from shale formations has driven the price of ethane to almost a five-year low.

INTERNATIONAL

Shale Gas Drilling ‘Huge Boost’ To UK Economy. Eagle Radio. Drilling for shale gas could create "tens of thousands" of jobs in the UK and generate vast sums of money for the Treasury, according to a UK-based exploration company.
 
Govt’s shale gas policy by December end. Business Today. The Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) has proposed to offer areas for exploration of shale gas on royalty and production linked payments to the government. The government is planning to launch its first auction of shale gas block by the end of 2013.
 
Arab Nations Jump on Shale Boom. Energy and Capital. As the shale mania spreads around the world, Jordan is the latest to sign up. The nation has good reason, too; with an estimated 40-70 billion tons of oil locked beneath some 60 percent of the country’s fairly arid land surface, it could have the fourth largest shale oil deposit in the world.
 
Leading energy expert attacks Chancellor George Osborne’s over dash-to-gas policy. The Independent. One of the world’s leading energy experts launched astinging attack on Chancellor George Osborne’s dash-to-gas policy warning that his heavy reliance on Britain’s shale reserves to generate electricity was “misleading and dangerous”.
 
China Has Plenty of Shale Gas, But It Will Be Hard to Mine. Energy Tribune. The discovery of vast amounts of shale gas in the United States has already had a big impact on the country’s energy use—prompting a shift away from coal.

CALIFORNIA

Ventura County supervisors order report on HF. Ventura County Star. The board voted 3-1 at Tuesday’s meeting with Supervisor Peter Foy dissenting to authorize the study by the offices of County Executive Mike Powers and County Counsel Leroy Smith.
 
Lease sales start for oil, gas development in Monterey County. Santa Cruz Sentinel. Nearly 18,000 acres of land in Monterey, San Benito and Fresno counties will be offered at auction Wednesday for oil and gas development.

COLORADO

The anti-HF goons in Boulder. Denver Post. When they reached her companion’s car, Wiedenbeck hopped in, too, "because I was concerned if we split that one of us would be in physical danger." Yet the ordeal continued. When they stopped the car after a short distance to collect their wits, an SUV pulled "just ahead of our car and essentially blocked us in" while a foe of hydraulic fracturing ran up behind them. After their car backed up to avoid the SUV, the screaming thug began to pound on their vehicle.
 
Testing system would assess drilling’s impact on groundwater. E&E News (sub req’d). "This is our attempt to get more buy-in, more acceptability for these activities where they haven’t happened yet," said Mike King, state director of natural resources and a member of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC).
 
City Council postpones final vote on HF. Colorado Springs Gazette. Council members voted 7-2 to wait until February for the final vote; in a preliminary vote last month, the council voted 6-3 in favor of the ordinance.

ILLINOIS

New HF Frontier Outside Illinois State Park Makes People Question. Huffington Post. Meanwhile, proponents point out that the mine would be far from the first in LaSalle County, which calls itself the "Silica Sand Capital of the World." Six sand mines currently hold active permits in the county, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

NORTH CAROLINA

NC hunts companies to drill. Triangle Business Journal. Now that drilling for oil through a technique known as fracking, North Carolina leaders and industry experts are looking to get commitments from oil and gas companies now, so they’ll be ready to get to work once final regulations are in place.

NORTHEAST

Leave Farming to Farmers. Canandaigua Daily Messenger, LTE.  Sander Diamond offers a litany of unsupported assertions in arguing New York should pass on natural gas. Given his assertions, it appears Mr. Diamond may not be as knowledgeable about history as we might expect from someone who teaches the subject. New York State for over 100 years has had a harmonious relationship between agriculture and the petroleum industry.
 
HF Comment Period Begins. WBGH News. The last step to completing the S-GEIS, which the regulations are based on, is a review of health impacts by the Department of Health and 3 outside experts.
 
NY AG examines conflict of interest on HF bans in Southern Tier. Binghamton Press and Sun. The New York State Attorney General’s Office has launched an ethics inquiry concerning votes by Southern Tier town board members related to natural gas drilling, according to documents obtained by the Press & Sun-Bulletin.
 
Westchester Bans Use Of Waste From Hydraulic Fracturing. Daily Voice. The sale, application and disposal of waste from hydraulic fracturing, which includes radioactive materials, is now banned in Westchester County and punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 or imprisonment up to 30 days.
 
Pipeline plan on hold, for now. Lancaster Newspapers. A proposed pipeline through southeastern Pennsylvania that would deliver Marcellus Shale natural gas to major East Coast markets has been put on hold, apparently because of depressed natural gas prices.
 
Village of Oxford tables gas drilling moratorium. FOX 40 News. "The board has made a good decision," said Bryant Latourette of Oxford who spoke in favor of hydro-fracking.  "It has to take a look at what’s been presented to it.  It needs to take a closer look at what they’re doing."

OHIO

Legislators in Ohio General Assembly propose numerous new shale bills as close of session nears. Lexology. The Ohio General Assembly closes its two-year term later this month.  The waning days of the term, falling between the November election and the end of the year, are known as the “lame-duck” session.  During this session, legislators have introduced a flurry of bills relating to hydraulic fracturing and shale gas drilling.
 
‘Covert’ project questioned: Bainbridge and Russell leaders are irate. Plain Dealer. Residents along Chillicothe Road are questioning the purpose of orange cables on the ground that extend on the western perimeter from Russell through the township.
 
Hilcorp Gets New Permit for Lawrence County. Youngstown Business Journal. Houston-based Hilcorp Energy Corp. has been issued a permit to drill a horizontal well in Lawrence County, Pa., the company’s second on the McConahy farm in Pulaski Township, Pa.
 
HF could lead to cleanup expenses. Columbus Dispatch, LTE. I applaud the Gov. John Kasich and the Dispatch editorial board for recognizing the long-overlooked need to raise Ohio’s relatively low severance taxes on the extraction of our unrenewable natural resources. A similar argument could be made for coal extraction, particularly given the relatively large inventory of unreclaimed coal stripmines and their continued negative impact on downstream water quality and recreational amenities.
 
Will natural gas boom change our energy future? Akron Beacon Journal. Public radio veteran Alex Chadwick recently toured Pennsylvania to examine fracking, the politically volatile exploration technology that has made natural gas the single most important element remaking our energy economy.

TEXAS

Eagle Ford brings 4,000 jobs and $705 million to San Antonio. Fox 29. City and county leaders unveiled a year long study conducted by UTSA showing the impact the Eagle Ford Shale has in Bexar County. According to the report, the Eagle Ford Shale economic impact in Bexar County last year was more than $705 million and 4200 plus jobs.
 
First LNG-Fueled Hydraulic Fracturing Completed in Eagle Ford Play. Rigzone. Ferus’ LNG Division was engaged by a major oil and gas service company in the United States to conduct the pilot project, which involved six dual-fuel 2,250 horsepower pressure pumper units, powered by LNG, to stimulate well performance in the south Texas Eagle Ford shale.
 
Science should stand in hydraulic fracturing study, experts say. Houston Business Journal. “It is certainly unfortunate that there is the appearance of a conflict of interest, but that should not detract from the value and importance of the study itself,” Holt said of UT’s work.
 
Energy experts say drilling can be made cleaner. Associated Press.  Honeycutt said the cameras, which cost about $100,000 each, have revolutionized the way inspectors monitor sites. Texas has also installed nine 24-hour air monitoring stations in the drilling region around Fort Worth, and more are on the way. Now, he said, even as drilling has increased, summer ozone levels have declined. NOTE: E&E News (sub req’d) also reports.
 
HF leads to drilling-rules rewrite. San Antonio Express. Recognizing this, the Texas Railroad Commission, the state’s oil and gas regulatory agency, is updating its rules to address the broad process of drilling, from the drilling itself to cementing and completing an oil or gas well.

WISCONSIN

Panel addresses HF health concerns. WXOW News. Frac sand is used in the drilling process for oil and natural gas through a process called hydraulic fracturing.