Tag: Marcellus shale

Companies Bid Millions to Drill Under State Lands in W.Va.

Companies have bid millions of dollars to drill for oil and natural gas beneath several state-owned lands in West Virginia.

On Friday, the state Department of Commerce opened bids for Marcellus shale fracking under several tracts of land.

Antero ResourceFish s bid about $8,100 per acre, or $2.3 million total, for mineral rights under Jug Wildlife Management Area in Tyler County. Jay-Bee Production Company bid between $5,000 and about $16,300 per acre for different parts of the same land.

Noble Energy bid about $5,100 per acre, or $685,000 total, to drill under Fish Creek and adjacent land in Marshall County.

StatOil USA Onshore Properties Inc. bid $9,000 per acre to drill under part of the Ohio River in Wetzel County.

The state requires an additional 20 percent royalty on what’s extracted.

FirstEnergy Making Upgrades in West Virginia

FirstEnergy Corp. is working on about $100 million in new transmission projects and evaluating additional system upgrades in West Virginia.

The additional upgrades are aimed to support northern West Virginia’s rapidly expanding Marcellus Shale gas industry as well as enhance electric service reliability for Mon Power’s customers.

The company says the new facilities include high-voltage substations and transmission lines to accommodate expanding natural gas processing facilities and other energy-intensive operations in West Virginia’s Marcellus Shale region.

New gas customer facilities are projected to account for load growth of about 400 megawatts through 2019. That’s about 200,000 new homes in Mon Power’s system.

Mon Power serves about 385,000 customers in 34 West Virginia counties.

Natural Gas Production Soars in W.Va.'s Northern Panhandle

  Natural gas production in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle has soared as drilling has increased in the Marcellus and Utica shales.

The Intelligencer and Wheeling News-Register reports that state data show natural gas production in Ohio County jumped from 84,000 cubic feet in 2011 to 22.6 billion cubic feet in 2013.

Wetzel County’s production jumped from 9.6 billion cubic feet in 2009 to 114.7 billion cubic feet in 2013.

Natural gas production in Brooke County rose from 1.4 million cubic feet in 2012 to 8 billion cubic feet in 2013. There was no natural gas production in the county from 2009 to 2011.

Statewide production increased from 265.3 billion cubic feet in 2009 to 742.4 billion cubic feet in 2013.

Dominion Announces Partnership to Build W.Va. Pipeline

Dominion Resources officially announced a new partnership Tuesday that will pump billions of cubic feet of natural gas a day out of West Virginia. That is if a federal regulatory commission approves the project.

The nearly $5 billion project has Dominion Resources teaming up with North Carolina’s Duke Energy and Piedmont Natural Gas as well as Atlanta-based AGL Resources to lay 550 miles of pipeline.

Starting in southern Harrison County, the proposed tract would cross through Lewis, Upshur, Randolph, and Pocahontas counties on its way to Virginia, eventually pumping more than 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas each day to Virginia and North Carolina, places where the demand for fuel is growing.

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline, as the project is called, is estimated to create more than 17,000 jobs according to Dominion. About 3,100 of those will be in West Virginia.

Most of them will be temporary construction jobs, but an increase in a demand means an increase in supply which could lead to more jobs on drilling sites.

Leslee McCarty with the Greenbrier Watershed Association says she’s not sure the economic good outweighs the possible environmental bad.

Her organization teamed up with the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy to detail the negative impacts in a fact sheet. It includes things like clear cutting trees through the Monongahela and George Washington National Forests, impacts to the water quality of at least half a dozen rivers and streams and decreases in the property values of nearby homes.

The announcement Tuesday means the company will begin the application process through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by studying the environmental, historical, cultural and other impacts. That application process takes 18 months to 2 years, according to Bob Orndorff, Dominion’s managing director for state and local affairs. Then, they’ll have to get permission from the state and municipalities as well as landowners.

Barring any regulatory delays, construction is expected to begin in the summer of 2016 and be completed in 2018. 

Work Underway for Electric Project in W.Va. Shale Region

  FirstEnergy Corp. says construction is underway on a new transmission substation in Doddridge County to help meet the electric demands of the area’s rapidly expanding Marcellus Shale gas industry.

The company also says the new substation also will support and help enhance service reliability for Mon Power’s customers in Doddridge and neighboring counties.

Officials say crews recently completed the foundation work and erected steel structures at the new 11-acre site.

The $36 million project near Sherwood also includes a short transmission line to connect the new substation with an existing line located nearby.

The new substation is expected to be completed and operational in December 2014. 

Mon Power serves about 385,000 customers in 34 West Virginia counties.

Companies Beginning to Explore W.Va. Utica Shale

Oil and natural gas companies with Marcellus Shale operations in the Northern Panhandle are turning their attention more and more to the underlying Utica…

Oil and natural gas companies with Marcellus Shale operations in the Northern Panhandle are turning their attention more and more to the underlying Utica Shale.

The Utica underlies much of the Marcellus in Marshall, Wetzel and Ohio counties.
 
The Intelligencer and Wheeling News-Register reports Gastar Exploration is drilling an exploratory well in both the Utica and Point Pleasant formations in Marshall County.
 
Gastar president and CEO J. Russell Porter tells the newspaper the Houston- based company plans to move both its Marcellus and Utica drilling programs to Wetzel County later this year.
 
Stone Energy Corp. operates mostly in Wetzel County and plans to drill a Utica exploratory well in June. Fossil Creek of Ohio also is exploring the Utica Shale in the northern panhandle.

 

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