The law school at Texas Wesleyan is hosting a two-day conference on oil and gas law that is packed with good speakers and very inexpensive - $140 for both days.
There is a lot on the program about the Marcellus Shale. To see the program, go here:
http://www.texaswesleyanlawreview.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15&Itemid=202
WSJ Weighs In On Fracing Controversy
The Wall Street Journal gives its opinion on the dangers of hydraulic fracturing, siding with the industry: "The shale gas and oil boom is the result of U.S. business innovation and risk-taking. If we let the fear of undocumented pollution kill this boom, we will deserve our fate as a second-class industrial power."
Powell Shale Digest Issues Report on Eagle Ford
The Digest reported on wells drilled so far in Eagle Ford fields in Texas. Enough information is now publicly available to begin to see where the play is headed, and where it's most successful.
The counties with highest oil and gas production are Dimmit, Karnes, Webb and La Salle. The counties with the best results per well are Karnes and DeWitt:
Baker Hughes' oil rig count reached 1,000 for the first time since it began tracking oil and gas rigs separately in 1987. 843 oil and gas rigs are currently located in Texas.
Two recent articles by a New York Times reporter, Ian Urbina, have caused strong reactions among the industry and those following shale plays in the U.S. Urbina's articles may be found here and here. Urbina's basic theme is that the new reserves of natural gas attributed to shale plays are not real, but are a "Ponzi scheme" created by overestimates of reserves by companies desiring to pump up their stock prices. Urbina bases his conclusions on emails from different industry players and analysts, including the Energy Information Administration, PNC Wealth Management and IHS Drilling Data, and anonymous sources in the industry, including Chesapeake and Enron. Links to these emails are in the articles. Many of them date back to 2009. "In the e-mails, energy executives, industry lawyers, state geologists and market analysts voice skepticism about lofty forecasts and question whether companies are intentionally, and even illegally, overstating the productivity of their wells and the size of their reserves. Many of these e-mails also suggest a view that is in stark contrast to more bullish public comments made by the industry, in much the same way that insiders have raised doubts about previous financial bubbles," says Urbina.
Urbina's articles have provoked strong responses.
"It is unfortunate that the words "rigorous" and "methodical" can't be applied to the New York Times' recent articles. Understanding the facts surrounding the potential for development of our nation's energy resources is every American's business. Our economic recovery, environmental progress and energy security depends in part on a sound, stable and sensible policy and regulatory framework informed by honest, fact-filled debate. The Times' current campaign undermines this debate and is a disservice to its readers."
"The Times story was obviously motivated by an anti-natural gas agenda. It is telling that the reporter chose not to interview a single reliable source and instead selectively quoted emails from unnamed sources or well-known industry critics dating back to as early as 2007 to invent a series of inaccurate and misleading allegations. If the Times was interested in reporting the facts and advancing the debate about the prospective benefits of natural gas usage to energy consumers, it could easily have contacted respected independent reservoir evaluation and consulting firms that annually provide reserve certifications to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or contacted experts at the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the Colorado School of Mines' Potential Gas Committee, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Navigant Consulting and others who would gladly have gone on record to confirm the abundant resources that have been made available thanks to the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques that Chesapeake and other industry peers have pioneered in deep shale formations across the U.S."
"Emails referenced in the article were written in 2008 and 2009, early in the understanding of the performance metrics for shale gas and have been proven completely wrong by events. One of the emails that was referenced in the article as from IHS was apparently written by someone misidentified as an IHS employee when in fact that person had not been employed by IHS for more than a year.
"Unconventional technologies and resources have moved with great speed. There is much more information about the performance and potential of shale resources available today than in the past. Shale gas supplies have built up very rapidly and now are 25 percent of total U.S. gas supply, as costs have come down dramatically and experience and knowledge have progressed.
"In February 2009, the IHS CERA report, "The Shale Gale," stated that the "recent revolution in the production of unconventional shale gas" would result in "a substantial increase in shale production and reserves"' and "a rapid growth of shale gas supply." Also in February 2009, IHS CERA's study Rising to the Challenge said: "Unconventional gas will drive growth."
"That was the IHS position then and it continues to be our position today. Both of these reports were released well before the 2009 email cited in the NY Times story."
The best and most thoughtful response to the Times articles is from this post by Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations: "I can't say that I've read through all of the hundreds of pages of documents that the Times has posted on its site. But I've gone through a good enough slice of them (including all the emails that the Times references in its articles) to get a feel for how Urbina went about using them in his stories. There's a pattern: Urbina was clearly looking for negative views of shale gas, and had no problem finding them." Levi goes on to write that Urbina did raise some significant issues about how shale gas reserves should be assessed, but he did so without really understanding the economics of the E&P industry.
This is not the first criticism of industry estimates of shale gas reserves. In 2009, Arthur Berman, a geologist and then consultant with World Oil, published a gloomy analysis of Barnett Shale economics and reserves in 2009. See my earlier post about Berman here.
Major conclusions of the report:
Regarding gas's carbon footprint, the report concludes that "Among the fossil fuels, it has the lowest carbon intensity, emitting less CO2 per unit of energy generated than other fossil fuels. It burns cleanly and efficiently, with very few non-carbon emissions. Unlike oil, natural gas generally requires limited processing to prepare it for end use."
Regarding potential natural gas supply:
Fracking has become more and more a topic in the general media and part of the state and federal environmental energy agenda, with new stories appearing daily. A sample:
Secretary of Energy Steveb Chu has appointed an advisory panel, officially called the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board's subcommittee on natural gas, to study the environmental issues around hydraulic fracturing and shale gas production. Members of the subcommittee are John Deutch, former head of the CIA during the Clinton administration, in the Department of Energy during the Carter administration, now a professor at MIT, and former board member of Schlumberger, Ltd.; Daniel Yergin, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates Chairman; Susan Tierney, Chair of the board of the Energy Foundation; Stephen Holditch, chair of the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M; Fred Krupp, President of Environmental Defense Fund; Kathleen McGinty, former head of Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection; and Mark Zoback, geophysics professor at Stanford University. Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy, has charged the subcommittee to make recommendations on ways to improve safety of fracking in 90 days, and offer advice to other agencies within six months on how they can better protect the environment from shale gas drilling. http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/164057-overnight-energy-fracking . Beginnings of the subcommittee's work have not shown promise: at the first meeting of the committee, Dusty Horwitt of the Environmental Working Group said its chairman John Deutch should resign because of his former ties to Schlumberger and Cheniere Energy. On the other side, Republicans including Darrel Issa (R-Calif), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, have said that Chu's subcommittee is composed primarily of Democratic appointees hostile to drilling interests.
Continue reading "Discussion and Debate Increase on Environmental Hazards of Fracking" »
Researchers at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University have written an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled "Methane contamination of drinking water accompanying gas-well drilling and hydraulic fracturing," which finds "systematic evidence for methane contamination of drinking water associated with shale-gas extraction" in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and New York. The article has already elicited a strong response from the industry. To my knowledge, this is the first scientifically based study finding a correllation between the drilling of shale wells and the contamination of aquifers.
The April issue of Discover, published by Kalmbach Publishing Co., contains an article on the potential environmental effects of hydraulic fracturing in gas shales, "Fracking Nation," by Linda Marsa. Much of the article simply repeats allegations being made by environmental groups and landowners of alleged groundwater contamination by shale wells. But the article mentions four newer topics and recent allegations being made by opponents of shale gas development:
Continue reading "Hydraulic Fracturing Controversy Makes Discover Magazine" »
The EPA has issued its draft plan to study the impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water in the U.S. Two state regulatory authorities have absolved frac'ed wells from responsibility for contaminating drinking water in Colorado and Texas. Maryland's top einvornmental regulator urged lawmakers to impose a two-year moratorium on frac'ing, as Maryland's legislature considers additional laws to regulate the practice. Meanwhile, the boom in shale gas drilling continues.
Continue reading "More About Hydraulic Fracturing in the News" »
Here is the closing statement of Range Resources filed with the Texas Railroad Commission after its hearing on complaints that Range's Barnett Shale wells in Parker County have contaminated groundwater. It provides a good summary of the events to date and the evidence produced at the hearing. Range Production Company Closing Statement.pdf
Here is a link to a summary of the Range dispute prepared by Gene Powell, Editor of the Powell Barnett Shale Newsletter.
Josh Fox's movie Gasland has been nominated for an academy award for best documentary. Gasland, widely criticized by the oil and gas industry, alleges that hydraulic fracturing is the cause of contamination of underground water resources across the country. (See my previous post about controversy surrounding the movie here.) The nomination, and the Fox's movie about the alleged dangers of frac'ing, have made him into a celebrity.
In response to the Oscar nomination, Energy in Depth, a website sponsored by oil and gas associations including the Independent Petroleum Association, Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners' Association, the Independent Oil & Gas Association, and Colorado OIl and Gas Association, has published a letter (Energy In Depth letter.pdf) addressed to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In the letter, Energy in Depth calls the film an "expression of stylized fiction" not meeting the Academy's criteria for a documentary. The letter says that the movie misstates the law and the rules, mischaracterizes the frac'ing process, and "flat-out makes stuff up."
Josh Fox does not take this lying down. He has published a detailed rebuttal of Energy in Depth's letter. Josh has own his own website, www.gaslandthemovie.com, and his own facebook page about the movie and the frac'ing debate, and he was even awarded the Yoko Ono "Grant for Peace." Clearly, he is enjoying his celebrity. Josh's rebuttal is no small refutation. It runs to 38 pages and contains responses from his "amazing team of experts," including Ron Bishop, PhD, lecturer in chemistry and biochemistry at SUNY Oneonta, Anthony Ingraffea, PhD, the D.C. Baum professor of engineering at Cornell,and Weston Wilson, a retired EPA engineer. Energy in Depth's letter to the Academy is not likely to lessen Josh's time in the limelight and may actually increase his chances of grabbing that Oscar.
Clearly, the controversy over frac'ing is not going away soon. The Washington Post reported on Monday that the county commissioners of Garrett County, Maryland, denied a permit to Carrizo Marcellus Inc. to drill a well in the county, citing concerns about pollution from frac'ing, and the State of Maryland recenlty declined to issue permits to Chief Oil & Gas and Samson Resources to drill in Garrett County, opting to wait for improved drilling technology to protect the environment, even though, according to a spokesman for the Maryland energy department, 1800 gas wells have been frac'ed in neighboring Virginia with no reports of well water contamination. The controversy has even reached Texas, where Range Resources is in the middle of a fight with the EPA over alleged contamination of groundwater in the Barnett Shale. If the industry wants to fight with Hollywood, it will have to do better than Energy in Depth's effort.
EPA's order against Range Resources for allegedly charging groundwater with gas from its Barnett Shale wells has caused quite a stir.
The Texas Railroad Commission has issued two news releases, one on December 7 and one on December 8. Commission Chairman Victor Carrillo said that he has told EPA Regions 6 Administrator Al Armendariz that "EPA's actions are premature as the Railroad Commission continues to actively investigate this issue and has not yet determined the cause of the gas. This EPA action is unprecedented in Texas, and commissioners will consider all options as we move forward." Commissioner Michael Williams said "this is Washington politics of the worst kind. The EPA's act is nothing more than grandstanding in an effort to interject the federal government into Texas business." The December 8 press release said that the Commission has called a hearing for January 10 and "expects both parties, the EPA as well as Range Resources representatives, to appear before Hearings Examiners and testify as to the allegations made yesterday." Range has said it will attend the hearing, but it understands that the EPA will not.
Continue reading "Update on EPA Order Against Range Resources, Parker County" »
Arthur Berman, a geological consultant, has once again blasted the economics of gas shale plays -- this time the Marcellus. At the annual conference sponsored by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas - USA, held on October 7-9 in Washington, D.C., Mr. Berman made a presentation: "Shale Gas--Abundance or Mirage? Why the Marcellus Shale Will Disappoint Expectations." His power-point from that presentation may be found here: Arthur Berman on Marcellus.pdf Mr. Berman argues that only a small percentage of the areas now being touted as productive in shale plays -- the "core areas" are economic at any price; that even within the core areas, performance is not uniform and the geology is complex; that the wells are very expensive and the break-even gas price is as high as $8-$12/mcf; that reserves have been overstated by the companies in the plays; that the industry is not properly estimating estimated ultimate recoveries from the wells; that changes in reporting rules recently adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission allow companies to "book" estimated reserves prematurely; and that the economies of the plays will ultimately be reflected in lower share prices of the companies participating in the plays.
For the Marcellus in particular, Mr. Berman asserts that infrastructure limitations -- lack of pipeline and gas processing capacity -- will slow development, that environmental issues -- fears about groundwater contamination, proximity to urban areas, and regulatory restraints -- will not go away, and that economics for drilling in the Marcellus Shale are no better than in the Barnett Shale. Mr. Berman says that shale gas is the nation's next speculative bubble likely to burst.
Mr. Berman created a stir just a year ago when he published a similar gloomy analysis of the Barnett Shale, at the ASPO conference in October 2009. At that time he was a contributor to a trade publication called World Oil, which is sent free to top oil & gas E&P executives. In early November 2009, World Oil was about to publish another article by Mr. Berman critical of shale plays, but the president of the publication ordered that it not be published. Mr. Berman resigned, and his editor Perry Fischer, who insisted that the article be published, was fired. All of this created a stir in the blogosphere. Fischer contended that World Oil executives were pressured by CEOs of two public E&P companies not to publish any more of Mr. Berman's critiques. Tudor Holt & Pickering, who analyze the oil and gas industry, published a critique of Mr. Berman's analysis, and two oil executives from Devon and Chesapeake wrote newspaper op ed pieces critical of his work. Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon said at the time that he expected gas prices to continue to rise, which would lead to an increase in drilling and production in the shale plays. "We think all of the elements are in place for gas prices to be higher in 2010 than they are today," McClendon said.
McClendon's predictions have not held true. Gas prices have continued to slide, although drilling in the shale plays has continued. Particularly in the Haynesville, wells are being drilled that are surely not economic at current prices. The only explanation I know of for this continued drilling is that the companies who paid $10,000 to $25,000 per acre for leases in the play must drill the wells to prevent the leases from expiring. The result is that gas production and drilling remains high despite lower prices, resulting in a continued glut in supply, further reducing prices. In the meantime Mr. McClendon, always quick on his feet, has moved to the Eagle Ford Shale play, a "liquids-rich" play, because oil prices, unlike gas, have not declined. Chesapeake acquired a large position in the "oil window" of the Eagle Ford and quickly made a deal with China's national oil company to sell them one-third of its acreage for $10,000 an acre. If indeed, as Mr. Berman believes, the shale plays are the next speculative bubble, maybe it will be national oil companies like China's who are left holding the bag.
Recent happenings in Pennsylvania:
Analyst Dave Pursell of Tudor, Pickering & Holt has addressed the frac'ing controversy tongue-in-cheek, inspired by Jack Nicholson's character in A Few Good Men:
You want the truth? You can't handle the truth! We live in a world that needs clean natural gas, and gas wells have to be frac'd by men with rigs and pumps. Who's gonna do it? Microsoft? Apple? The energy industry has greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for your i-phone app, and you curse the frac crews. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what we know. That fossil energy fuels economic growth. And the existence of frac'ing, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, powers our economy. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about on Facebook, you want them on that frac, you need them on that frac. We use words like pressure, proppant, conductivity. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent producing gas. You use them as a punchline. We have neither the time nor the inclination to explain ourselves to someone who takes a hot shower every morning using the natural gas that we provide, and then questions the manner in which we provide it. We would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way. Otherwise, we suggest you pick up a pipe wrench, and meet us on location. We have wells to frac!
A study group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has concluded that natural gas will play a leading role in the U.S. over the next several decades, both in providing fuel for the nation's energy needs and in reducing greenhous gas emissions. The study was conducted over two years by a group of thirty MIT faculty members, researchers and graduate students, assisted by an advisory committee of industry leaders and consultants. The study group has released an interim 80-page report summarizing its findings. A full report with additional analysis will follow later this year.
Among the study's findings:
Continue reading "MIT Releases Study on Future of Natural Gas" »
RigData has compiled the numbers of active drilling rigs by county for each of the major shale plays in Texas: Barnett, Haynesville and Eagle Ford. These serve as a good measure of the degree of activity in each of the counties within these plays.
The Barnett Shale rig count shows a total of 81 rigs in July. The rig count has held steady around 80 for the last several months. Activity is concentrated in the core area, Tarrant and Johnson Counties.
The Haynesville Shale rig count has a total of 184 rigs working in both Texas and Louisiana, with 56 of those rigs in Texas - 12 in San Augustine County, 11 in Harrison County, 10 in Shelby County, and 9 each in Nacogdoches and Panola Counties. This count also has remained steady at around 180 rigs over the last several months.
The Eagle Ford in South Texas has 84 rigs running , up from 49 rigs in April, including 22 rigs in Webb County, 12 in La Salle County, and 10 deach in Dimmit and De Witt Counties. Operators are clearly moving rigs into the oil-rich portions of the Eagle Ford, to take advantage of the oil and liquid-rich portions of that play in light of low gas prices.
Jan 31, 12 08:57 AM Texas Wesleyan Law Review Energy Symposium March 29-30 The law school at Texas Wesleyan is hosting a two-day conference on oil and gas...
Jul 13, 11 06:47 PM Recent News: EPA Fracing Study, Report on Eagle Ford, Frac Water Recycling, Range v. EPA, WSJ Weighs In On Fracing Controversy The Wall Street Journal gives its opinion on the...
Jun 29, 11 03:47 PM New York Times Articles on Shale Plays Create a Stir Two recent articles by a New York Times reporter, Ian Urbina, have caused strong reactions...
Jun 16, 11 03:22 PM New MIT Study, "The Future of Natural Gas," Touts the Future of Natural Gas Shale Development A study group sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has issued a report, The...
Jun 1, 11 05:17 PM Discussion and Debate Increase on Environmental Hazards of Fracking Fracking has become more and more a topic in the general media and part of...
May 11, 11 02:23 PM Duke University Researchers Find Correlation Between Marcellus Shale Drilling and Methane-Contaminated Drinking Water Researchers at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University have written an article...
