This is great work. I’d like to
Letters-to-the editor tips
|
CLEVELAND — What happened to the Ohio shale boom? Oil and gas companies have given different answers every few months.
1. It’s a Marcellus shale boom. No, wait, it’s a Utica shale boom.
At first, the Ohio shale boom was all about the Marcellus shale, not the Utica. For example, in October 2010, Chris Perry and Larry Wickstrom of the Ohio Geological Survey gave a presentation on Ohio’s shale prospects, called, “The Marcellus Shale Play: Geology, History, and Oil & Gas Potential in Ohio.” The State geologists saw a big future in the Ohio Marcellus formation:
“. . . due to large production increases, a play such as the Marcellus is reshaping our natural gas distribution networks and the way we ultimately may use natural gas.”
Perry and Wickstrom barely noticed the Utica shale.
Before long, everything was reversed and no one mentioned Marcellus shale. Why?
Because nothing was happening in the Marcellus. There are currently only six producing wells in Ohio Marcellus shale, only one of which is a Chesapeake Energy well.
As a sign of how thoroughly the Marcellus vanished, in its report on 2011 natural gas production the Ohio Department of Natural Resources included figures for Utica wells, but didn’t even bother to report on the Marcellus wells.
“No more than a year ago, expectations of shale development in Ohio focused largely on the Marcellus. However, it became clear in 2011 that Marcellus-related drilling is unlikely to happen very far west of the state’s borders with Pennsylvania and West Virginia.”
— “An Analysis of the Economic Potential for Shale Formations in Ohio,” February 29, 2012, study funded by the Shale Coalition, and conducted by Cleveland State University, Ohio State University, and Marietta College.
Meanwhile, the Utica Shale bandwagon started rolling. On July 29, 2011, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon said, “The Utica should emerge as a key driver in the future growth of U.S. energy supplies.” Continue reading Shale boom? What happened?
 The leases Chesapeake Energy wants to sell are in Stark and Portage counties. OKLAHOMA CITY, OK — “Chesapeake Energy Corp. is trying to sell some of its drilling leases in Stark and Portage counties where the shale 6,000 feet below the surface has been said to be rich in oil.
The Oklahoma City company has listed for sale its drilling rights to more than 94,000 acres in the two counties, including three completed wells, two of which are producing. The company has the lease rights to about 1.3 million acres in Ohio.”
— John Funk, The Plain Dealer
link to article
 A Chesapeake Energy drilling rig rises about 130 feet above a noisy drilling pad that spans five acres in Carroll County OKLAHOMA CITY, OK — “Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s Ohio shale wells are producing just a fraction of what they could because the company is waiting for the completion of special plants to process the gases and oils.
In a conference call with analysts Monday, Chief Operating Officer Steven Dixon, acting CEO, said the company has drilled 240 wells in Ohio’s Utica shale but is selling gas and oil from only 54 wells.
The company’s board of directors named Dixon acting CEO Friday. He replaces Aubrey McClendon, the flamboyant founder of the company who was forced out by shareholders.”
— John Funk, The Plain Dealer
link to article
OKLAHOMA CITY, OK — “Chesapeake Energy Corp said on Tuesday that Aubrey McClendon will step down as chief executive after a tumultuous year in which a series of Reuters investigations triggered civil and criminal probes of the second-largest U.S. natural gas producer.
News of the executive’s plan to depart on April 1 boosted the company’s shares by 9 percent. The stock has made a partial recovery since losing almost half its value last spring after a Reuters report opened the company and its co-founder up to intense scrutiny.”
— Anna Driver and Brian Grow, Reuters
link to article
— Anna Driver, Reuters
 Chesapeake Energy Corporation’s 50 acre campus is seen in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, NEW YORK, NY — ” The stock price of his energy company is down nearly 30 percent. The board stripped him of his chairmanship amid scandal. Today, his estimated billion-dollar personal fortune has shrunk by more than half.
Aubrey McClendon, 53, endured a trying year running the second-largest natural gas producer in the United States, Chesapeake Energy Corp. But as corporate, state and federal probes into McClendon and the company continue, 2013 isn’t looking much easier.
Facing a cash crunch, the natural-gas giant that McClendon founded had been counting on profits from land that was leased in Colorado, North Dakota and Wyoming. The deals, however, have soured – at a cost to Chesapeake of more than a billion dollars, the company told investors in November.
Like property owners in Michigan and Texas, land owners in North Dakota have sued Chesapeake over allegations that the company reneged on leasing agreements. And now, one of its leading regional contractors is suing Chesapeake for allegedly failing to pay a $15 million bill, court documents show. ”
— Brian Grow, Anna Driver and Joshua Schneyer, Reuters
link to article
NEW YORK, NY — “Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s CHK -1.47% prospects of coaxing crude oil from Ohio’s rust belt have dimmed, the company’s chief executive said Tuesday, though he maintained the region remains key to the natural-gas giant’s future.
Chesapeake, the country’s second-biggest gas producer after Exxon Mobil Corp., XOM +0.19% is seeking to transform itself into a major producer of oil, which is more profitable than natural gas. The Oklahoma City-based company has nearly doubled its oil output in the last year, with the biggest increase coming from its holdings in South Texas.”
— Wall Street Journal
no link, subscription required
 Neal Dingmann, analyst, Sun Trust Robinson Humphrey CHICAGO, IL — “Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK) and other oil and natural-gas explorers in Ohio’s Utica Shale may have a tougher time raising drilling cash from joint ventures as investors trim offerings for stakes in undrilled fields.
PDC Energy Corp. didn’t receive a high enough bid from would-be joint-venture partners for an interest in its Utica holdings and will develop the acreage on its own, the Denver- based company said today in a statement.
PDC’s failure bodes ill for Chesapeake, the U.S. gas producer that’s searching for a joint-venture partner for its Utica assets, touted as a discovery to rival the Eagle Ford Shale in Texas. Chesapeake won’t get anything close to the $15,000 an acre Total S.A. (FP) paid last year for a stake in some of its Utica fields, said Neal Dingmann, an analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey Inc.
‘The numbers are going the wrong way,’ Mark Hanson, an analyst at Morningstar Investment Services in Chicago, said in a telephone interview today.”
— Joe Carroll, Bloomberg News
link to article
NEW YORK, NY — “Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK), facing claims by mineral rights holders in multiple states over canceled oil and gas lease offers, lost a bid to reverse a $19.7 million judgment to a Texas lease owner.
Chesapeake wrongfully canceled an agreement to buy drilling rights held by the family-owned Peak Energy Corp., the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled. The panel today upheld a 2011 decision by U.S. District Judge John Ward in Marshall, Texas, awarding Plano, Texas-based Peak $19.7 million.
Peak claimed Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake breached a contract and abandoned the deal as gas prices plummeted. Ward said a letter of intent signed by both sides was a valid contract. Chesapeake asked the court to reverse Ward and find that a letter of intent isn’t a binding contract.
‘The absence of closing documents does not necessarily make an agreement nonbinding,’ the appeals court said. ‘This agreement is enforceable.’”
— Margaret Cronin Fisk, Bloomberg
link to article
 PITTSBURGH, PA — “The softening in prices is sorry news for drillers that have relied on natural gas liquids to compensate for record-low natural gas prices. Natural gas liquids, or NGLs, are extracted alongside the natural gas and stripped out for sale at prices that tend to follow higher crude oil figures. Their use in manufacturing, particularly in plastics, have made them desirable to a petrochemical industry growing to accommodate the rise in production.
But despite the attention of some of the world’s biggest companies, the age-old rules of supply and demand are catching up to the hydrocarbon market.
Ethane and propane production is at the highest level in decades, especially since firms have diverted attention away from “dry” gas portions of shale rock that don’t contain the liquids.”
— Erich Schwartzel, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
link to article
NEW YORK, NY — “Donna Thornton made sure to include a no-cost provision in her contract with Chesapeake Energy Corp. that let the driller harvest natural gas beneath 2.5 acres of her property in Louisiana.
Thinking she had excluded production and marketing expenses and would therefore secure higher royalty payments, the Texas accountant said she was shocked when she confirmed in July that the second-biggest U.S. gas producer was passing costs on to her. For Thornton and thousands more owners of mineral rights in the U.S., ‘no-costs’ in drilling leases has taken on new meaning.
As gas prices were heading toward a 10-year low in April, Chesapeake began reinterpreting in its favor thousands of contracts with landowners from Pennsylvania to Texas that own the 1 trillion cubic feet of gas the company produced last year, according to interviews and documents reviewed by Bloomberg. Chesapeake, arguing that other contract language allows for cost deductions, is fighting more than a dozen lawsuits.”
— Bradley Olson and Margaret Cronin Fisk, Bloomberg News
link to article
 NEW YORK, NY — “Energy investors have taken bets for years on what they thought was an important indicator of future energy production: the weekly rig count data provided by oil service firms.
They may want to be careful about how much money they put on the table.
A Reuters analysis of the data, and interviews with officials at companies involved in collecting and compiling it, shows that it may sometimes be an arbitrary and misleading gauge subject to revisions.
The culprit appears to be the fracking boom and the complex geology that has made it much more difficult to decide whether a rig is likely to discover oil or gas in large quantities, often leading companies to rely on guesswork when drilling begins.”
— Edward McAllister, Reuters
link to article
NEW YORK – “Chevron Corp. is hoarding the money it makes from oil and gas operations, prompting investors to wonder if the energy giant is bracing for a spike in costs or will use its $21 billion cash pile to buy a smaller rival.
“The company’s cash level rose 60% over the last year. Chevron is now carrying more cash on its balance sheet than any publicly traded energy company—about 18% more than larger rival Exxon Mobil Corp. —and more than the market capitalization of most U.S. exploration companies. Even if Chevron used the money to retire all its debt, it would still have about $11 billion left over. . . .
Cash-strapped Chesapeake Energy Corp., the nation’s second-largest gas producer after Exxon, has been discussed as an acquisition target since its largest shareholders—who now effectively control the board—urged its management in May to consider a sale at a rich enough premium. Chesapeake’s $12.7 billion stock-market value makes its vast oil and gas holdings look cheap. But some experts say its complicated web of financings—and the discount on its stock price, which could hinder agreement on a deal value—make an acquisition less likely.”
— Daniel Gilbert, Wall Street Journal, August 27, 2012
link to article
WASHINGTON, DC – “Chesapeake Energy paid only $13 million in federal income taxes in 2011, after reporting $2.8 billion in U.S. pre-tax profits.28 According to Bloomberg, the firm’s effective tax rate over the course of its 23-year-history has averaged only about 1 percent.
“Chesapeake and other U.S. oil and gas producers benefit from a ‘drilling-costs tax benefit’ that allows generous income tax deferrals. This tax rule may have made some sense a century ago when drilling involved high risks. But today’s technology has enormously reduced the drilling risk of coming up dry.
“Archaic tax rules have helped subsidize outrageous rewards for billionaire Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon, all over and above the more than $1 billion in shady personal loans the CEO has received from the firm’s corporate lenders. SEC and IRS investigations into the dark recesses of Chesapeake’s compensation history with McClendon are now ongoing.
Shareholders are speaking out as well. At Chesapeake’s most recent annual meeting, 80percent of shareholder votes went against McClendon’s $17.9 million pay package for 2011.”
— Sarah Anderson, Chuck Collins, Scott Klinger, Sam Pizzigati, Institute for Policy Studies
link to report
NEW YORK, NY — “The financial disclosure report Ryan filed with Congress last month and made public this week shows [GOP Vice Presidential candidate Congressman Paul Ryan] and his wife, Janna, own stakes in four family companies that lease land in Texas and Oklahoma to the very energy companies that benefit from the tax subsidies in Ryan’s budget plan. Ryan’s father-in-law, Daniel Little, who runs the companies, told Newsweek and The Daily Beast that the family companies are currently leasing the land for mining and drilling to energy giants such as Chesapeake Energy, Devon, and XTO Energy, a recently acquired subsidiary of ExxonMobil. .
. . Ryan and his wife reported owning minority stakes ranging from nearly 1 percent to 10 percent in the following four family companies: Ava O Limited Company, which holds mining and mineral rights; Blondie and Brownie, which holds gravel rights; Red River Pine Company, which holds timber rights; and Little Land Company, an oil and gas corporation. .
. . the properties have been a lucrative investment for Ryan and his wife, earning them as much as $117,000 last year, and $60,000 the year before, his personal financial disclosure reports show. While Ryan’s stake in the oil and gas firm was his smallest at 0.8 percent, it was listed as one of his most valuable assets, generating as much as $50,000 of his income last year, the report shows.”
— Daniel Stone, Newsweek/Daily Beast
link to article
 A natural gas drill site owned by Chesapeake Energy in Leroy Township, Pa. PITTSBURGH, PA — “The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection says natural gas drilling company Chesapeake Energy last week filed an important Marcellus Shale production report containing so many errors a state database rejected it.
DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday said on Tuesday a previous statement by Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corp. that suggested state databases were the problem wasn’t entirely accurate and omitted important points.
‘DEP’s production database functioned exactly as designed by rejecting reports that contain obvious data entry errors,’ Sunday said. For example, Chesapeake attempted to report production information on wells where the drilling start date wasn’t listed; attempted to report more producing days than the number of days in the reporting period; and attempted to report drilled wells as wells that were not drilled, Sunday said.
Chesapeake also waited until the end of a 45-day grace period to submit data, Sunday said.”
— Kevin Begos, Associated Press
link to article
|
Letters supporting the Fracking Emergency Medical Right to Know Act 7,672 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and made personal phone calls urging state legislators to support the Fracking Emergency Medical Right to Know Act as of May 14, 2013.
Ohio coal-fired power plants
Resources on proposed Cleveland incinerator
AEP’s Muskingum River Power Plant
Letters to American Electric Power 989 neighbors have sent handwritten letters urging AEP to retire its Muskingum River coal plant as of July 15, 2011.
Letters to Duke Energy 2,307 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and telewires urging Duke Energy to retire Miami Fort Unit 6 and Beckjord coal plants as of July 15, 2011.
Letters to Kokosing Asphalt 8,709 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and petitions urging Kokosing Asphalt to be a good neighbor as of February 25, 2011.
Letters to Rumpke 9,205 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and petitions urging Rumpke to be a good neighbor as of April 15, 2011.
Letters to FirstEnergy 3,914 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and petitions urging FirstEnergy to retire their four Lake Erie coal plants as of July 15, 2011.
Mountaintop removal coal mining
Letters to Senator Sherrod Brown and Senator Rob Portman 6,615 members have sent handwritten letters and petitions to Senator Brown urging him to support US EPA rules that will protect our health from polluting coal plants as of January 24, 2012.
3,751 members have petitioned Senator Portman urging him to support US EPA rules that will protect our health from polluting coal plants as of January 24, 2012.
|
