Drill

Tecolote Energy LLC on Monday said it achieved two milestones with one well drilled into the Anadarko Basin in the Texas Panhandle, with the longest horizontal lateral ever and the highest production rate recorded.

A project that would use nearly 4,000 tons of drill cuttings from natural gas wells in Pennsylvania to help build a road in the northeastern part of the state has been approved by regulators, marking the first time that the material has been authorized for use at a non-industrial site.

Research conducted for a legislatively mandated study in West Virginia has “found little concern” for the leachate associated with cuttings from unconventional oil and natural gas drilling that were properly disposed in permitted landfills.

As the majors and other large oil and gas companies deploy up and down the Marcellus and Utica shales, a handful of smaller companies are targeting shallower formations like the Upper Devonian Shale, using hydraulic fracturing (fracking) at less expensive wells to achieve their own measure of success.

Demand between now and 2015 will prop up natural gas prices, even with a backlog of drilled wells awaiting connection, and from 2016 to 2018 a “dramatic structural increase” in demand could outpace supply additions and send gas prices to as high as $6.00/MMBtu, BNP Paribas’ Teri Viswanath, director of commodity strategy, said Friday.

PDC Energy Inc. completed the sale of its noncore Colorado natural gas assets Tuesday, with the sales proceeds earmarked to accelerate development of its liquid-rich horizontal drilling programs in the state’s Wattenberg Field and Ohio’s Utica Shale.

Regulators with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) passed a milestone in the Utica Shale last week, after having cumulatively issued more than 600 permits for horizontal wells targeting oil and natural gas.

Dover, OH-based Dennison Disposal LLC has applied for a permit to drill a Class II wastewater injection well in Union Township in Tuscarawas County, OH, to support oil and natural gas drilling in the Utica Shale. The well would be drilled to a depth of 7,900-9,000 feet, according to the permit application with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) The well, classified as a saltwater injection well, would have an average disposal capacity of 5,000 barrels a day of wastewater, and a maximum disposal capacity of 8,000 barrels a day. An ODNR spokesman said a public comment period on the proposed well is to end April 24. Last July, Gov. John Kasich signed an executive order temporarily giving the ODNR power to regulate injection wells (see Shale Daily, July 13, 2012). Specifically, the chief of the Division of Oil Gas Resources Management, currently Rick Simmers, has the authority to enact rules for injection wells, including requiring additional testing before drilling and possibly setting a maximum allowable injection pressure. The ODNR currently has an inventory of 151,000 Class II injection wells, including saltwater injection, enhanced oil recovery and annular disposal wells.

A new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Services (CRS) has backed up Republican lawmakers’ claims that all of the increase in oil and natural gas production that occurred during the past five years has been on state and private — rather than federal — lands. For the most part, state and private lands are where the shale action is.