Shale Daily

A fresh frontier for shale drilling is opening up in Canada’s Northwest Territories, a new well approval by the National Energy Board (NEB) has confirmed.

As expected, pipeline operators opened the taps on four projects to alleviate bottleneck constraints by providing more takeaway capacity from the gas-rich Marcellus Shale to markets in the Northeast, adding a total of 1.8 Bcf/d of capacity.

Total U.S. natural gas production was nearly flat in August compared to the previous month, but in the Other States category, which includes shale-heavy Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, output reached 27.02 Bcf/d, a 2.4% increase from 26.38 Bcf/d in July and a whopping 17.1% increase from 23.08 Bcf/d in August 2012, according to the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Monthly Natural Gas Gross Production Report.

A one-two punch will help knock down some of the Marcellus Shale ethane glut.

Williams executives believe the Bluegrass Pipeline, which would deliver natural gas liquids (NGL) from the Marcellus and Utica shales to Gulf Coast markets, to be a key to unlocking all of the value of the Appalachian Basin’s reserves, but exploration and production (E&P) companies still need to provide some details about their drilling plans for assurance beyond 2015, CEO Alan Armstrong said Thursday.

A Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) official said Wednesday a consent decree between the agency and a private company concerning pollution, possibly from oil and gas wastewater discharged from a treatment facility along the Allegheny River, is imminent.

The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) has proposed a policy that would enable it to give conditional approval for barges to transport wastewater from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in bulk, a move that could potentially open the nation’s waterways as transit options.

About half of the active land drilling rigs in the United States are drilling in Texas, home of red hot oil plays in the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford Shale. Based on preliminary Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) production figures for August, production of oil and gas in the state are up from year-ago levels.

Like the lumbering giants they resemble, oil majors take a bit more time to pivot from one target to the next, a task exceedingly difficult for North America’s top natural gas producer, ExxonMobil Corp. The pirouette to more oily targets came full circle in the third quarter in the three most strategic U.S. leaseholds, the Permian Basin and the Woodford and Bakken shales.