Utica Shale

A nonprofit energy aggregator that supplies natural gas to more than 250,000 customers in Northeast Ohio has signed a six-year contract to purchase gas produced from the Marcellus and Utica shales.

With its “confidence level” higher than ever, Dominion Resources Inc. is rounding up its Appalachian-driven natural gas assets and forming a partnership that could generate up to $2 billion a year in earnings, CEO Tom Farrell said Thursday. As part of the overall restructuring, about 100,000 acres of the Marcellus Shale holdings in West Virginia will be farmed out.

With up to 18 Bcf/d of natural gas supplies expected by 2018 from the Marcellus and Utica shales, the logical place to carry excess gas is west, according to Rockies Express Pipeline LLC (REX) CEO Bill Moler.

The proposed Bluegrass Pipeline lacks the authority to impose eminent domain through Kentucky to build a natural gas liquids (NGL) pipeline, the state’s top environmental regulator said last week.

For the second time in six months, voters in the City of Youngstown, OH, will be asked to pass an amendment to the city’s charter that would ban hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and several other activities that support shale development.

Halcon Resources Corp. will begin seismic testing to find Utica Shale oil and gas deposits in six townships of Mahoning County, OH, after local officials there approved a one-year road use maintenance agreement with the company.

A nonpartisan policy research group in Pennsylvania is doubling down on its assertion that the state would be better served by a severance tax on oil and gas, adding that Pennsylvania is getting “shortchanged” by the impact fee under Act 13, the state’s omnibus Marcellus Shale law.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. is awaiting approval by the courts of a proposed $7.5 million settlement to resolve claims that a unit improperly charged Pennsylvania leaseholders post-production fees, a spokesman said Tuesday.

PVR Partners and Hess Corp. have struck a deal for the former to construct an 45-mile natural gas trunkline and gathering facilities to serve Hess’s lean gas production in the Utica Shale in eastern Ohio. The deal also establishes an area of mutual interest (AMI) to the companies.