Utica Shale

Southwestern Pennsylvania and West Virginia have formed an “integrated region” for natural gas drilling, an area where well drilling increasingly has been focused in the Appalachian Basin, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Although President Obama and the participants in a town hall meeting at Binghamton University in New York on Friday devoted most of their discourse to education, energy was mentioned once, with the president acknowledging the rise of natural gas but calling for further investment in alternative energy not derived from fossil fuels.

Nearly all of the workers hired by the natural gas industry for jobs in the Marcellus and Utica shales in 2012 were residents of states in the region, according to a workforce survey conducted by the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC).

Aubrey McClendon hasn’t taken long to gallop back in the U.S. onshore unconventional drilling business, if analysts are to be believed.

Prometheus Energy Group Inc. announced that it had signed a multi-year agreement to supply Antero Resources with enough liquefied natural gas (LNG) to power “a significant portion” of Antero’s natural gas-fueled drilling rigs in the Marcellus and Utica shales.

Exploration and production (E&P) companies remain enthusiastic about the U.S. onshore, in particular the Permian Basin, Niobrara formation, Utica Shale and the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale (TMS), based on observations at the recent EnerCom Consulting oil and natural gas conference, said two analyst teams who were there. However, Marcellus Shale pricing appears to be a “real concern for the buyside.”

Spectra Energy’s Texas Eastern Transmission LP is holding a supplemental open season for firm transportation service on its Uniontown to Gas City (U2GC) Expansion Project, which offers shippers a new firm path from the Marcellus Shale in west Uniontown, PA, to the pipeline’s existing interconnect with Panhandle Eastern Pipeline near Gas City, IN.

State regulators in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia collectively issued 411 permits for oil and gas drilling during the month of July, most of which targeted the Marcellus and Utica shales.

Antero Resources LLC, now preparing to become a publicly traded explorer, already oversees one of the biggest operations in the Appalachian Basin, and it wants to keep it that way by building a 150-mile-long water sourcing and distribution pipeline that would feed drilling sites across West Virginia and into Ohio.