[Original post June 15, 2011. Additional context and a new map near the end.]
I happened to notice that Denver, CO-based Anschutz Exploration Corporation recently roused itself for a proposed return to drilling in New York's Southern Tier — asking the DEC on June 8, 2011 for a permit to drill down into Trenton-Black River limestone, 9,783 feet beneath the Greible property, off Moss Hill Road, near Breesport, NY.
If it ever actually happens (and, for any readers new to the business, there are always more permits applied for, and granted, than are actually ever drilled), this would mark Anschutz's first new TBR well in New York in more than 15 months — ever since it spudded the Dow 2 on 3/2/2010, out near the Chemung County airport on the other side of Horseheads.
In fact, the enterprise of drilling is in such decline in the Former Empire State, the Greible 1 would mark the first fresh TBR activity by any operator statewide since MegaEnergy re-entered its Pimpinella wellbore (for an apparently successful lateral dubbed 1-B) in the Town of Tioga, Tioga County, NY, wrapping things up on 10/9/2010.
With regard to Anschutz, remember that, in November 2010, the privately held company was widely reported as having sold its northeastern U.S. leasehold to Chesapeake Energy. But, it turned out a week or so later, the deal actually specifically excluded the NY-based portion of Anschutz's holdings. At the time, few media observers were astute enough to say out loud that this was because Anschutz's upstate holdings had much less value — due to NY's tenacious state of regulatory uncertainty regarding shale gas. Drilling the Greible as a TBR well represents pretty much all that Anschutz can do, at present, to have any hope of making any money on this expiring, undeveloped, unsold leasehold.
The fully drilled total distance applied for on the Greible — depth, plus the turn, plus the horizontal — would be a jaw-dropping three miles, or precisely 15,921 feet. Should it ever actually pay out, just the one single well is proposed to generate most-likely-12.5% royalty to all overlying, signed and unsigned owners of 670 acres.
The table below represents the latest available information on drilling permits applied for, or permitted, or wells spudded, bottomed out, completed, or plugged — in just the more-central parts of New York, leaving aside WNY, where most oil and gas activity has traditionally been concentrated. This covers about a month's worth of fresh paperwork, through approximately June 8, 2011.
The info has been distilled from recent changes to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation's Wells Database, which you are more than free to search for yourself right here.
I happened to notice that Denver, CO-based Anschutz Exploration Corporation recently roused itself for a proposed return to drilling in New York's Southern Tier — asking the DEC on June 8, 2011 for a permit to drill down into Trenton-Black River limestone, 9,783 feet beneath the Greible property, off Moss Hill Road, near Breesport, NY.
In fact, the enterprise of drilling is in such decline in the Former Empire State, the Greible 1 would mark the first fresh TBR activity by any operator statewide since MegaEnergy re-entered its Pimpinella wellbore (for an apparently successful lateral dubbed 1-B) in the Town of Tioga, Tioga County, NY, wrapping things up on 10/9/2010.
With regard to Anschutz, remember that, in November 2010, the privately held company was widely reported as having sold its northeastern U.S. leasehold to Chesapeake Energy. But, it turned out a week or so later, the deal actually specifically excluded the NY-based portion of Anschutz's holdings. At the time, few media observers were astute enough to say out loud that this was because Anschutz's upstate holdings had much less value — due to NY's tenacious state of regulatory uncertainty regarding shale gas. Drilling the Greible as a TBR well represents pretty much all that Anschutz can do, at present, to have any hope of making any money on this expiring, undeveloped, unsold leasehold.
The fully drilled total distance applied for on the Greible — depth, plus the turn, plus the horizontal — would be a jaw-dropping three miles, or precisely 15,921 feet. Should it ever actually pay out, just the one single well is proposed to generate most-likely-12.5% royalty to all overlying, signed and unsigned owners of 670 acres.
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| Overlooking Breesport, NY, from Moss Hill Road, a photo by loki4200 on Flickr. |
[Digression No. 1: This would have to be double-checked by somebody with direct access to the DEC's mainframe, but I'm pretty sure 15,921 feet of "bottom hole total measured depth" would represent a new record in New York State — again, if it gets drilled. Based on my best reckoning — at least within the realm of modern-era TBR wells — the current record-holder for fully drilled distance would be the Ballymoney 1, a directional well that in October 2002 maxed out at 15,079 feet in a sorry, since-plugged, dry hole somewhere beneath the Town of West Union, in the extreme southwestern corner of Steuben County, NY. Fortuna — as the U.S. subsidiary of Talisman of Canada was then known — paid the bills on that one.]
[Digression No. 2: Just to give everybody an idea how big a production unit 670 acres represents... If this unit were laid out in a perfect square (which it won't be, exactly, due to what is known about how natural gas flows from this limestone), it would run 5,402 feet from side to side — or more than a mile. Nice box, if you're in it.]
[Digression No. 3: At the time of this writing, Anschutz's permit application does not yet appear to have been synced up with the state's compulsory integration hearing process, which is sometimes also known as forced pooling. It's unclear whether the company will seek to get through that bureaucratically supervised exercise before drilling, or afterwards. The law governing this process was significantly modified in 2005 — in such a way as to envision that units would be decided before drilling, before anyone knew whether the well would be successful. But it turns out it's also possible in certain cases to drill the well first, and then sort out the unit afterwards (if the well is not a dry hole).]
[Digression No. 4 — added July 11, 2011: (Click pic to see it all clearly.) Data newly released by NYS DEC on July 1 allows a close observer to notice some additional significance to the pattern of Anschutz's TBR drilling activity running from Horseheads easterly. First, it turns out the Number One producing well in NYS during 2010 was Anschutz's Center at Horseheads 1 — the surface location for which is about 3.2 miles (16,950 feet) by direct line northwest of the now-proposed Greible. Center at Horseheads was spudded in the side yard of a suburban office campus as far back as 9/23/2008, but it only got hooked up to pipeline last year — producing for eight months out of the year. The well generated 1,324,941 MCF — which is far short of a record, but the best of any statewide in 2010 — as spelled out in a table at the bottom of a separate post here, the first to call attention to NYS's latest production downturn. Secondly, the Number 14 producing well in NYS last year turned out to be Anschutz's Ruger 1 — the surface location for which is 1.3 miles (6,930 feet) east of Center at Horseheads and 2.0 miles (10,500 feet) northwest of the proposed Greible. The Ruger was spudded 2/26/2009 in an area near Newton Creek at the base of Bowman Hill (just east of State Route 13, but made inaccessible by that no-access highway). The Ruger was also hooked up to pipeline during 2010 in time to generate 421,841 MCF during eight months that year. The bottom line is that this looks like the same west-east-running TBR feature, a dolomitized graben, but re-pierced by the horizontally running drillbit every one or two miles.]
[Digression No. 5: No word yet on whether New York's ever-louder, anti-drilling forces will mobilize in order to find a way to turn Anschutz's return to TBR drilling into a staged-for-media protest against New York's halting stutter-steps toward shale gas. Natural gas from tight shale is a different kettle of fish than trying for natural gas from dolomitized limestone — which requires no such full-monty frack completion — but, of course, that's too technical a distinction to make any difference in the current realm of street theater and political mayhem.]
[Digression No. 6: If anyone out there has not yet noticed that the battle against shale gas has now gotten officially way off topic in New York State, check out this article here from Steve Reilly of the Binghamton P&SB, covering a June 8, 2011, town board meeting in Coventry, NY. On that occasion, the Granola People clogged the entrance of the town hall in order to argue against private-sector installation of a pipeline offering consumer-level natural gas service. A week later — on the same pipeline question, but in a different town, Bainbridge, NY — the Anti Everythings tried to pull the same stunt, but the Local Worthies again turned out on short notice against them — as recounted here by EID-Northeast. Truly, it is getting a little crazy out there.]
[Digression No. 2: Just to give everybody an idea how big a production unit 670 acres represents... If this unit were laid out in a perfect square (which it won't be, exactly, due to what is known about how natural gas flows from this limestone), it would run 5,402 feet from side to side — or more than a mile. Nice box, if you're in it.]
[Digression No. 3: At the time of this writing, Anschutz's permit application does not yet appear to have been synced up with the state's compulsory integration hearing process, which is sometimes also known as forced pooling. It's unclear whether the company will seek to get through that bureaucratically supervised exercise before drilling, or afterwards. The law governing this process was significantly modified in 2005 — in such a way as to envision that units would be decided before drilling, before anyone knew whether the well would be successful. But it turns out it's also possible in certain cases to drill the well first, and then sort out the unit afterwards (if the well is not a dry hole).]
[Digression No. 5: No word yet on whether New York's ever-louder, anti-drilling forces will mobilize in order to find a way to turn Anschutz's return to TBR drilling into a staged-for-media protest against New York's halting stutter-steps toward shale gas. Natural gas from tight shale is a different kettle of fish than trying for natural gas from dolomitized limestone — which requires no such full-monty frack completion — but, of course, that's too technical a distinction to make any difference in the current realm of street theater and political mayhem.]
[Digression No. 6: If anyone out there has not yet noticed that the battle against shale gas has now gotten officially way off topic in New York State, check out this article here from Steve Reilly of the Binghamton P&SB, covering a June 8, 2011, town board meeting in Coventry, NY. On that occasion, the Granola People clogged the entrance of the town hall in order to argue against private-sector installation of a pipeline offering consumer-level natural gas service. A week later — on the same pipeline question, but in a different town, Bainbridge, NY — the Anti Everythings tried to pull the same stunt, but the Local Worthies again turned out on short notice against them — as recounted here by EID-Northeast. Truly, it is getting a little crazy out there.]
The table below represents the latest available information on drilling permits applied for, or permitted, or wells spudded, bottomed out, completed, or plugged — in just the more-central parts of New York, leaving aside WNY, where most oil and gas activity has traditionally been concentrated. This covers about a month's worth of fresh paperwork, through approximately June 8, 2011.
The info has been distilled from recent changes to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation's Wells Database, which you are more than free to search for yourself right here.
A close observer will note that there's more to drilling in New York than just oil and gas exploration and development. In fact, this list of recent activity reveals three commonly occurring — but not very commonly known — situations where somebody would want to get a permit to drill a deep well, but without it having anything to do with producing new fossil fuels:
1) Storage of fossil fuels produced from somewhere else (see the Schuyler County entry).
2) Salt-mining in the form of brine (three wells on tap in Wyoming County).
2) Salt-mining in the form of brine (three wells on tap in Wyoming County).
3) Stratigraphic (the New York City Water Department wants to drill six different wells into limestone between 650 feet and 1000 feet deep, some right through the bottom of the Hudson River, just upstream of Newburgh, NY — probably as part of an upcoming aqueduct re-routing project).
| Date | Event | Well Type Formation (Orientation) | Well Name | Operator | County (Town) | Map It |
| 6/8/2011 | Permit Applied For | Gas Wildcat Trenton-Black River (Horizontal) | Greible 1 | Anschutz Exploration Corporation | Chemung (Horseheads) | 31015264880000 |
| 6/3/2011 | Reached Total Depth | Gas Wildcat Herkimer (Horizontal) | Chiulli 161 | Norse Energy Corp USA | Chenango (Smyrna) | 31017264840000 |
| 6/2/2011 | Permit Applied For | Storage Syracuse (Vertical) | Finger Lakes 2 | Finger Lakes LPG Storage, LLC | Schuyler (Reading) | 31097264890000 |
| 6/2/2011 | Spudded | Brine Salina (Horizontal) | Hooker 169 | Occidental Chemical Corp | Wyoming (Middlebury) | 31121278850000 |
| 5/27/2011 | Permit Applied For | Stratigraphic Wappinger Limestone (Vertical) | RB-9A | New York City Dept. of Environmental Protection | Dutchess (Wappinger) | 31027270270000 |
| 5/27/2011 | Permit Applied For | Stratigraphic Wappinger Limestone (Vertical) | RB-10 | New York City Dept. of Environmental Protection | Dutchess (Wappinger) | 31027270280000 |
| 5/27/2011 | Permit Applied For | Stratigraphic Wappinger Limestone (Vertical) | RB-9 | New York City Dept. of Environmental Protection | Orange (Newburgh) | 31071270260000 |
| 5/25/2011 | Permit Applied For | Gas Wildcat Herkimer (Horizontal) | FRANKLIN D 1H | Norse Energy Corp USA | Chenango (Preston) | 31017300100000 |
| 5/23/2011 | Permit Applied For | Stratigraphic Wappinger Limestone (Vertical) | RB-1 | New York City Dept. of Environmental Protection | Orange (Newburgh) | 31071270230000 |
| 5/23/2011 | Permit Applied For | Stratigraphic Wappinger Limestone (Vertical) | RB-2 | New York City Dept. of Environmental Protection | Orange (Newburgh) | 31071270240000 |
| 5/23/2011 | Permit Applied For | Stratigraphic Wappinger Limestone (Vertical) | RB-3 | New York City Dept. of Environmental Protection | Orange (Newburgh) | 31071270250000 |
| 5/21/2011 | Spudded | Brine Salina (Horizontal) | Hooker 168 | Occidental Chemical Corp | Wyoming (Middlebury) | 31121278840000 |
| 5/19/2011 | Permit Applied For | Brine Salina (Horizontal) | Texas Brine Company 106 | Texas Brine Company, LLC | Wyoming (Middlebury) | 31121276420100 |
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