ExxonMobil's XTO Now Camped Out With 5 Wells In NY's Stalled Shale Gas Queue

[Original post Feb. 27, 2013.  Updated May 1, 2013 upon receipt from DEC Albany of the two Delaware County unit maps proposed by XTO.]

Three more full-on Marcellus shale drilling applications from ExxonMobil subsidiary XTO Energy popped within New York State's electronic records during Feb. 2013. 

Adding these three to two previous XTO filings — previously reported here and here alone in Oct. 2012, but now re-cast with this fresh update — I've mapped all five projects with pins marking top and bottom holes below, and summarized all five at the end of this post (together with links to detailed maps of the proposed units, when I get my hands on the new ones).

View XTO Energy (ExxonMobil subsidiary) — Five Marcellus shale gas applications in NYS in a larger map

Significant?

These are the first of any sort of application statewide for XTO, never before an active driller in New York State by that name.

But they're also the first horizontal shale gas requests from a well-known, well-funded developer — at least since New York State started informally refusing such applications sometime during the early months of its now fully 5-year-old bureaucratic blockade against this new enterprise.  A number of pre- and early-moratorium applications still technically sit idle within the DEC's electronic records, but so many of the underlying leases have lapsed in the meantime — or fallen under the legal cloudiness of the force majeure issue — all of these old applications are likely to be scrapped, or to be total do-overs.

XTO's projects are all within Broome County's easternmost Sanford or the adjoining Township of Deposit in Delaware County.  Both townships sit just north of the politically significant NY-PA state line (though the shale has been sitting for many years under both jurisdictions without knowing the difference).  While Deposit looks as though it sits wholly within the Delaware River drainage, Sanford straddles the watershed divide between the incapacitated Delaware Basin, and the much more accommodating Susquehanna River drainage area.  (Yes, they're both free-flowing rivers; but, again, it's just that the bureaucracies are different.)

Nonetheless, the surface pads for all of these XTO wells — including the Dew Dec A 1H, which I'm told is named for landowner Dewey Decker, Sanford Town Supervisor, and an early advocate for upstate's budding lease opportunities — are proposed for hilltop wooded terrain draining ultimately to the Delaware, not the Susquehanna.

What this all means is that XTO — for reasons that probably only an optimist could explain — is now ready and eager to get into a line that's been long blocked, not by one, but by two, shale gas moratoriums.

For the first moratorium, New York environmental officials have been flat-footed since Feb. 15, 2008 (the date of the first such stalled application anywhere statewide from industry).  Then — since July 23, 2008, the birth date for the tortured and still-unresolved SGEIS process — these officials were busy coping with studious delay, and unprecedented public commentary, on this question.

For the second moratorium, the federal-state compact Delaware River Basin Commission has been stymied from reaching a consensus (or even just taking a vote) on its own version of over-lapping regulations governing such activity.  Unlike the similar, adjoining federal-state compact Susquehanna River Basin Commission, the DRBC decided early on it had to do much more than simply regulate water withdrawals in its zone of influence.  But then the DRBC's proposed, over-the-top regulatory scheme got bogged down in politics, same as in New York — a pool of quicksand from which the path of least (short-term) resistance always seems to mean... don't sink; don't swim; don't even struggle; just delay, delay, delay.

These XTO applications also represent a challenge to anti-leaning observers (most mainstream reporters, and a handful of pseudo-journalistic bloggers), as well as to basically-burned-out well-wishers for progress (such as myself, at least on certain days) — all of whom have become increasingly hopeful/fearful that indigenous shale gas will never be produced from under gridlocked New York.  (At least not within the foreseeable future.)

It's true that financially troubled Norwegian penny stock Norse Energy has made similar filings — camping out in the DEC's stalled shale gas queue since July 2011 with 29 new, mostly horizontal, Marcellus and Utica shale applications.  But it's been easy for many to ignore Norse's efforts as a persuasive stunt, or as a prop to the hopefulness of its investors, or as a sweetening to its underlying assets for an eventual sale.

But now well-heeled XTO joins bedraggled Norse to "occupy" New York's line.

Hmmm...

API Well Number:  31007300060000 (proposed unit map obtained and uploaded off-site here)

Well Name:  Dew Dec A 1H

Company Name:  XTO Energy

Well Type:  Not Listed

Well Status:  App to Drill/Plug/Convert

Objective Formation:  Marcellus

County:  Broome

Town:  Sanford

Status Date:  10/11/2012

Permit Application Date:  10/3/2012

Well Orientation:  Horizontal

Surface Longitude:  -75.519335

Surface Latitude:  42.064837

Bottom Hole Longitude:  -75.506605

Bottom Hole Latitude:  42.054007

True Vertical Depth:  6050

Bottom Hole Total Measured Depth:  11000

Drilled Depth:  11000

Proposed Well Type:  Gas Wildcat

Spacing: 

Spacing Acres:  619.1

Integration: 

Last Modified Date:  10/11/2012

API Well Number:  31007300070000 (proposed unit map obtained and uploaded off-site here)

Well Name:  Cempa Unit A 1H

Company Name:  XTO Energy

Well Type:  Not Listed

Well Status:  App to Drill/Plug/Convert

Objective Formation:  Marcellus

County:  Broome

Town:  Sanford

Status Date:  10/11/2012

Permit Application Date:  10/3/2012

Well Orientation:  Horizontal

Surface Longitude:  -75.503886

Surface Latitude:  42.079922

Bottom Hole Longitude:  -75.514772

Bottom Hole Latitude:  42.091136

True Vertical Depth:  6077

Bottom Hole Total Measured Depth:  10795

Drilled Depth:  10795

Proposed Well Type:  Gas Wildcat

Spacing: 

Spacing Acres:  635.2

Integration: 

Last Modified Date:  10/11/2012

API Well Number:  31025300000000 (proposed unit map obtained and uploaded off-site here — after waiting out a nearly 2-month Freedom of Information Law delay engineered within DEC Albany)
Well Name:  Begeal 1H
Company Name:  XTO Energy
Well Type:  Not Listed
Well Status:  App to Drill/Plug/Convert
Objective Formation:  Marcellus
County:  Delaware
Town:  Deposit
Status Date:  2/20/2013
Permit Application Date:  1/18/2013
Well Orientation:  Horizontal
Surface Longitude:  -75.35141
Surface Latitude:  42.017858
Bottom Hole Longitude:  -75.355152
Bottom Hole Latitude:  42.033241
True Vertical Depth:  5870
Bottom Hole Total Measured Depth:  11170
Drilled Depth:  11170
Proposed Well Type:  Gas Development
Spacing: Conforms to statewide spacing under Title 5
Spacing Acres:  633.23
Integration: Integration order pending
Last Modified Date:  2/20/2013

API Well Number:  31025300010000 (proposed unit map obtained and uploaded off-site here — after waiting out a nearly 2-month Freedom of Information Law delay engineered within DEC Albany)
Well Name:  Shaefer Unit 1H
Company Name:  XTO Energy
Well Type:  Not Listed
Well Status:  App to Drill/Plug/Convert
Objective Formation:  Marcellus
County:  Delaware
Town:  Deposit
Status Date:  2/21/2013
Permit Application Date:  1/18/2013
Well Orientation:  Horizontal
Surface Longitude:  -75.365989
Surface Latitude:  42.121412
Bottom Hole Longitude:  -75.372014
Bottom Hole Latitude:  42.128093
True Vertical Depth:  5995
Bottom Hole Total Measured Depth:  10732
Drilled Depth:  10732
Proposed Well Type:  Gas Development
Spacing: Non-statutory unit under Title 5; conforms to policy objectives
Spacing Acres:  579.95
Integration: Integration order pending
Last Modified Date:  2/21/2013

API Well Number:  31007300080000 (proposed unit map uploaded off-site here)
Well Name:  Kelly Unit 1H
Company Name:  XTO Energy
Well Type:  Not Listed
Well Status:  App to Drill/Plug/Convert
Objective Formation:  Marcellus
County:  Broome
Town:  Sanford
Status Date:  2/21/2013
Permit Application Date:  1/29/2013
Well Orientation:  Horizontal
Surface Longitude:  -75.4611045
Surface Latitude:  42.098447
Bottom Hole Longitude:  -75.468786
Bottom Hole Latitude:  42.108737
True Vertical Depth:  5873
Bottom Hole Total Measured Depth:  10088
Drilled Depth:  10088
Proposed Well Type:  Gas Wildcat
Spacing: Non-statutory unit under Title 5; review in progress
Spacing Acres:  555.49
Integration:
Last Modified Date:  2/21/2013