The Desolate Middle Ground on Shale Gas

Something happened last week that represents an unfortunate defeat for the Middle Ground in the persuasive contest enshrouding unconventional domestic fossil fuels, particularly shale gas.

In Congress, March 13, senators couldn’t muster a filibuster-proof super majority to pass a measure, lately given indirect support by the Obama Administration (stories here and here), calling for taxpayers to subsidize vehicles that run on natural gas.  This was intended to displace continued consumption of fuels made from crude oil, which remains substantially imported from problematic nations, and, needless to say, increasingly expensive.



Unlike hydrogen, electric, or other alternatives, natural gas vehicles do not pose so much of an economically-challenged, long-term transformation.  Even while relatively inconsequential New York has lost four years in a shale-directed drilling moratorium — studying the prospect for exploiting its own indigenous resource — natural gas has gone into glut, continentally, and become inexpensive.  Manufacturers have already produced trucks and cars capable of running full- or part-time on compressed, sometimes liquefied, methane.  And, on the fill-up side, there’s a public station even in downtown Syracuse (current price $1.98 per gallon of gasoline equivalent), two more in the suburbs, and still others coming.  In certain cases of back-and-forth transport — such as the United Parcel Service, or public transit like Centro — CNG, LNG, or NGV by whichever acronym already makes economic sense without subsidy.

The feds could have sped up this already slowly rolling train.  But some elected officials instead hung back on the station platform, bickering with inflexibility.

The Republican’s conservative wing couldn’t hack it due to their unrealistic ideological stance that government shouldn’t impose energy policy by meddling in the market.  And some from the Democrat’s liberal wing joined them, largely because its well-meaning, well-educated (but still willfully misinformed) base has lately become riled about the supposed dangers of hydraulic fracturing.

One side’s despised Crony Capitalism sometimes glides seamlessly in waltz step with the other side’s Welfare for Corporate Pigs — even if it’s a gas meter that’s ticking out the beats. 

What a strange dance that is. 

Meanwhile, lost in the middle is a bi-partisan majority — ranging from President Obama to fossil fuels baron T. Boone Pickens — which takes a pragmatic, open-minded view of the whole energy picture:  The burden to consumers, and to the economy, of gasoline and diesel.  The fully external costs of our oil-protective wars.  The shovel-ready jobs represented by federally assisted technological advances in unconventional resources.  And the net environmental (and ethical) benefits of an energy policy in which we Americans seek to manage our own impacts.

The promise of domestic energy represents not just the Same Old Contest between environmentalists and industry.  This debate is also — even more crucially — a contest pitting the middle against both the far left and far right.  In killing this latest version of the Pickens Plan, the middle lost again.  For now.

In New York, there are certainly parallels for this defeat of the middle — which could be one possible outcome of our own Ceaseless Shale Gas Debates.  But I sure hope not.

Instead, I look forward to the day when “Buy Local” includes both sweet corn and shale gas.  Some may be concerned only with visions of their backyard devastation, but I see soldiers coming home from their devastation — and driving to jobs on drill rigs in bi-fuel Silverados.  I see industry, under first-class regulatory oversight, safely fracking shale far beneath land owned by my own fellow Upstaters.

And me, as an end consumer, more than happy to pay for it.

That’s my inter-connectedness of life.  That’s my community.  That’s my home rule.  That’s where I want to go.

CHK Sells 415 Wells in NY to Minard Run

Location and sprawl of the Fayette-Waterloo and West Auburn natural gas fields, as approximated by the NYS DEC on a really nice wall map put out back in 1986.  Producing gas wells here appear to be the primary asset recently transferred between Chesapeake and Minard Run.

[I've set up some later-popping details on this transaction in a separate post here.]

[Original post March 19, 2012. Updated March 20 to account for some curve balls which I either missed the first time through, or were later thrown into the electronic records.]

Some unreported oil and gas news became available late last week for those few Upstaters who were not outdoors sunning themselves, but instead were locked indoors, combing the NYS DEC's oil and gas databases, which cover well permits, transfers, and production. 

Here it is:  Chesapeake Energy — the nation's number two natural gas producer, based in Oklahoma, and prior absorber of leading Appalachian producer Columbia Natural Resources — recently sold 415 natural gas wells to Minard Run Oil Co. of the City of Bradford, Pennsylvania.  Minard Run traces its origins back to 1875 in the western PA epicenter of the world's original oil boom, and has long boasted it is the world's oldest family-owned independent — in fact continuously owned by the same family.

The transfer requests were submitted March 14, and approved by the DEC March 15.  The computer records were updated soon thereafter.  The state has a bureaucratic role in keeping tabs on these otherwise completely private transactions because it enforces the public interest in maintaining a responsible party for each well (and — little-appreciated fact here — in making sure local assessors get the gas well tax bills mailed to the right payer).

I have seen no announcement on this yet from either CHK or Minard Run.  But, barring some kind of major malfunction in the electronic records, that's the story, as revealed by a close reading of this otherwise arcane data.

On the basis of well counts, if not actual production, the selection of assets represents most of CHK's New York portfolio of active (or potentially active) wellheads — all, that is, except for its high-producing, horizontally or directionally drilled Trenton-Black River limestone efforts.  As of the time of this writing, CHK is still the listed operator of 64 active, (or potentially active) wells, mostly TBR's, and mostly in the mid-southern or mid-central parts of the state.

Most of the recently transferred wells are in Queenston sandstone production zones ranging across the mid-sections of two Finger Lakes counties — Cayuga (211 wells, all Queenston), and Seneca (184, all Queenston except for two verticals in obscure shales).  These traditional, vertically developed fields have been producing natural gas with little public notice or controversy since they originally broke out in the 1960s.  Known to New York's handful of gas patch veterans as the West Auburn and Fayette-Waterloo fields, CNR bought these interests in 1999.  In 2005, CHK made its entry into Appalachia by buying up CNR basin-wide.

Included on the CHK-to-Minard-Run list are a number of other generally not-yet-producing wells sparsely populating six surrounding counties:  Wayne (2 TBR wells); Ontario (1 Queenston); Yates (5 total — 3 Queenston's and 2 not applicable's); Schuyler (3 Queenston's); Cortland (1 not applicable); and Onondaga (8 Queenston's).

Some of these additional wells were initiated as TBR efforts, but — having proved dry at that horizon — were plugged back to shallower zones more capable of production, as discovered on the way down, either by design or happenstance.  Predecessor CNR was the originator of the TBR play in New York (in Steuben County — where the discovery well was drilled as early as 1985, the field further developed in 1995, and word got out circa 1998).  Since 2008, however, these sorts of historically uncontroversial exploration efforts have been popularly forgotten in the tussle over hydraulic fracturing for shale gas, which is still not permitted on a full scale horizontal basis in New York.

Like shale, TBR represents a high-tech campaign, but, as contrasted to shale, it requires much more involved seismic study in advance of pinpoint drilling, and a gambler's willingness to run the risk of a dry hole (which turned out to be substantial).  Other operators followed CNR's breakthroughs in seismic interpretation with even better results, as represented by the suite of TBR mega-producers in Chemung, Schuyler, and Steuben counties, most of which were either developed, or purchased after development, by the Canadian operator Talisman Energy, f/k/a Fortuna.  Partly due to a shift in investment interest toward fully permitable shale gas out of state, and partly due to sinking market values for natural gas, no new TBR efforts have been drilled in New York since August 2010, when Anschutz Exploration spudded the Dow 2 in Chemung County.

Queenston development has been similarly weak in recent years:  Only three wells listing that rock layer as the intitial target have been started since 2009.

New York's unfortunate state of drilling decline has been covered by this blog in much greater detail here.

CHK had been rumored for at least a couple years to be willing to entertain a buyer for its relatively low-volume, old-school producers.  This move now in New York appears to connect with the company's announced sales of other assets nationally — which have been publicly explained as a way of raising operating cash and driving down debt, both of which have long been lodged as concerns by investors and stock analysts.
I do not know yet to what extent the deal includes CHK's thousands of acres in undeveloped leases.  These are in part geographically intermingled with these wells — which, by definition, drain areas covered by developed, indefinitely running, held-by-production leases (and which therefore would logically have to pass with well ownership, including at least rights to the productive zones).  Some of CHK's undeveloped leases are still ticking within their generally five- or ten-year primary terms, and some may be subject to extensions on grounds of force majeure — due to the superior, unforeseen, disruptive force caused by New York State's now Four-Year-Old Regulatory Sink Hole on Shale Gas.  It remains to be seen whether NY courts will view the state's shale gas blockade as enough of a reason for leaseholders to legitimately invoke this Contracts Law 101 clause.  There are at least a couple cases underway, brought by landowners who are primarily motivated by the hope of being someday free to lease again for more money, higher royalty, and more protectively drafted terms — now that the shale gas genie is out of the bottle.

Note, however, that the locations of the CHK-to-Minard-Run wells are generally too far north or west within Upstate to have obvious, near-term relevance for shale gas.  That's if you believe, as several geologists have put forth, the Marcellus shale is too shallow or too thin in these areas, and the Utica shale remains too much of an unknown.  I say this despite substantial "They're gonna drill everywhere!" hype broadcast hereabouts over the last four years as part of the Ongoing Shale Gas Showdown.  As I've written before, some of that persuasive misdirection has come from the excessively hopeful pro-drilling side, while another five or six helpings' worth have come from the excessively fearful, kill-the-drill side — acting in rare, unscripted agreement with their debating partners.

That being the case, this latest transaction may not represent CHK's loss of interest, or loss of confidence, in some day fracking for shale gas in New York — should the Cuomo Administration finally find a way to push through some Regulatory Resolve on this question.  CHK could still develop natural gas from the Marcellus under current or future leases closer to the heart of the play in the Southern Tier, hugging the State Line, where the shale is virtually a slam dunk, based on production data from PA.

In addition to the number of acres involved, the other main question is the sale price for the overall transaction, which will have to await formal announcements from the buyer or seller.  It may wind up being too minor of a transaction — in the context of CHK's much more involved balance sheet — to be detailed in future quarterly reports.

PA Active Rig Count Looks Headed Below 100

[Leaving same post date, but a quick update here March 27:  It took two weeks, but my headlined forecast proved true as of the week ending March 23 — as shown by an AP story out of Pittsburgh reporting PA was now down to hosting 98 active rigs.]

It doesn't show on my chart yet, because that's based on monthly averages, and the month of March is still going on.  But the weekly active rig numbers issued by oil patch service behemoth Baker Hughes today, March 9, (and at Noon Central Time every Friday), show Pennsylvania having "only" 101 such operations at work in-state.

That's a drop of nine compared to the February 2012 monthly average, and a drop of four from just the prior week.  It's a pretty good sign the Keystone State will soon be dropping below the nice round threshold of 100 rigs.  The last time PA hosted fewer than 100 actually drilling rigs was in Oct. 2010, during a time period when it was on a run-up to its record high of 115 rigs, reached in July 2011.

Meanwhile, based on the last full monthly averages, Ohio had 15 rigs at work, and West Virginia had 28 — both states appearing to continue slight upward trends over the last ten months or so.  New York, needless to say, scored another 0.  In fact, the last time NY had a rig working in-state big enough for Baker Hughes to find it was back in December 2010.

Since most rigs are working on a single well during any given week, the ebb and flow of employment impact can be roughly correlated to the rig counts using the figure of approximately 420 jobs per well — based on the assumptions used in a July 2011 study by an arm of Penn State Extension.  While most Easterners can envision only pickup-driving roughnecks from out of state, jobs tied to fossil fuels extraction are actually spread across more than 150 different occupations — each hard at work in their respective fields, before, during, and after drilling.

A drilling boom in Ohio has been anticipated for months in connection with Summer 2011 revelations that eastern parts of the Buckeye State are blessed with shale gas, shale gas liquids, and shale oil — all from the previously under-recognized rock layer known as Utica shale.  The wetter and oilier portions of Ohio's Utica are said to preserve the economics of unconventional prospects due to higher values for these resources compared to pure dry methane.  Western PA is also known to host similar "wet" fossil fuels — in the Marcellus, and in the not yet widely discussed Upper Devonian — and that may be part of what's keeping that state's rig count from completely crashing.

Methane's market value, meanwhile, has been repeatedly setting new ten-year lows in the mid-$2-per-MMBTU range for most of the winter of 2011-2012.  Those kinds of prices — about one-half or one-third of modern averages — have meant terrific savings for End Consumers, but they are unquestionably alarming for industry, investors, and landowners.  The natgas price drop, though previously attributed at least in part to recessional forces, is now much more clearly seen as a supply-demand trough caused largely by the Shale Energy Technological Revolution's remarkably quick creation of a huge glut.  With those commodity values, it's equally remarkable there are this many rigs still active at all in Appalachia, where — measured in BTU's, at least — the majority of the undeveloped resource remains in the form of dry natgas.

Moves by industry into northeastern U.S. fields, from 2008 onward, have had the unforeseen political consequence of much more widely publicizing (and making controversial) the previously obscure revolution triggered by hydraulic fracturing — which is now much more commonly (and disparagingly) referenced as "fracking," or "hydrofracking."  Contrary to virtually all shorthand descriptions appearing in northeastern media, hydraulic fracturing is not so much a drilling technique, as it is a "completion" technique — most profitably deployed within deep horizontal wellbores drilled beforehand for that purpose.  It is an American technological feat which combines the 1940s-invented fracking, accomplished vertically, with the also 1940s-invented horizontal drilling, and it was pioneered by independent operators (with some federal R&D help, as President Obama recently noted) in the Barnett Shale of Texas.

Though widely and misleadingly described by overdramatic northeastern media as working by "blasting," "shattering," or "breaking up" the shale — or by "flushing out" the fossil fuels — fracking in actual fact works by simply countering natural rock pressure, temporarily, in discrete, one-at-a-time sections of previously drilled sedimentary bedrock.  That high pressure is applied for the purpose of slipping sand (or ceramic beads) into the shalebed's numerous tiny fractures — some old, and some newly created.  After the hydraulic pressure is intentionally eased up, and some of the spent frack water recovered, the "proppants" are left behind, stuck in the cracks, keeping routes through the shale open for the fossil fuels to escape to the wellbore, usually under normal rock pressure.

[Some further miscomprehensions peculiar to the East Coast:  Fracking has become inextricably linked in the public's mind with natural gas production, but — in actual reality, looking at the full picture in North America or worldwide — the technique is just as important for producing unconventional oil or liquids as natgas.  (See, for instance, this recent piece of Reality Correction from the very worthwhile blog of former PA DEP Chief John Hanger.)  Furthermore, though you sure don't hear about this much, fracking is also a key part of the arsenal for several much-less-besmirched enterprises, such as geothermal development, drilling more productive water wells, and still-under-development green dreams to work against global warming by sequestering carbon deep underground.]

My chart above runs the rig data back to October 2004, the month when Range Resources quietly became the first driller in the Appalachian basin to stimulate a horizontal Marcellus well in this way.  Word of Range's surprisingly successful gas-finding results on this and follow-up wells did not get out widely until January 2008, when geologists Terry Engelder of Penn State and Gary Lash of SUNY Fredonia saw through the arcana of industry reports to investors in order to conclude, and publicly release, a significant upward re-estimation of the natural gas content of the Marcellus formation.

Over the time frame of this technological upheaval, the Baker Hughes rig counts are useful in offering a historical comparison of industry's boom or bust response to the varying economic times, geologic fortunes, and regulatory receptions posed by each of these four states.  As you can readily see, drilling in PA was running even or higher nearly every successive month from January 2009 to July 2011, before finally topping out under the downward economic pressure created by the breakthrough's own continent-wide success.  While neither OH or WV has (yet) witnessed anything like the drilling boom which took off in PA, both states have stayed open to such developments — being guided by state administrations and political climates favoring the enterprise.  In NY, by contrast, industry's interest in developing Upstate landowners' previously unknown shale gas resource has been greeted with a chronically delayed regulatory holdup, meshing obstructively with a gathering political firestorm.

In fact, New York on Feb. 15, 2012 — without any media notice whatsoever — reached the Four-Year Mark for its infamous shale gas moratorium.  That is the historical fact if you consider the moratorium's starting point to be Feb. 15, 2008, as I do.  That's the date industry first (unsuccessfully) asked for a drilling permit for a full-scale Marcellus well in the state.  Five months later, on July 23, 2008, New York officials followed their informal bureaucratic hesitation with a more formalized administrative freeze, pending study of the environmental impacts of high-volume completions, and the crafting of tougher operational rules, a process which is still ongoing.

Over all this time, drilling opponents and sympathetic media representatives have largely succeeded in subtly re-framing New York's ban as being a question of whether or not the state will ever allow shale gas development.  Drilling proponents, on the other hand, have insisted upon continuing to view the moratorium as it was originally described — as a temporary measure — preferring to believe that developing the Empire State's indigenous shale gas has always been a matter of when, and how, but not if.  Officialdom has cagily gone back and forth, using either characterization, depending on the person, the timing, or the situation — such as this recent, seemingly supportive-of-drilling statement from Governor Andrew Cuomo.

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Baker Hughes has long kept a tally of active drilling rigs for both informational and promotional purposes.  The counts trace their history to 1944, when they were initiated by predecessor Hughes Tool Company (whose founder Howard Hughes, Sr. invented the two-cone rotary drill bit). The Hughes company realized that its sales force generally knew (or could find out) the location by state or province of every single operating rotary rig in the United States or Canada — even those which weren't (yet) using Hughes tools.

The counts have been consistently maintained ever since, and they have become a barometer for the energy sector, and for the economy generally.

Baker Hughes' rig counts are considered more conservative than those broadcast by other outlets, because they only count active, rotary rigs — highly complex operations which are in the midst of placing substantial economic demands on the service, support, and labor sectors.

Rigs are only counted as active if they are being employed anywhere along the line between "spudding in" (or starting a well) and "target depth."  Not counted are rigs that are in the process of being taken down, moved, or rigged up again, or rigs that are being used to support non-drilling chores, such as workovers, completions, or testing. Most relatively small, cable-tool and truck-mounted setups are also excluded from the census.

Delaware County Plays David to Gotham City's Goliath — But Small Audience So Far

[Original post March 2, 2012.  Updated here March 7:  Responsive to some gentle nudging via Twitter, more detail on Delaware County's emerging role in Upstate Political Theater was laid out yesterday by Lissa Harris of the regional blog, Watershed Post.  Included was the now-established news that this resolution was, in fact, passed by the Delaware supervisors on Feb. 22, 12 towns to 4.  Harris also threw in some worthwhile, reality-checking calculations regarding Delaware's claimed portion of the disputed no-drill zones, a total of 786,000 acres, or 80 percent of the county's landmass, which breaks down like this:  in upstream watershed (lighter green on NYC's map) = 503,000 acres; out-of-watershed fringe buffer (darker green) = 33,000 acres; and newly proposed, downstream infrastructure buffers (pink and lavender) = 250,000 acres.  That makes Delaware's demand on behalf of its tax-paying, usually-law-abiding landowners a jaw-dropping $103,435-per-acre proposition, spread over 60 years — except, as Harris notes, a significant chunk of this land is already publicly owned, including by NYC.]

This resolution — a demand for $81.3 billion in drill-ban-related reparations from NYS/NYC — was recently either introduced or passed, virtually without media notice, by the Delaware County (NY) Board of Supervisors:
Resolution by Delaware County Board of Supervisors Seeking $81.3 Billion From NYS-NYC Over Catskills Waters...

Some background and some observations:  In order to feel secure in its continued enjoyment of lower-cost, federally waived, unfiltered domestic water from the Catskills Region of Upstate, New York City has already succeeded in using its political muscle to convince NYS DEC regulators to ban drilling for shale gas from on or under all lands uphill of its water reservoirs (lighter green on map below).  Worried also about the Mysteries of the Deep, this no-drill zone extends an additional 4,000 feet beyond the actual watershed divides (darker green on map below).  This fringe zone has already been additionally surrendered by state regulators, even though the much more likely case of occasional, drilling-related surface spills in these areas could not possibly have any impact whatsoever on NYC-bound water, due to the laws of gravity and landscape.

Though these blanket rulings are still technically only in proposed form — via the current draft SGEIS — NYS will not, politically, be able to retreat from any of this, at least not anytime soon.

The only trouble is this:  NYC hasn't purchased all, or even most, of this misleadingly green-shaded land — either outright in fee, or by easement against development.  It's true NYC owns rights to all the land that it long ago flooded, or built upon, to create its water system.  And it's true the city Water Department has made some additional purchases since.  But not much of what lies upstream.  In fact, former DEC Commissioner Alexander "Pete" Grannis used to give speeches in which he pointedly noted that some 70 percent of this upstream land remains privately owned.

These same, pending, but-already-set-in-stone DEC drilling rules similarly limit property rights on private lands upstream of Syracuse's unfiltered supplies, drawn out of Skaneateles Lake.  But there has not yet, to my knowledge, been much protest from landowners or elected officials in the affected areas of Onondaga, Cortland, and Cayuga counties.  (Though I am a Syracuse water consumer and rate-payer — if I may make a suggestion, in the interest of true fairness — these folks should really be hopping on their dial-up connections, and dusting off their calculators, before it all becomes a Done Deal.)

In these drinking water watershed situations (On this phrasing, here's a reminder to Earth Science-impaired media representatives:  All land lays in a watershed), the state's drill/no-drill regulatory distinctions have been unsatisfactorily explained as being not so much about the realistic risk of surface spills, or the unrealistic risk of uncontrolled returns from depth, of spent or unspent frack water.  Instead, it's been explained as being more about the risk of much less spectacular sediment runoff from drillsite and access road construction.  Sediment!  Or, more to the point, it's really more about the regulatory risk that the federal EPA will view such surface disturbances as a reason to strip NYC and Syracuse of their money-saving filtration waivers — regardless of whether there's much actually foreseeable impact from drilling, and regardless of whether there are any public health benefits to be gained from filtering the water supplies already.

Now NYC wants even more land either off-limits to drilling, or under the thumb of its own case-by-case veto.  Recently, Big Apple leaders have pushed for adoption of additional infrastructural buffer zones running for up to seven-miles-wide alongside its aqueducts — an area which covers additional private lands on the downstream side of its reservoirs (pink surrounded by lavender in the map above).  In essence, NYC leaders have become so freaked out about the scenario of deep fracking somehow jostling or infiltrating their aging near-surface water pipes, they have managed to convince themselves, and their expert consultants, that there is actually a rational reason for this kind of preposterously simple-minded regulatory overkill.

Meanwhile — in PA, WV, OH, and beyond — fossil fuels producers are without incident routinely drilling (and afterwards fracking) thousands of mile-long horizontal laterals situate thousands of feet deep, directly underneath an oblivious array of gas pipelines, oil pipelines, water pipelines, streams, rivers, ponds, railroads, highways, homes, businesses, schools, and cemeteries.

Leaving aside the highly questionable risk-assessment validity of these ever-expanding no-drill takings, as put forth by NYC, a question of fairness remains:  Should the many urban, water-drinking, peaceful-of-mind beneficiaries of these regulatory "protections" compensate the many fewer private landowners for their lost economic opportunities? 

Or is it okay for the majority to economically oppress the minority, just because it's politically stronger?  Going all the way back to the days of King George, and to the drafting of the American Bill of Rights, isn't the system of free, private ownership of land intended to set limits upon this kind of oppression?  And should we be careful what we wish for, when we conspire in silence to excuse such blatant exceptions?

Delaware County's resolution says, in all fairness, reparations must be made — and this document is the latest salvo in an Upstate-Downstate dispute which long pre-dates the much younger Shale Gas Debates.

Media coverage has been so inattentive to this rural locale, we are not even able to say with certainty whether this resolution has already passed the whole body, or was merely introduced.  There has reportedly been coverage in at least one ironically pay-to-see Catskills outlet (Hancock Herald), a beforehand forecast in one very small organ (The Mountain Eagle), and a partially viewable story in another also ironically pay-walled operation (Catskill Mountain News).

But, as of the time of this writing, no widely circulated outlet statewide has yet set down this latest chapter.  How can this be?  How can this be — for a story that so well fits the well-established, afflict-the-comfortable, comfort-the-afflicted, media narrative?  It be, because most Northeastern media are only able to see news angles which run in familiar directions. 

Some little guys, they are simply blind to.  And I say that really stinks.

Note that the dollar figure Delaware supervisors arrived at for lost shale gas opportunities by private landowners and their surrounding economies — $81.3 billion, to be paid out over 60 years — is several times larger than even the most exaggerated, higher end of the estimated costs for NYC to simply filter its water, as virtually all other big cities already do.  (I've heard $14 billion, $9 billion, and $8 billion.)

Either way — and I realize this ain't gonna happen, given New Yorkers' White-Knuckled Commitment to the Politics of Fear — to me it's clear it would actually be in the state's net economic interest — and net public health interest — to simply do both:  Filter these water supplies, and drill safely for shale gas!

Norse Energy: Two More, Please — Further South, Down in Broome, Closer to PA Line

[Update April 2, 2012:  For the 8th, the Emerson, D. 1H, the proposed Spacing Unit Map has been obtained in PDF form and uploaded here.  For the 9th, the Fritzsch, C. 1H, I put it here.]

Though Google maps notoriously bogs down bandwidth, hang in there while we try it this way this time:

View Two New Marcellus Applications From Norse in a larger map

These markers mark the proposed surface (blue) and "bottom hole" (red) locations for two drilling permit applications filed with NYS DEC by Norse Energy on February 27 and March 1, 2012 — assuming there haven't been any data entry errors, which have plagued prior filings.

The Emerson, D. 1H is more easterly, while the Fritzsch, C. 1H maps out to the west of that.  Both are proposed full-scale horizontal Marcellus shale gas projects in the Town of Sanford, Broome County.

[Corrected March 21, thanks to a sharp-eyed commenter below:  The landscape under the proposed wellpad locations turns out to drain to the Delaware River watershed via Oquaga Creek, rather than to the Susquehanna — which would have posed fewer regulatory complications.  On closer look, I see the Emerson without question as laying wholly within the Delaware watershed.  And the Fritzsch as proposed appears very close to the unknowing divide — but just a whisker over onto the Delaware's side of the hill.  Norse's applications thus, in one fell swoop, pose an intriguing nudge against two unresolved and here overlapping Shale Gas Moratoria, the first from NY's own DEC, and the second from the federal-state compact known as the Delaware River Basin Commission.  It both saddens me and entertains me that such a seemingly inconsequential distinction — literally, the width of one fallow pasture — could be the deciding factor in triggering a hailstorm of additional red tape.  But that's the complex institutional world New York State chooses to accommodate.]

One notable point is that these wellbore laterals — usually planned to run pretty close to 90 degrees against the shalebed's natural fractures — vary somewhat from the purportedly more typical, slightly northwest-slightly southeast arrangement.

Another notable point is the relatively small unit sizes proposed.  NYS's ultra-conservationist spacing laws were changed in 2008 in order to rationally accommodate the Shale Gas Technological Revolution with low-surface-impact 600-acres-plus-sized units — usually envisioning six laterals drilled from the same centralized well pad.  But these applications from Norse (and some prior) appear to propose putting only the acreage over maybe one lateral at a time through the state's compulsory integration process, which is triggered any time there are any unsigned minority-interest lands involved.

These filings represent the 8th and 9th, post-draft-SGEIS shale gas applications coming from Norse (most Marcellus, but some Utica) — none of which can go forward unless and until Governor Andrew Cuomo gets around to green-lighting the state's new rules for this new method of fossil fuels extraction.  Needless to say, this regulatory re-write has now been under development — and the subject of unprecedented persuasive gyrations, politically — for three and a half years.

Below I've listed selected details on these wells from the DEC database (which you can comb for yourself here).  Applications One, Two, Three, Four, Five and Six/Seven were previously covered on this blog, through annotated details, and occasionally maps, so feel free to poke around.

The 8th application:

API Well Number:  31007300020000
Well Name:  Emerson, D. 1H
Company Name:  Norse Energy Corp USA
Well Type:  Not Listed
Well Status:  App to Drill/Plug/Convert
Objective Formation:  Marcellus
County:  Broome
Town:  Sanford
Status Date:  3/1/2012
Permit Application Date:  2/27/2012
Well Orientation:  Horizontal
Surface Longitude:  -75.48125
Surface Latitude:  42.12631
Bottom Hole Longitude:  -75.468137
Bottom Hole Latitude:  42.122344
True Vertical Depth:  5100
Bottom Hole Total Measured Depth:  9060
Drilled Depth:  9060
Proposed Well Type:  Gas Wildcat
Spacing: 
Spacing Acres:  158.27
Integration: 
Last Modified Date:  3/1/2012

The 9th application:

API Well Number:  31007300010000
Well Name:  Fritzsch, C. 1H
Company Name:  Norse Energy Corp USA
Well Type:  Not Listed
Well Status:  App to Drill/Plug/Convert
Objective Formation:  Marcellus
County:  Broome
Town:  Sanford
Status Date:  3/1/2012
Permit Application Date:  3/1/2012
Well Orientation:  Horizontal
Surface Longitude:  -75.521749
Surface Latitude:  42.13475
Bottom Hole Longitude:  -75.524847
Bottom Hole Latitude:  42.125574
True Vertical Depth:  4714
Bottom Hole Total Measured Depth::  8348
Drilled Depth:  8348
Proposed Well Type:  Gas Wildcat [fixed after initial filing]
Spacing:  Non-statutory unit under Title 5; review in progress
Spacing Acres:  161.57
Integration:  Integration order pending
Last Modified Date:  3/2/2012

Cuomo's Message? Depends What Your News Source Wants to Hear

It's interesting to me how New York State media can spin the same single radio interview from Gov. Andrew Cuomo in two directly opposite directions — based not so much on what he said, as on what the reporters, and their editors, and their presumed audiences, want to hear.

I think it's a trick of human nature — and we are all, to varying degrees, susceptible to fooling our eyes, ears, and brains.  Tell you one thing, the Ceaseless Shale Gas Debate in New York State makes for One Helluva Magic Show.

On March 2, Cuomo put in another of his occasional appearances on the free-thinking Fred Dicker's "Live From the State Capitol," an Albany AM radio show airing 10 a.m. most weekdays (which, for most Hardcore Citizens of New York, can best be heard via live Internet feed here, or via podcast here, later on, at your leisure).

Judging by the fast fingers viewable nearly in real-time on Twitter, I think it's fair to say that most of the Albany press corps keeps a close eye on these gubernatorial appearances.  And they also routinely click over to his often-same-day appearances on "The Capital Pressroom" with Susan Arbetter, whose public radio show leans way more toward Heart-Rending Leftward Orthodoxy, live most weekdays an hour later at 11 a.m.  (One livestream outlet is here, and the podcasts eventually get posted here.)

The Albany correspondants listen because there's always the chance Cuomo might make some news, and they can't bear the professional humiliation of being caught out of the loop.  As far as news goes, March 2 turned out to be a judgment call.

But, here, you be the judge.

Here's how Dicker's own pro-drilling New York Post ran it — complete with deployment of its "Frack, Baby, Frack!" logo for this continuing saga — in a story by Erik Kriss:

Gov hits gas on drilling plan

ALBANY — When it comes to fracking in upstate New York, Gov. Cuomo says the issue isn’t whether it will happen — it’s how it will happen.

And here's how these same statements from Cuomo ran on anti-drilling Gannett's Politics on the Hudson blog, in a post from Joseph Spector:

Cuomo: No Decision Yet On Hydrofracking

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today that there’s no new time schedule on when the state Department of Environmental Conservation would finish its review of hydrofracking—which the agency has been reviewing for nearly four years without resolution.

Just as interesting — if an advanced search on Google News two days later can be relied on — not a single Gannett-owned daily newspaper in Upstate made use of, in print or online, Spector's text — even though it was already bought and paid for.

You think that would be the case if Cuomo had said something about shale gas that Gannett wanted to hear?  The editorial message to the front-line scribes is obvious:  "[Yawn...] Next time, find us some real news [that we want to hear]."

But here's what Cuomo actually said:

On recent stories, based on Freedom of Information Law releases, showing that Cuomo (or his staff) had culled out anti-fracking questions in a long-prior online chat:  "Yeah, I think it's a silly point...  I didn't answer all the hydrofracking questions.  Of course not.  Of course not.  [Dicker:  What'd you get — 500 of them?  Cuomo:  Laughs.]  Well, you know, they're organized efforts.  It could be hydrofracking.  It could be whatever it is.  But when you do any situation like this, whether it's a call-in radio, whatever it is, you get organized efforts that will ask the same question a hundred times, a hundred different ways.  Hydrofracking opponents are very well organized.  Whenever I do a venue, I get a lot of hydrofracking questions.  I answered the hydrofracking question the same way I've answered it a hundred times before:  We're in the middle of a process, there's nothing new, DEC is doing the review.  And then there are another hundred questions basically on the same topic the same way, which I didn't answer."

On the DEC's progress in issuing a final SGEIS:  “I have had no recent updates one way or the other in terms of time.”

Nudged by Dicker on recent statements supportive of unconventional domestic fossil fuels, coming in President Obama's State of the Union address, and from his EPA chief Lisa Jackson:  “Well, I'll tell you, I was surprised by [New York City] Mayor Bloomberg’s support, which I hadn’t heard.  I hadn't really focused on, either.  But I hadn't heard that the mayor supported hydrofracking.  [Dicker:  Yeah, he said, Let's get the gas out of the ground, except in my neighborhood, in the watershed of the city.]  The watershed.  But, you know, watershed protections are understandable.  I was also surprised by Lisa Jackson, and the strength of her comment.  They're not especially relevant to DEC.  I don't want DEC making a political decision.  I want them making a decision on the facts.  And that's what they are doing...  We've said that from day one.  So I affirmatively don't want DEC considering politics.”

About the value of natural gas, conceptually:  “Look, natural gas is a great resource.  It helps this country, it helps the economy, in many different ways.  And I don’t think the question was, ‘Should we develop natural gas?’  The question is the protections, and how, and the regulations, and that’s what DEC is working through."

Is that what you wanted to hear?

More News Banned in Binghamton: Broome County Executive Reaching Out to Industry

[Updated March 1, 2012 to also show Preston's letter to state officials supporting the Bluestone Pipeline.  Also changed Feb. 29, 2012 to correct for new-to-me information received later that same day:  Preston's plan to create an "Office for Gas Drilling Issues" was, in fact, reported in the Binghamton Press during her Fall 2011 campaign — though it appears to be archived behind a pay wall at this date.]

Interesting, strongly worded, pro-drilling, open-for-business statements here from Debra A. Preston, a Republican elected in 2011 to lead Broome County, a key member of New York's Southern Tear (misspelling intentional).

It looks as though Preston is seeking to counter perceptions that the Greater Binghamton area has, over time, become hostile to this industry, especially in the wake of the Democratically led City of Binghamton's widely publicized decision to have a try at banning hydraulic fracturing within municipal limits.

Christopher Wallace, the recipient of the first, is a Utica-based lawyer (and payer of New York State income and other taxes) who has long represented various operators — on matters both in-state and out-of-state — including the pre-2008 time period, when the possibilities for Upstate shale gas development were regionally unknown.  How far and wide of a mailing this single sample represents, I'm unable to say.

Preston's second letter was written to the NYS Public Service Commission in support of an ongoing application known as the Bluestone Pipeline (written about previously here, here, and here) — which is routed to enter Broome's most easterly Town of Sanford from Marcellus shale gas fields in PA.

Not NIMBY (newsworthy), but YIMBY (not newsworthy) — go figure.

Pro-Drilling Letter From Broome County NY Executive Debra A. Preston[space-holder]

Letter From Broome County Executive Debra A. Preston in Support of Bluestone Pipeline

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