Bond James Bond

Are things finally starting to happen here? These aren't big numbers yet, but at least they're starting to go up at a rapid pace. Production in Ohio’s Utica shale rising fast Ohio’s 245 Utica shale wells producing at a rate of $1 billion a year EIA data is charted here. Might not correspond directly to Ohio DNR data since the EIA does more estimating, while it sounds like the Ohio DNR does more actual counting of production from each well.

Discovered a few blogs that keep track of activity in the Utica shale. This one doesn't seem to be very active, but... http://www.uticashaleblog.com/ Ohio.com's Utica shale blog: http://www.ohio.com/blogs/drilling And this one covers both the Marcellus and Utica shales: http://gomarcellusshale.com/ Blogs by people who know a lot about the industry can often be more informative than anything printed in the regular media. And I have no idea why they made this estimate so early (industry immediately said the numbers were too low), but the USGS recently came out with an assessment of the "technically recoverable, undiscovered" amount of oil and gas in the Utica (includes the PA portion). 38 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 940 million barrels of oil Those are decent numbers (especially the natgas), but there's been so little drilling to date I don't know why they bothered, aside from political pressure to do so.

Here's a link to the full Mad Money segment on the Utica shale: Mad Money October 18

Be sure to watch Mad Money on Thursday! :clap: ‘Mad Money’ host Jim Cramer coming to Ohio for show on Utica shale

^ Natural gas prices were in the gutter earlier in the year and late last year when leasing was at a frenzy. I'm pretty sure the culprit is a collapse of natural gas liquids prices. The only viable areas left are going to be ones in the oil window, at least until either NG or NGL prices recover (both of which could take a while). But here's a prediction I'm going to make: First, the EIA reported today that US domestic oil production last week reached the highest since early 1997. Note that oil prices tumbled today after the report came out, and have been tumbling the past week or two, likely in response to the surge in supply. The EIA is projecting US oil production will average 6.8 million barrels/day next year, which would be the highest since 1992. Longer-term projections I've read say US production could reach 7 million barrels/day by 2015, and maybe 8-10 million barrels/day by 2020 or 2030. Those farther-out predictions may or may not be optimistic, but regardless, US production is going up in the short and medium term. Second, couple that with the fact Obama recently signed legislation ramping up CAFE standards significantly in stages by 2025. You'll have a situation where supply is going up, while demand is going down or remain flat. Guess what will happen? Somewhere around 2014-17 or thereabouts I think you're going to have a crash in oil prices, regardless of what the economy is doing. This may or may not be confined to North America, hard to say. The drillers producing oil in plays like the Utica, Bakken and Eagle Ford shales will have a hard time making money since these plays require higher oil prices to be profitable. Unless ... new technologies like Super Fracking can be perfected and adopted on a widespread scale before then, in which case they should be OK. If not, a lot of these companies are going to go belly-up and/or you'll see a large wave of industry consolidation (might already be starting, frankly). Drilling will slow down to some extent, but as is happening with natural gas the past year or two, even though prices are less than the cost to drill, these companies will essentially be forced to drill, for the simple reason that that's what they do. It's not like Chesapeake Energy can diversify into the woman's handbag industry if it can't make money drilling natgas, NGL's or oil; they'll have no choice but to continue drilling, which will drag out the glut over a much longer period of time than anyone in the industry would be comfortable with. Consumers, of course, will greatly benefit from all this in the meantime, as will refiners and petrochemical producers. Hard to say when, but maybe around 2018-2025 prices of oil will rebound as the glut is burned off (pun intended), unless Super Fracking and other new technologies really take off. Dry natural gas and NGL prices could rebound before that. Anyway, the industry is going to look a lot different in 2020 than it does now.

Stark County well’s oil production has CEO gushing And if this pans out, watch out.

Utica shale bringing jobs to Eastern Ohio: Liquids-rich shale stokes economic development

New map of where the dry gas, wet gas and oil areas are located: With shale, there’s lots at ‘play’

Because there are very few oil/gas companies and oil service companies based in Ohio, and the ones that are based in Ohio tend to be very small. Texas and Oklahoma (with a secondary nod to California) are where all the big oil and gas companies are based, so naturally they're the ones who are going to exploit the fields found in other states. North Dakota doesn't have any oil/gas companies based in their state, yet that fact has hardly hurt their economy. You can see from the articles already posted here that many of these Texas and Oklahoma companies are *already* setting up branch offices in Ohio, so once they get started up and some more native Ohioans will become trained in the industry, it will be as much run by Ohioans as by Texans.

I was just thinking about a month ago if someone would ever require something like that. It's a great idea, surprised no one's mandated it before. Now, to extend the economic development theme on that, some company's gonna make tons of money and build a factory somewhere in the area building brine storage tanks. :D With the millions of gallons of fluid they use to frac these things, and the thousands of wells which are going to be drilled, that's a lot of storage tanks!

Looks like they're doing something to address the earthquake problem. Ohio: Rules Tightened for Wells

This is the first place I've seen give an estimate about how much oil this will produce: Current guess is 200,000 barrels/day by 2020. That's about as much as Oklahoma is producing now. Chevron And Anadarko Gear Up For Fracking Fest In Ohio Shale deposits in Ohio have drawn significant interest from major industry players owing to the locations suitability. Ohio, once the home of Standard Oil, has a well-connected network of pipelines and waterways that help transport output to the markets with ease. Transportation has been a major bottleneck for the shale industry development in the Bakken shale in North Dakota where producers have to rely on the intermittent rail transport. The state of Ohio is expected to produce 200,000 barrels of crude/day by 2020, helping Chevron and other players improve their domestic production. In addition to strong infrastructure, Ohio also has a favorable geology which allows the waste water generated from hydraulic fracturing to be injected underground. [1] This is a major relief for drillers who do not have this option in plays in Pennsylvania where waste water has to be processed and let into rivers causing problems. Some explorers have resorted to transporting the waste water to Ohio so that it can be injected into the ground.

Some good well results from Chesapeake Energy. These aren't in the oil section of the shale, just from the dry and wet gas sections. But the production rates for the natural gas liquids are very good and bode well for the oil section. Chesapeake Energy News Release (PDF) Any oil/liquids well with a peak or IP (Initial Production) rate of 1,000 barrels/day or more is a very good well. Even 500 bpd is a pretty good well. Any gas well with a peak or IP rate of more than about 1-2 million cubic feet (abbreviated "mmcf") is a good well. 5-10 mmcf is a very good well, and you'll sometimes get wells in these plays with 15-25 mmcf, which is a monster well.

I can't believe people are still talking about the Utica shale in terms of natural gas. Wake up folks, who cares about the gas? --- this has OIL!! Oil is going to produce, like, 10 times the economic benefits that gas will. Wall Street Journal

Hello Ohioans! Remembered this forum today after I'd been posting about this topic in the Midwest section of Skyscrapercity yesterday. Some of you know me already. ;) Anyway, regarding the Utica shale ... forget about the natural gas. This thing contains oil!!!! ***** Oil boom about to hit Ohio ***** More info From Chesapeake Energy's latest conference call presentation: THIS IS GONNA BE BIG FOR OHIO!