Welcome back to The Link-Up, your weekly rundown of our favorite stories from the past week in the oil and gas industry!
Durango Herald
Sometimes you have to pick your battles, and the battle seen as an existential threat takes priority over the one that's more of a possible inconvenience. Initiative 97, which would expand the required setback to 2500 feet, up from 500 feet (homes) or 1000 feet (schools), has now officially qualified for the Colorado ballot...so the Colorado Oil and Gas Association is understandably directing most of its effort there.
That leaves the governor's race between Republican Walker Stapleton and Democrat Jared Polis (those handsome guys above, respectively, if that wasn't obvious) somewhat lightly regarded, at least by COGA. Stapleton is seen as the more industry-friendly candidate - in fact, Polis once proposed a 2000-foot setback before withdrawing it - but one thing at a time.
The Ithaca Voice
Elsewhere, Cynthia Nixon - yes, Miranda from Sex and the City - is running for governor of New York and she seems pretty unlikely to be any friendlier than the status quo in the state where fracking is banned. Of course, she trails incumbent governor Andrew Cuomo by a significant margin in the polls (at least as of July) with the Democratic primary next week, so that's unlikely to matter a ton.
Also, there's someone named Zephyr Teachout running for attorney general. I Googled the name to see which pronouns to use, and apparently her middle name is Rain. Zephyr Rain Teachout.
Lewistown Sentinel
Mifflin County, Pennsylvania is using almost $50,000 of their Marcellus Shale payout to pay for things like baseball fields, walking trails, repairs, and landscaping. Just leaving that here, beneath the two previous ones on purpose.
Hart Energy
If you want a bunch of stats to feel good about, this is the place.
The Marcellus-Utica region is now the third largest producer of natural gas in the world, trailing only the U.S. as a whole and Russia, both of which are entire countries that rank in the world top five for land area, if you didn't know.
Gas production in the basin is at 28.8 Bcf/d, with the next closest domestic basin, the Permian, at 10.8 Bcf/d.
The average lateral length per well in West Virginia has increased from 2,500 feet to 7,000 feet over the last ten years. Technology, man.
Appalachia will supply 40 percent of the North American gas market by 2030.
There's plenty more, but you'll have to click through for it.
Oil & Gas Journal
In case you didn't believe the last one, here's this. Both gas and crude oil production are way up from 2017's second quarter.
The Business Journal
Crazy, it's almost like massive operations to pull magic goop that people pay a lot of money for out of the ground has economic benefits. Just to answer the obvious question...
[OOGA PR director Mike] Chadsey told the group that should a prospective worker earn their commercial driver license, or CDL, then a job is waiting for them. “If you were to come up to one of our companies and say ‘I’m drug free and have a CDL,’ I could guarantee you would be walking out with a job,” he said.
Chadsey went on to name industrial engineers, petroleum engineers, diesel mechanics, and other positions related to the pending ethane cracker in western Pennsylvania as other high-demand areas, lest you think this was only about truck drivers.
Forbes
I don't typically get too deep on some of the business moves made by the larger producers because it seems like doing so would quickly take this whole endeavor out of the general interest sphere and into some sort of niche that probably isn't a great use of my time at work. But this seems like a pretty big one.
Eclipse finally announced a deal on Monday: Its intent to combine with Irving, Texas-based Blue Ridge Mountain Resources, creating one of the largest operators focused on Ohio's Utica Shale.
Seaport Global Securities put the value of the transaction at $345 million, giving the combination an implied enterprise value of $1.4 billion and an equity value of $908 million.
Thanks for reading, see you next time!
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