[copious.abundance]

More info on this in the coming months. Been waiting to hear about this one.

LINK

Ohio Braces for Oil Shale Boom
by Ryan Dezember|Dow Jones Newswires|Wednesday, February 23, 2011

For many residents of this northeast Ohio hamlet, the oil bonanza began with a knock at the door. City Hall received a fax.

Spit from that machine last summer was a mineral rights lease offer -- just like those being hand-delivered to homeowners -- from oil and gas explorer Chesapeake. In the subsequent months Chesapeake's oil-field leasing agents swarmed the region, laying claim to what the company and others say may be one of the last big unconventional oil discoveries in the U.S.

"It was a mad rush," said Mayor Rob Donham. Windham eventually sold Chesapeake the right to drill underneath 100 acres that hold the town's municipal buildings and ball fields for $55,000 -- enough to buy two new police cars -- and the prospect of decades of oil royalties.

Ohio is bracing for an oil boom as companies, led by Chesapeake, gobble up leases covering millions of acres in the eastern half of the state. While no one's yet proven the commercial potential of the Utica formation, an oil-rich layer of rock that underlies this area, some believe it will yield crude on par with the largest shale reservoirs in the U.S. and spark a Rust Belt resurrection.

[...]

[Sixstrings]

Post deleted. I was wrong about something, thank goodness I caught it before Oily had a chance too.

[papa moose]

So from reading the article, what may be the last big discovery in the US is worth 2 cars and decades of royalties?

Doesn't sound very reassuring to me, kicking the can a few extra yards at most.

[copious.abundance]

I just know you're all excited about this, so I found some maps showing where the oil window in the Utica shale is located. Maybe if you've got friends or relatives with land in this area, they'll get rich.

The state of Ohio has some geologic maps of the Marcellus and Utica shales here. I downloaded the map, "Source Rock Distribution and Total Organic Carbon Content: Summary and regional maps" from the Utica shale section, and from the last page extracted the following map. The original one didn't show the state boundaries very well so I highlighted the Ohio boundary to make it easier to read.



The area of interest is, of course, the green area labeled "Oil" and also the "Wet gas" area.

So much excitement!

[copious.abundance]

Looks like a modified version of the article in the first post is going to make it in Monday's Wall Street Journal.

>>> LINK <<<

This paragraph was new. Will be interesting to see the results of the study:

In Ohio, state geologists are working on an estimate of the Utica formation's reserves but haven't completed it. If energy companies have their own estimates, they aren't disclosing them.

[copious.abundance]

Couldn't find this guy's presentation anywhere online, and this is the first I'd seen or heard about it even though it supposedly was from last month, so I'm going to presume it's a preliminary estimate, and as the WSJ article above noted we'll get a complete report from the state of Ohio sometime in the near future.

Or, maybe this is the report the WSJ was referring to???

Regardless, here it is.

Ohio shale deposits hold potential for oil, gas, jobs

Nobody is entirely sure how much natural gas and oil exists in the Utica Shale, a geologic formation a mile below the surface in as many as 47 eastern Ohio counties.

In a presentation to the Ohio Oil and Gas Association last month, Larry Wickstrom, the state's geologist, estimated producers could recover as much as 15.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 5.5 billion barrels of oil from Ohio's share of the Utica Shale.

That's a "very conservative estimation," said Mac Swinford, assistant chief of the Ohio Geologic Survey.

[copious.abundance]

Nifty thing about a new resource play like this is it creates jobs not just for the people driling the wells, it also creates a need for lots of pipes, well equipment, etc. which all need to be made somewhere. In this case it's a new factory in Youngstown.

LINK

$650 million plant to transform Youngstown
Steel mill, expected to bring 350 jobs, atop natural-gas fields
BY BILL TOLAND
BLOCK NEWS ALLIANCE

YOUNGSTOWN -- What's left of Youngstown's once redoubtable industrial corridor follows the Mahoning River through the valley that the water carved. Lording above those industrial relics -- above the still-active fabricating plants and tool-and-die shops -- is V&M Star. The city has pinned its financial hopes to the hulking mill works, which has pinned its own hopes upon the gaseous and liquid gold locked a mile underground.

Early in 2010, V&M Star announced it would build a $650 million rolling mill next to its existing Youngstown operation. It was the biggest private investment announced in all of Ohio that year, the biggest in that region since General Motors Co. built the Lords- town, Ohio, assembly plant nearly four decades ago, and the biggest in Youngstown in half a century, if not ever.

[...]

Because of what V&M will be making at its new, million-square-foot plant: small-diameter steel pipes, the kind used in transporting natural gas from well sites to compression stations and main lines.

Youngstown -- halfway between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, at 41.09 degrees north latitude and 80.65 west longitude -- is geographically positioned on top of both the Marcellus and Utica shales, two rock formations that hold untold reserves of natural gas and liquid hydrocarbons.

[...]

[copious.abundance]

Devon is also getting in on the game here - and it looks like it extends into Michigan!

Devon Energy sez ...

Portions of that $400 million in added exploratory spending will also be allocated to five new oilfields in which Devon has recently built positions.

Those new positions include 300,000 acres in Wyoming's Niobrara Shale,150,000 acres in Oklahoma's Mississippian oilfield, 110,000 acres in Ohio's Utica Shale, and 300,000 in Michigan's portion of that same rock formation.

So much excitement!

[vision-master]

("So much excitement"!)

Statements like this are just plain sick (oily).

[peeker01]

just postpones the inevitable collapse. what's the point.

[Outcast_Searcher]

I have personally called you out as a shill, scam artist, cornucopian dreamer, schemer, grifter, liar, and cheater. Now the truth is apparent to all but the most deluded or corrupt. What do you say? You still scamming this crap. Don't you have any shame?

Um, way to be fair and balanced there PSTARR. You and FOX News...

OF2 is just reporting on what is being found (more shale oil sources) - he doesn't control the environmental side issues of fracking, or all the MANY social costs which our idiot society refuses to factor into energy exploitation. (I think we should honestly try to do that -- lots less growth, but much more of a chance toward sustainabiity -- but we won't do that since it is expensive and our society is clearly run by greedy idiots. Can you imagine what going to, say, the full $15 or $20 cost of crude oil with the real impacts factored in -- even if you did it over a decade, would do to the global economy? Maybe once green tech abounds, but that could take 30 years.) The social costs are valid, but I don't see how raving about it at OF2 is the point. If you want to fix it, rave at the evil idiots on Capitol Hill and donate to earth-friendly organizations, for all the good it will do you vs. TPTB and all their money/power.

Recently (I think just after the (speaking of idiots) NYT article distorting the economics of Fracking came out) there was a LOT of rebuttal from informed sources on CNBC and in the MSM.

The industry has strongly objected, and words like Ponzi Scheme were clearly over the top. (Issues - both financial for NG and environmental - clearly; that does NOT equate to Ponzi Scheme).

The fact that companies like Chesapeake Energy are diversifying into more profitable crude drilling to balance the financial interests long term is an example of how there are more alternatives than to defraud everyone. Our on Maddog's mention of Shell Inc. capping proven NG wells and waiting for prices to rise, instead of selling more NG into this depressed market sounds like another very logical alternative.

....

Net - I don't see anything new here. OF2 is right that there is LOTS of oil. I continue (as far as I can see) to be right that although there is lots of oil, getting at the new sources is getting more expensive (including environmental risks) over time -- meaning it doesn't magically solve our problems, but provides a path toward potential sustainability vs. short term doom.

There have been plenty of industry experts in various MSM sources backing up OF2's basic assertion about plentiful oil shale deposits via fracking or horizontal drilling. Let me guess -- they are ALL scam artists?

How is it that your over-the-top name calling makes you more credible than OF2?

[ian807]

Somewhere, there's a guy selling penny stock based on this.

Be that as it may, let's say there's 5 billion recoverable barrels there. Heck, for amusement's sake, let's double it to 10. The USA uses between 8 to 9 billion barrels a year. The world uses 30 billion or so barrels a year. So at most, this would extend our current use in the USA by a year or a little under 4 months if it's sold on the open international market unless we start conserving in a big way (See that happening any time soon?).

The gas reserves are large enough to be useful, and we'll use them. Of course, gas fields deplete much more rapidly than oil fields and if we start substituting gas for oil, we use it up that much faster.

Still, let's not knock it. Every little bit helps. A few billion barrels here and there and perhaps we can put off the great unpleasantness another decade.

[copious.abundance]

OF2, didn't see you over at Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush where the shale-gas business was debunked ...

Um, since you don't, like, pay attention, we're talking about oil here, not gas. Granted, it will produce some gas along with the oil, but that's not the point of drilling this shale (and it isn't the point of this thread).

You and Shorty (under his various aliases) were always biggest proponents of these schemes, promoting the plays with almost religious fervor ("So much excitement! ") and have ardently resisted any and or calls for restraint and perspective. I have personally called you out as a shill, scam artist, cornucopian dreamer, schemer, grifter, liar, and cheater. Now the truth is apparent to all but the most deluded or corrupt. What do you say? You still scamming this crap. Don't you have any shame?

Here's what I have to say: Coming up next in the phenomenon shown in the graph below - The Buckeye State!

[copious.abundance]

Yeah. Hundreds of thousands of acres of damaged economies ...

Damaged economies???

Au contraire mon capitan, northeast Ohio's economy will BOOM because of this! Thousands of rural Ohio landowners will get nice, fat royalty checks once the oil starts flowing, and they'll happily drive around in fancy new Ram pickup trucks and Mercedes C-Class cars. Factories in the northeast Cleveland metropolis will be humming, turning out oil field equipment, steel for all those thousands of needed wells, plastic and steel for pipes - you name it! See one example above re: article about Youngstown factory. Restaurants and malls will be crowded with well-paid oil workers. The housing market will boom. The good times will be a-rolling! I'm so excited, I can't wait!

[copious.abundance]

Here ya go - this will be Cleveland, Akron, Canton and Youngstown 5-10 years from now. So exciting!

Boom times in south Texas, thanks to the Eagle Ford shale

Across cities in sparsely populated South Texas, hotels have no vacancies, small apartment complexes are full, and mom-and-pop RV parks like the Costillas' are popping up (and filling up) seemingly overnight to catch the overflow of oil field workers pouring into the area ... And a ripple effect has created opportunity, in turn, to cash in by providing services for the new residents for everything from cleaning to catering or washing and folding laundry ... Hope Costilla saw signs of the boom for months. She and her husband couldn't get a table at a restaurant - too crowded. Homes that previously couldn't sell at any price started renting for $1,000 to $1,500 a month. The H-E-B store where she's a checker began running out of staples such as bread and milk, and oil company executives started handing her their business cards in case she knew someone who caters, cleans or does laundry - a task in high demand because the only Laundromat in town is perpetually crowded. She heard of people making more than $1,000 a day catering food for oil field workers. ...

[vision-master]

Did you remove the stain in yer pants yet oily?

[copious.abundance]

Some amazing news!

On Gulfport Energy's latest investor presentation, they had a slide comparing the Ohio Utica to the Bakken and Eagle Ford. ... And it looks like this might be better than the Bakken! At least in terms of OOIP per section (a square mile). 36 million barrels compared to the Bakken and Eagle Ford's 9 million barrels!!

LINKY ( PDF, pg 8 )


So much excitement!