Cos Lining Up Leases for Marcellus Shale Properties

Cos Lining Up Leases for Marcellus Shale Properties

Monday, April 11, 2011
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
by Bill Utterback, Beaver County Times, Pa.

The race to find natural gas in the Marcellus shale shelf below Beaver County has become a paper chase.

Since Jan. 1, nearly 1,100 properties have been leased by two gas-producing firms, according to the Beaver County Recorder of Deeds records.

Only one new well has been drilled in 2011, and only three well-drilling permits have been issued, according to state Department of Environmental Protection records.

Overall, Beaver County has produced nearly 1,800 leases with natural gas firms and two operating wells, one struck in Marion Township in 2009 and the other struck near Lime Kiln Road in South Beaver Township in January.

The ratio of wells to leases could soon increase.

"There's no question the natural gas is there ... and the extractable amount may be greater than the original estimates," Kent Moors, a gas and energy analyst with Duquesne University's Institute for Energy and the Environment, said.

"They'll come to get the gas," Thomas Anderson, a geologist and natural gas specialist with the University of Pittsburgh. "They may not get to all those properties, but they get to a lot of them."

Moors said that "information" and a depressed natural gas market may have temporarily quieted production in Beaver County.

"There are a couple of things going on ... there's been a difference of opinion as to where the sweet spots are," Moor said, adding that as more information about Pennsylvania's potential is gathered, more firms are transferring resources from other parts of the country to Pennsylvania.

The Chesapeake Appalachia firm, headquartered in Tulsa, now holds lease agreements for more than 1,300 Beaver County properties, more than 1,000 of them acquired since Jan. 1, more than 75 since April 1.

In 2011, Chesapeake has entered lease agreements for property in Big Beaver, Brighton Township, Center Township, Chippewa Township, Darlington Township, Greene Township, Hanover Township, Hookstown, Industry and Potter Township, according to the recorder of deeds records.

Range Resources, based in Fort Worth, has nearly 500 lease agreements in Beaver County, 57 of them acquired in 2011. Range Resources has signed property deals in Big Beaver, Brighton Township, Daugherty Township, Franklin Township, Hanover Township, Independence Township, Marion Township, Raccoon Township and New Sewickley Township in 2011.

Together, the two firms have reserved properties in 17 Beaver County communities in less than four months.

Range Resources has acquired leases on 153 properties in Allegheny County since Jan. 1, including 47 in Findlay Township, 41 in North Fayette Township and 25 in Moon Township.

"It could be that (firms) have been busy (drilling) in other areas. They have their hands full right now," Anderson said. "They're doing a ton of drilling in Washington County right now, but that doesn't mean that the natural gas in Beaver County isn't very, very attractive to them."