Range Resources Corp. on Wednesday said its Marcellus Shale production rate has quadrupled from a year ago, reaching the high end of its target.

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According to Scotia Waterous, an analytical firm, the breakeven natural gas price for the Marcellus is $3.25/million btu. The only lower breakeven price is for condensate- rich Eagle Ford at $2.73/million. Range Resources has managed to lower their breakeven price, probably as a function of economies of scale. But the drastic decline in shale gas drilling rig count is also a contributing factor inasmuch as labor and material costs are less now than one year ago. Natural gas prices have been firming up recently with current prices in the $5.25-5.50/million btu range. Two other plays, the Woodford and the Pearsall are clearly uneconomic at today’s prices. Barnett Tier 1 is marginal. Range Resources strong drilling campaign has taken most of the risk from their Pennsylvania holdings and with a low extraction cost structure, the company will make money even as the overall natural gas environment remains fair to poor. With the recent ExxonMobil announcement of the XTO acquisition to reinforce belief in the future of shale gas, the management of Range Resources must be satisfied with decisions in the Marcellus that have brought them to this happy situation.
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Spectra Energy Corp. said Monday its subsidiary, Texas Eastern Transmission LP, reached a deal with oil and gas producer Range Resources Corp. to transport supplies of Appalachian natural gas in the northeastern U.S.

Under the agreement, Texas Eastern will provide a minimum of 150 million cubic feet per day of transportation capacity for Range Resources at the Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania.

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Spectra Energy Corp. said Monday its subsidiary, Texas Eastern Transmission LP, reached a deal with oil and gas producer Range Resources Corp. to transport supplies of Appalachian natural gas in the northeastern U.S.

Under the agreement, Texas Eastern will provide a minimum of 150 million cubic feet per day of transportation capacity for Range Resources at the Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania.

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Clean Water Action accused the state’s Department of Environmental Protection of illegally entering an agreement with Shallenberger Construction Inc, a water infrastructure contractor, to build the plant at Masontown in southwest Pennsylvania.

The plant would dump 500,000 gallons (1.9 million litres) of gas drilling waste water a day into the Monongahela River, violating federal clean-water standards, the group said.

The DEP has failed to control many of the chemicals that are used in hydraulic fracturing, a technique widely used to extract gas from deep deposits beneath Pennsylvania and parts of surrounding states, it added.

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Environmentalists have challenged the proposed construction of a plant that would process waste water from natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania’s booming Marcellus Shale field, an activist group said on Tuesday.

Clean Water Action, a nonprofit, said the plant would discharge drilling waste into the Monongahela River in southwest Pennsylvania without testing for most of the toxic chemicals that form part of the fluid.

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