Halcon Resumes Drilling in Trumbull County
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Houston-based Halcon Resources Corp. has resumed oil and gas exploration in Trumbull County, more than a year after the company declared it would suspend its program in the northern tier of the Utica shale in eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania, according to the latest data from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
ODNR reissued a permit to Halcon June 10 so the company could drill a horizontal well in Warren Township on the Lutz property just off Layer Road. ODNR lists the status of that well as “drilling.”
Halcon was first awarded the permit June 10, 2013.
It’s the first well Halcon has drilled in the northern Utica since the company announced it would suspend its program here in April 2014. Shortly after, BP America announced that it too would pull out of the northern Utica, citing poor production from the wells it drilled in Trumbull County.
Halcon has eight producing wells in the northern Utica – two in Jackson Township in Mahoning County and six total in Vienna, Mecca, Lordstown, and Hartford townships in Trumbull County.
According to the latest data from ODNR, Halcon’s northern Utica wells are producing at rates well below average for a Utica horizontal well. The company’s best producing well is the Kibler 2-3H unit in Lordstown, which during the first quarter of 2015 produced 59.4 million cubic feet of natural gas and 1,378 barrels of oil. A second well, the Kibler 1H, produced 45.7 million cubic feet of gas and 1,174 barrels of oil.
The other wells ranged in production from 7.7 million cubic feet to 35.8 million cubic feet of natural gas during the quarter.
Average production for a Utica well during the first quarter stood at 209.3 million cubic feet, ODNR reports.
Meanwhile, overall permit activity and rig counts continued to decline throughout the Utica.
ODNR issued just five permits – including Halcon’s – for the week ended June 13, the agency reported. The rig count stood at 18, down from 23 the previous week and well below the 53 rigs that operated in the shale play at the beginning of the year.
Chesapeake Exploration LLC, a subsidiary of Chesapeake Energy Corp., received four permits to drill in Monroe County.
To date, 1,932 horizontal well permits have been issued in the Ohio portion of the Utica shale. Of that number, 1,504 are drilled and 904 are in production.
No new permits were issued for Mercer or Lawrence counties in western Pennsylvania, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
