Chesapeake Energy Corp. is still in love with the liquids-rich Utica shale in eastern Ohio.

It is eyeing Carroll, Harrison and Columbiana counties as Ohio’s “core of the core” where the Oklahoma energy giant will continue drilling for natural gas, oil and other liquids.

Friday marked the first time that Chesapeake had publicly identified those counties as the heart of its drilling plans.

The Utica shale still appears as lucrative as the Eagle Ford shale in Texas, and Chesapeake is “absolutely thrilled” with the early Utica results, CEO Aubrey McClendon said in a teleconference with analysts discussing its third-quarter financial results.

The company envisions drilling up to 4,000 wells on its leased Ohio core area in the next 20 years, officials said.

To date, Chesapeake — the No. 1 player in Ohio — has drilled 134 wells in the Utica shale.

That drilling will produce bigger results in 2013 as new pipelines and processing facilities come online, McClendon said. Read more.

Drilling companies beginning to explore the Utica shale got a piece of good news last week when the U.S. Geological Survey estimated the rock formation in Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states holds enormous reserves of natural gas and oil.

Releasing its first estimate of the Utica, the USGS calculated that the shale formation holds about 38 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, recoverable natural gas, 940 million barrels of oil and 9 million barrels of natural gas liquids such as ethane and propane.

The Utica lies beneath the Marcellus shale, where energy firms have drilled thousands of unconventional gas wells in Pennsylvania in recent years. The Marcellus is considered to be one of the richest natural-gas reserves in the world.

Drillers are just beginning to tap into the deeper Utica. Pennsylvania and Ohio have issued 452 Utica well permits to date, and 178 wells have been drilled, according to the most recent state data — with the most productive located in Harrison and Carroll counties in eastern Ohio.

The geological survey’s Utica estimate covered parts of Ohio, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. Read more.

The odds of an extended boom in Ohio’s Utica Shale gas production just got a lot more favorable.

Two major pipeline corporations and a large diversified energy company are proposing a major new gas transmission line to run 250 miles across northern Ohio.

The large-diameter pipeline would connect with existing transmission lines and storage facilities in Michigan and Canada — linking eastern Ohio’s emerging shale gas fields to customers throughout Ohio, Michigan and Ontario and potentially throughout the Midwest.

The Nexus Gas Transmission line is a joint project of Houston-based Spectra Energy Corp., Enbridge Inc. of Canada and Detroit-based DTE Energy.

The three announced on Tuesday that they had signed an agreement to develop the new transmission line at a potential cost of $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion.

The plan, said Spectra Energy spokeswoman Wendy Olson, would be to use existing gas and power line corridors, minimizing the impact on neighbors and on the environment. Read more.

The energy boom in eastern Ohio could be responsible for producing more than large amounts of natural gas. Area Realtors say the commercial real estate market in Tuscarawas County also is benefiting.

The recent sale of the Riverfront Antique Mall is proof that the commercial real estate market is improving, said James Pietro of Experts Realty, who was hired this year to sell the building.

The property, located at 1203 Front Ave. SW, had been on the market for four years. But, last week, it sold — at asking price.

“It was purchased by a non-oil and gas buyer, but there was a lot of interest from oil and gas companies in the building,” Pietro said. “They’re driving the whole commercial market, which is great.”

Riverfront Antique Mall sold the property to Tusc Riverfront Properties LLC, a Dover holding company, on Aug. 22 for $1.19 million, according to the Tuscarawas County auditor’s office. Read more.

An Energy Analysts International Inc. associate said Monday that Ohio’s Utica shale could become the third-largest such formation to produce oil and natural gas in the U.S., pumping as many as 500,000 barrels of oil a day from vast underground reserves, the Akron Beacon Journalreports.

Senior Associate Steve Fillingham with Colorado-based Energy Analysts International Inc. was speaking at the Northeast Ohio Logistics Conference & Golf Open at Firestone Country Club, where the shale formation under Ohio was the main topic, the newspaper reports. Read more.

STEUBENVILLE – Having watched the oil and gas industry shape their own communities, business owners and government leaders from Western Pennsylvania were in Steubenville Thursday to share their insights into what lies ahead for Jefferson County.

The five-member Boomtown Panel, assembled by the Ohio Valley Oil & Gas Association to help its members understand the opportunities that oil and gas development brings, and what they’ll have to do to benefit from it, convened as scheduled despite a power outage that forced organizers to use a generator for lighting.

Leading the storm-shortened, members-only discussion, held at Eastern Gateway Community College’s Steubenville campus, were Paul Battista, president of Sunnyside Supply Inc. in Slovan, Pa.; Billy Kelly Sr., founder of BX3 Oilfield Supply in Wyoming County, Pa.; Eric Planey, vice president of International Business Attraction for the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber of Commerce and co-chair of the Cleveland-Pittsburgh TechBelt Initiative in Youngstown; Washington County, Pa., Commissioner Harland Shober Jr.; and Dearald W. Shuffstall II, senior vice president of Northwest Savings Bank’s Oil, Gas & Mineral Division. Read more.

Oil and gas leasing can be an exciting and sometimes confusing proposition.  Landowners are now faced with many options when considering different ways to lease their land. Often times landowners are contacted directly by interested brokers or gas companies themselves. While these options can provide quick and easy solution to leasing land they are often not in the landowners best interest. Gas companies understandably often operate with their own interests in mind.

By working with an attorney at Contant Legal Group LLC our clients are able to have the peace of mind that comes with knowing that someone is in their corner.  Using our experience and contacts within the oil and gas industry, and with our clients interests in mind, we are able able to negotiate bonus payments and landowner friendly terms that you will often not find in a typical gas company lease.

Please follow this blog for updates including industry news and a series of posts outlining import lease terms and considerations.

In growing the Mineral Rights Landowners Group North East the attorneys at Constant Legal Group LLC have been holding informational meetings in Ashtabula, Geauga, Lake, and Portage counties for the past several months.  We have been happy to meet many landowners looking for help with their oil and gas leases.  Over the past few months many landowners have indicated that they would like to see a sample lease that we would plan on using for the Mineral Rights Group North East. We are happy to announce that we have drafted a proposed lease that we will be reviewing at our upcoming meetings.

Using our past experience as a building point, we have been very landowner friendly in our approach to drafting this lease.  Not only are we pursuing premium bonus and royalty payments for members of our landowners group, but we have bolstered the proposed lease with many landowners friendly terms.  We look forward to meeting more landowners like yourself and the continued process of growing Mineral Rights Group NE.

Be sure to attend one of our upcoming meetings for more information and the chance to become a member of the most experienced and professional landowners group in North East Ohio.

Mineral Rights Group NE.  Get the most for for oil and gas lease.

Fourteen years after pulling its corporate staff out of Cleveland, BP is reintroducing itself to Northeast Ohio. Not with a skyscraper on Public Square, but with a modest field office in Warren, within striking distance of its stake in Ohio’s Utica shale.

BP chief executive Bob Dudley, on a visit to Cleveland Friday morning, said the quiet beginning could mushroom into something huge. The global energy giant is poised to become a major player in Ohio’s emerging natural gas industry.

“Who would have thought, 20 years ago, that we would be re-entering the production business in Ohio,” Dudley told a gathering of business and civic leaders at the InterContinental Hotel on the campus of the Cleveland Clinic. “Really, we made a new and exciting investment. We’re taking a big play in the Utica.”

In March, London-based BP announced it had begun to secure mineral rights to nearly 85,000 acres in Trumbull County, north of Youngstown. Friday, Dudley said exploration and testing will soon commence and that BP expects to begin drilling next year.

Moments after his presentation, Dudley told The Plain Dealer he anticipates the operation to result in new jobs and a new corporate presence for BP, formerly British Petroleum, which gained its first American foothold in Cleveland a generation ago. Read more.

HOUSTON—America will halve its reliance on Middle East oil by the end of this decade and could end it completely by 2035 due to declining demand and the rapid growth of new petroleum sources in the Western Hemisphere, energy analysts now anticipate.

The shift, a result of technological advances that are unlocking new sources of oil in shale-rock formations, oil sands and deep beneath the ocean floor, carries profound consequences for the U.S. economy and energy security. A good portion of this surprising bounty comes from the widespread use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a technique perfected during the last decade in U.S. fields previously deemed not worth tampering with.

By 2020, nearly half of the crude oil America consumes will be produced at home, while 82% will come from this side of the Atlantic, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. By 2035, oil shipments from the Middle East to North America “could almost be nonexistent,” the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries recently predicted, partly because more efficient car engines and a growing supply of renewable fuel will help curb demand. Read more.