Oil and Gas Growth in Canton, the Utica Capital

Our focus early in 2013 is the midstream: Pipelines and processing plants that connect Utica wells to customers

We come to work every day at the Utica Capital, Canton, Ohio, to help encourage the growth of the oil and gas business. Here is an update:

Business Development Seminar

After three successful Oil and Gas Business Development Seminars in 2012, which explained upstream exploration and production, we set out this year to understand more about midstream. Our first seminar of 2013 drew 160 participants on April 9 at the Alex Krassas Center in Canton. It featured explanations of some of the biggest midstream infrastructure projects in the Utica.

The importance of the midstream infrastructure buildout cannot be exaggerated. The most active Utica Shale exploration area is yielding a mix of methane (natural gas that heats your home) and several natural gas liquids, sometimes called wet gas. These NGLs include ethane, butane, propane and pentane.

These NGLs often are more valuable on the market than methane. Many can be used as the building blocks for plastics and chemicals needed in all aspects of life in this country. But each has to be separated from the other at a series of processing plants.

Without the pipelines to take this gas and NGL mix away from the wells, and without the processing plants to separate each component into a pure form, the energy resources in the Utica cannot be effectively brought to market.

And until the energy is brought to market, the landowners who have leased their land to exploration companies such as Chesapeake Energy will not earn their royalty checks, and the companies themselves will not earn return on their considerable investments.

The speakers at our midstream seminar were:

• Brent Breon of Caiman Energy, which is involved in a $1.5 billion midstream infrastructure buildout with partner Dominion under the name Blue Racer. Dominion, of course, is parent of Dominion East Ohio Gas.
• Scott Hallam of Access Midstream, which is the former Chesapeake Midstream. Access and two partners, Momentum M3 and EV Energy Partners, is building a pipeline and processing plant network that was announced at $900 million early last year. Evidence of this project can be seen in the processing plant under construction in the vicinity of Routes 6 and 644 in southern Columbiana County, just south of Hanoverton.
• John Durand of Crosstex Energy, which is investing in Utica pipelines, a rail hub and an Ohio river port to ship NGLs to refineries and chemical plants in the South.
• Matt Henderson of the Penn State Marcellus Center for Research and Outreach, who spoke about business opportunities to suppliers of goods and services.
• Kyle Quillen of Agile Network Builders, who talked about this high-speed communications company’s ability to serve remote areas of the Utica with fiber optic-quality communications.
• Joe Barone of Shaledirectories.com, the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce’s partner in producing the seminar and three others held in 2012. Joe offered specific coaching to businesses on how to market to the oil and gas industry.
• Kathleen Steere of Stark State College, who talked about the rapid development of curriculum at the two-year college to meet the workforce needs of the energy companies.
• Todd Hawkins of Tesla NanoCoatings, who explained how his use of carbon-tube technology was creating a new corrosion-fighting substance to protect pipelines and other equipment that is exposed to corrosive environments.

View the 2013 Midstream Seminar Presentations