ELLSWORTH — When Youngstown / Warren Regional Chamber President and CEO Guy Coviello was asked if the amount of oil and gas produced in the third quarter of this year by a new horizontal oil and gas well in Ellsworth is good news for the area’s oil and gas industry, he offered two thumbs up.

“The numbers are starting to prove what we predicted a few years ago — that the Utica play will move north and be rich in oil,” he said.

The EOG Ohio-owned well is called the Wehr Spring Valley Farm and is at the corner of state Route 45 and Leffingwell Road. It generated 40,489 barrels of oil and 203,299 MCF of natural gas during the third quarter of this year, its first quarter of production, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

For comparison, there are 10 other horizontal oil and gas wells in Mahoning County. None of them produced more than 339 barrels of oil in the third quarter, and none produced more than 39,899 MCF of natural gas in the third quarter.

A horizontal well is one in which the well is drilled vertically to begin with like traditional wells of the past, but also curves at some point deep underground and then runs horizontally to collect gas and oil along that zone. Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, is a drilling method used to extract oil or natural gas from such wells.

Horizontal wells began to be developed in the Mahoning Valley about a dozen years ago. But neither Mahoning nor Trumbull County has seen the kind of high production numbers as Columbiana County wells have seen in recent years.

Coviello said the Regional Chamber predicted that good production would come north from Columbiana County because of reports from Cleveland State University and “strategic decisions made by companies like Encino Energy. A lot of this is the result of new exploration and production technology.”

EOG in recent months purchased the oil and gas rights in the Mahoning and Columbiana areas that were previously held by Encino. The new Ellsworth well is one of those leases.

Coviello added, “This is why we have been focused on helping the industry with favorable public policy, talent expansion and housing. A lake-to-river pipeline along Route 11 and permitting reform are essential elements to maximizing the play.”

He noted that the Youngstown-Warren area has “already begun seeing the benefits” of increased oil and gas production in the region with the recent expansion” at Vallourec pipe mill in Youngstown.

Last month, Vallourec broke ground on a $48 million investment in a new premium steel pipe threading line to serve the oil and gas industry.

Mike Chadsey, director of external affairs for the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, was asked about the production numbers at the Ellsworth well and said, “The industry continues to be encouraged by the production reports from Mahoning County and the Mahoning Valley overall. The continued investment and activity show that producers in the area are expanding the area of the Utica.”

OIL AND GAS ATTORNEY

Nils Johnson of the Law Offices of Johnson and Johnson of Canfield has worked with landowners and energy companies in the Mahoning Valley for many years. He said this week that production numbers at the Ellsworth well and technology improvements have increased interest in Mahoning County oil and gas. That includes property owners and those who want to buy mineral rights.

“Our phones are ringing off the hook, as it should be,” he said. In the past couple weeks, property owners have been approached about leasing their mineral rights for oil and gas exploration, he said.

Johnson described two ways in which oil and gas companies have improved the ways they hydraulically fracture their horizontal wells in order to improve the amount of oil and gas being produced in wells such as the Wehr Spring Farm well and others in the region.

One has been in the “surfactants that make the water more slippery” in the fracking process, Johnson said. He called it the “secret sauce, the frack fluids that are injected to break open the rock, have been improved greatly. If you inject regular water into shale, there are clays in the shale that will swell and clog everything up,” he said.

“So there are things called clay stays and surfactants that make the water more slippery that are added. And they adjust these (formulas). And over time they get better and better at it. So they have kind of figured out the secret,” he said.

The Richard Wheeler blog on the sunitausa.com website stated in August that the chemistry behind hydraulic fracturing “often gets overlooked,” saying that “Surfactants are key additives that control viscosity, reduce surface tension and improve fluid recovery.” They help unlock hydrocarbons from tight formations and boost well productivity, he said.

Johnson said another way gas and oil companies have improved production from horizontal wells is by changing the “spacing” of stages of fracturing. Instead of “completing the wells every 600 or 700 feet, it’s now every 200 for 300 feet,” Johnson said.

While the production numbers have soared in Columbiana and other counties to the south, the production numbers from horizontal wells in Mahoning County over the past decade have “kind of condemned Mahoning County” from an oil and gas perspective, Johnson said.

Earlier Mahoning County results “weren’t very good. But with the upgrade in technology, a lot of these that seem to have been condemned are springing back to life,” he said.

There is a horizontal well in Ellsworth adjacent to the new Wehr Spring Valley Farm well called the Hendricks well. It produced 343 barrels of oil in the third quarter and 6,295 MCF of natural gas, according to ODNR data.

Johnson said he believes the results at the Hendricks well historically are among the reasons Mahoning County has not been viewed as favorably as some other areas for oil and gas production. He said he believes the Spring Valley Farm results may be changing that.

Johnson said he believes improved methods Hillcorp Energy Co. is employing at horizontal wells it owns in the area helped production numbers at those wells.

“This technology — the experimentation with what frack fluids to use and and how close do you put the stages of the frack process — everybody is upping their game, and that always happens when you move into a new basin and start trying to develop a new rock,” Johnson said.

He said Encino and Hillcorp have been using new methods for several years. He mentioned Encino wells in Hanover and Knox townships in western Columbiana County that have had success using new hydraulic fracturing methods.

The wells he referenced produced natural gas of 200,000, 130,000, 179,000, 151,000, 192,000, 155,000, 147,000 and 164,000 MCF of natural gas in the third quarter, according to a ODNR database. Each well’s oil production was in the 11,000 barrels and less range.

He said such wells are located near wells whose production was “not very good, but they used new fracks and so forth and did pretty well,” adding “This (Utica / Point Pleasant Shale) is one of the big oil and gas fields in the world.”

Johnson said that when a shale play, such as the Utica and Point Pleasant in eastern Ohio, is “developed, it takes time until the geology is understood.” He said, “They run tests and try to determine which frack fluids are going to work best, and that takes a while to work out how much horsepower you need to hit it with,” he said.

Johnson showed a map from the EOG website while discussing the distribution of dry natural gas production areas in the easternmost part of Mahoning County and “wet” gas on the westernmost parts of the county.

The map shows four regions designated by four colors moving east to west with dry gas first, then a section “starting to make some fluids,” with the next section producing “volatile oil,” and the fourth section having “heavier oil.”

Johnson said his advice to property owners considering oil and gas leases is to talk to a knowledgeable attorney and work with neighbors because “that gives you negotiating clout. And if you have a big enough block, they can’t force you to pool.”