American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2015 - 111

ConventionSection: Kentucky Oil & Gas Association
Signing the modernization act into law
doesn't mean the end of the work group,
Vogt says, since state officials see it as an
effective way to move other issues forward.
"We really tried to protect the state's
smaller operators, of which I am the
poster child," Vogt says. "My company
has only 12 employees. I am committed
to keeping them employed. Without some
pushing, a lot of these regulations could
be hard on smaller operators. I really
was pleased with where we started with
the DNR workgroup and where we finished. Had a lot of the initial ideas presented to the work group gone through
it, it would have been devastating to
smaller operators."

Strong Relationship
One advantage Kentucky producers
enjoy is that the industry has a long-standing
strong relationship with landowners and
the public in both the Appalachian and Illinois basins, McNeill assesses. Although
there have been some reports of antiindustry opposition forming in the state, he

points out those groups largely are based
outside Kentucky's producing regions.
"It is in the Central Kentucky area,
defined by the Lexington-Louisville corridor, where you are starting to see some
grass-roots opposition coalesce," he says.
"But, in eastern Kentucky, and Lawrence
County, which is where the Berea Sandstone is, the general sense is that the area
is ready to embrace the economic development potential and tax revenue base
that could be generated from enhanced
development."
Kentucky's operators are taking advantage of new techniques and technology
to open the commonwealth's oil and gas
plays, McNeill says. Association members,
especially the larger independents, have
drilled horizontally for years as they targeted the Lower Devonian, a dry gas
formation, he adds. Most of those completions have used nitrogen fractures.
Now, as attention shifts to the Berea
Sandstone, McNeill points out operators
are pairing high-volume hydraulic fracturing with horizontal drilling.
"A high-volume Berea fracture job in

Kentucky is 300,000-400,000 gallons of
water, so we are not approaching the
levels of the Utica or the Marcellus," he
says. "But still, the technology has made
its way to Kentucky. As a result, we are
seeing an enhanced level of production
from wells that have been completed
using these techniques."
That attitude applies to developing the
Rogersville Shale, Vogt says. "Hydraulic
fracturing in the state dates to the 1950s, so
the technology is not new for Kentucky
operators," he points out. "But the scale of
it is new. My last fracture job was 8,000
gallons of water. When you start talking
about a half million gallons, that is a big
scale change. I think that is pretty typical
of Kentucky operations. The depth of the
horizontal drilling in the state has been a
few thousand feet down and a few thousand
feet out, versus 10,000 feet down and 5,000
to 10,000 feet out in other states."
❒

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JUNE 2015 111

American Oil and Gas Reporter - June 2015

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