American Oil and Gas Reporter - August 2015 - 150

groups faced, she said both needed to
capitalize on their opportunities, such as
building infrastructure and developing
new markets. However, there is a lack of
predictability and certainty in commodity
prices, while there also is a dire need for
infrastructure, she listed.
The MSC has several priorities for Pennsylvania this year, Clayton Wright said, including opposing a severance tax and
revising draft final surface operation (Chapter
78) regulations proposed by the Department
of Environmental Protection, tracking municipal ordinances, and "taking that bigpicture of natural gas, and localizing it."
She said that like the coalition, VOGA
should emphasize the economic benefits
of oil and gas production. "That way,
you don't have to get into the politics."
She showed a graphic with three concentric circles. She described the innermost
ring as the direct effect of oil and gas
production, the middle as the supply
chain effect, and the outermost ring as
consumption. She said the rings represented a rippling effect, with the larger,
outer rings showing a wider impact, yet
it was important to emphasize each ring
because each benefited a unique party.
She also described any oil and gas association's outreach efforts as a four-

piece puzzle. The four parts are advocacy,
awareness, coalition-building, and education. Through emphasizing and building
on this four-part structure, Clayton Wright
said MSC "started to turn from being on
defense to being on offense."
When the coalition wanted to start
spreading its message, she said it chose
billboards over television advertising.
"Not only are TV ads expensive, they
even can be counterproductive," Clayton
Wright reasoned. "Billboards are a less
expensive alternative and you are just as
likely to reach your audience."
She said MSC's billboards concentrated
along routes to and from major cities, including the capital, Harrisburg. Each billboard includes a short, but industry-positive message, and directions to MSC's
website, where people can find more
messaging material. "We wanted to show
legislators their constituents and their
stories," she explained.
Regarding other forms of outreach media, Clayton Wright suggested that "buying
radio ads on conservative talk shows can
rally the base of industry support." She
added that social media such as Twitter
and Facebook could help an association
"know what the opposition is doing, and
help to neutralize its message."

She also emphasized the importance of
coalition building within the broader business community, both on local and state
levels. "We worked with the chamber of
business to start a coalition against Pennsylvania's new energy taxes," she related.
"We are working very closely with the
manufacturing sector because it understands
that much of its resurgence (is the result
of) of affordable, local shale resources."
In its polling, MSC found the industry
had more support than it realized, although
Clayton Wright said there still were too
many who were neutral or who thought
the industry's benefits came at a large
cost. "We found that 50 percent of Pennsylvanians believed oil and natural gas
were good, but that extracting and processing them was polluting the environment," she revealed.
"Look at these opportunities and challenges, and see how they are similar to
your own," Clayton Wright concluded.
"See if there is anything in here that
would benefit your association-anything
you can learn from. I can tell you that
MSC has yet to achieve its goals, but we
are a lot better off now than we were.
It's a necessary, but difficult process, but
maintaining good public relations is the
best thing our industry can do."
❒

INDUSTRY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
FROM PAGE 145

"There is no particular reason, structurally, why the oil should be in that
western part of Breckinridge County. Basically, it is on a nice uniform monocline,
so there is no structural reason for that
oil," he said.
Nuttall added that data indicated the
shale in that area was immature. Rocks in
the Illinois Basin's central part generated
most of the produced hydrocarbons in the
formation, but these western Kentucky
wells were on the basin's margin, he

added.
The Rogersville is another interesting
Kentucky play, Nuttall assessed. Eastern
Kentucky operators have targeted the
deeper formations since the 1920s, but
were looking for conventional reservoirs.
When the Homer Field began production,
many questioned the oil source's location,
and he said a research project was
launched. It showed a thick section of
the Cambrian Conasauga formation underlying the field, which included the or-

Rudy Vogt (left), president of
the Kentucky Oil & Gas Association, visits with Katie Heyob,
a master's candidate at Ohio
State University, after her presentation at KOGA's annual
meeting. Heyob discussed natural mechanisms that could
reduce the impact of additives
used in the fracturing process.

150 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

ganic-rich Rogersville Shale.
"That report was published in 2004,
but since 2007, everyone was saying that
the shales themselves could be reservoirs
because we now had the technology,"
Nuttall described. "And so operators are
targeting that."
He added that most KGS information
on the Rogersville was based on the 2004
data. Several more well reports are expected in the next six months, Nuttall
said.
The Berea is one of Kentucky's older
reservoirs, first drilled in 1879, Nuttall
said. In 2011, operators began drilling
shallow horizontal wells with smaller
slickwater fracture stimulations and by
2014, 58 percent of the commonwealth's
oil production came from eastern Kentucky. He added almost all of the increase
was produced from the Berea.
"The slickwater fracture stimulations
in the Berea really brought about this
renaissance in Berea production," Nuttall
praised. "Most of them are in old fields
in parts of Lawrence County, going up
into the Greenup County area. Almost
all are producing oil. This has made
Lawrence County the number one oilproducing county in Kentucky."
r

American Oil and Gas Reporter - August 2015

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