American Oil and Gas Reporter - February 2017 - 90

ConventionSection: Ohio Oil & Gas Association
those tenants simply to please crowds
that never will like us in the first place."
Winter Meeting
Announcing that journalist and author
Robert Bryce will deliver the meeting's
keynote, Bennett promises "a very highcaliber schedule of speakers" for OOGA's
winter meeting, which begins the morning
of Wednesday, March 8, with meetings
of OOGA's Government Affairs, Political
Action, and Environmental committees.
OOGA's Board of Trustees is scheduled
to meet Wednesday afternoon.
Bryce, who is a senior fellow at the
Manhattan Institute, has written Power
Hungry: The Myths of Green Energy and
the Real Fuels of the Future as well as
Smaller Faster, Lighter Denser Cheaper:
How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong.
Joining him in OOGA's speaker lineup,

Bennett reveals, are Porter Bennett, president and chief executive officer of Ponderosa Advisors LLC, who will provide
an economic analysis on the oil and gas
industry, and Jim Elliot with the law firm
Spilman, Thomas & Battle, who will update OOGA on lawsuits challenging the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's
methane regulations.
A panel consisting of representatives
from Jobs Ohio, Shale Crescent and Clean
Energy Future will discuss efforts to grow
natural gas markets, Bennett continues,
while Jeremy Smith with MarkWest Energy will examine the various uses for
natural gas liquids.
Other winter meeting highlights, Bennett mentions, include a merger and acquisition update along with a Marcellus
and Utica production analysis, the annual
DeBrosse Memorial Report on oil and
gas activity in Ohio, and state legislative,

regulatory and legal reports.
Bennett says the winter meeting trade
show will be open from 8 a.m. to 5:30
p.m. on Thursday, March 9, and from 8
a.m. to noon on Friday. The first of three
open business sessions will run from 9
a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Thursday; the second
is set for 1:00 to 4:30 p.m. Thursday;
and the final business session will be 9
a.m. to 11:45 a.m. Friday.
Thursday's activities conclude with
the Ohio Oil and Gas Producers PAC,
and trade show receptions running concurrently from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., followed
by the President's Reception from 5:30
to 7:30. OOGA's concluding luncheon
and winter meeting keynote address are
scheduled for noon to 2 p.m. Friday.
"We always are ready for a successful
winter meeting in March," Bennett assesses. "That is something we always
look forward to."
❒

Midstream Critical To Developing Utica
A half dozen years ago, Ohio producers
began to realize they were sitting atop a
vast new resource in the Utica Shale that
had the potential to transform the state's
production profile, recalls Ohio Oil &
Gas Association Vice President Steven
M. Downey.
What they also realized, he adds, "The
infrastructure was not there to fully
develop the Utica if we did not have gas
processing, fractionation and gathering,
as well as long-haul pipeline systems to
get us out of the basin."
So OOGA's Commerce Committee,
which Downey chaired at the time, decided
to develop a midstream subcommittee to
encourage development of that midstream
infrastructure. As vice president of business
development and marketing for EnerVest
Operating LLC, which is Ohio's largest
conventional oil and gas producer, Downey
admits his initial motivation was to enable
gas producers to benefit from the sale of
liquids in which they traditionally had
been unable to participate.
However, a couple things quickly became clear, he says. "We figured out
(midstream development) was so important
that it needed to be elevated to full committee status. That is how the OOGA
Midstream Committee started."
As companies such as MarkWest Energy,
Williams, Utica East Ohio, Momentum
Energy, and Blue Racer Midstream began
90 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

announcing plans for midstream facilities,
the Ohio Department of Natural Resources
and Environmental Protection Agency were
making plans to regulate them as public
utilities. "Our outlook went from purely
economic to figuring out how to ensure
regulation was fair and equitable so these
guys could build their facilities," he says.
Especially concerning, observes Brent
Breon, vice president of business development for Blue Racer Midstream, who
earlier this year succeeded Downey as
chairman of the Midstream Committee,
was a push within the state to require
processing and gathering facilities to
obtain approval from the Ohio Power
Siting Board, whose review process could
take up to two years.
"You had world-class entities wanting
to build facilities that were getting really
scared they were going to have to wait
two years, yet producers were drilling
wells with no outlet," agrees Downey.
Breon says OOGA worked with lawmakers to pass SB 315 in 2012, which
established construction standards for unconventional wells and hydraulic fracturing
rules, but also included pipeline safety
provisions that he describes as "typical
things prudent operators would do anyway:
cathodic protection, participating in a
damage prevention program and line
marking, and construction practices within
Class 1 or rural locations."

Looking Ahead
Today, Breon says, the Midstream
Committee continues to monitor state
regulation, but is turning more of its attention to federal issues such as efforts
by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials
Administration within the U.S. Department
of Transportation to push interstate transmission safety requirements onto gathering
systems.
"From the standpoint of current regulations, we think we are in a comfortable
spot," he assesses. "Companies should
be able to construct pipelines and be prudent in protecting them, but not have
burdensome regulations that are unnecessary or costly.
"We think there is a good, bright-line
definition between interstate transmission
pipelines and gathering pipelines, and
what are considered production pipelines,"
Breon continues. "Our effort now is to
try to maintain the status quo and keep
interstate pipeline safety regulation out
of the gathering industry."
Other regulatory concerns for the Midstream Committee, Breon says, include
protections afforded the northern longeared bat under the Endangered Species
Act. Although the U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service listed the bat as threatened in
2015, it subsequently declined to designate
any critical habitat for the species because

American Oil and Gas Reporter - February 2017

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