Two brothers-in-law with long-time ties to Cape May County recently launched oil and gas technology startup, ShaleCast. If your eyes glazed over upon seeing “oil and gas,” not so fast--the fruits of the industry might be closer than you think. 

Over the last several years, even the most casual observer has more than likely noticed the signs of an energy revolution. If the natural gas commercials and political debates have yet to catch your ear, no doubt your wallet has noticed the resulting lower gasoline prices. As of this morning the average price for a gallon of gas in Cape May, NJ was hovering around $1.81. You can probably thank the shale revolution for it.

This energy revolution has been enabled by hydraulic fracturing, colloquially known as “fracking.” Fracking is the process of injecting a mixture of 99% sand & water and 1% select chemicals, at high pressure, into shale rock to extract the oil and natural gas it contains.

Because most of the drilling has been done on private lands, billions of dollars from land leases, royalty payments and mineral purchases have been made to landowners and this has infused communities with unprecedented revenue. The boost has lifted the fortunes of local businesses, governments, school districts and more across the U.S. More recently though, the boom has turned to bust as drillers became victims of their own success, and overproduction worldwide put the industry in a tailspin.

Into these shifting industry fortunes, co-founders and brothers-in-law Benjamin Hall and Keith Mauck launched ShaleCast.com, a platform that forecasts income from oil and gas sales for the roughly 8 million mineral owners created by the shale boom in the United States. Benjamin Hall is a former resident of Wildwood Crest who graduated from Wildwood Catholic High School in 1994 and currently lives in Chicago. His brother-in-law, Keith Mauck, originally from Indiana, is a resident of Wildwood Crest. Both are entrepreneurs whose venture into the oil and gas business began as a family affair eight years ago.

“When we were first approached to lease our Louisiana family farm, we were out-of-state landowners without any oil and gas expertise. Through that process, we noticed thousands of other families were getting terrible contract terms and not maximizing the opportunity. Ultimately, that realization lead us to launch ShaleCast,” said Hall, who serves as CEO of ShaleCast.

Mineral owners with a stake in a producing well can get a free income forecast on ShaleCast by searching for their well’s name on the site’s homepage. Behind each well forecast lies a massive database and algorithm that crunches all the historical production figures to produce royalty forecasts. After providing some additional information, the resulting dashboard provides a 15-year forecast for the well.

“Since the beginning of the shale boom, landowners have asked the question, what is the shale revolution worth to me? The thought of having an asset of this size and importance and not knowing its value would be incomprehensible in most other industries. No one sells a used car without a Blue Book value or puts a home on the market without comps from the neighborhood, but every day that’s what landowners who sell their minerals have been doing up until our launch,” said Mauck, Co-Founder of ShaleCast and Publisher of GoMarcellusShale.com.

According to Hall, ShaleCast’s goal is to assist the royalty owner in making life decisions. “Our goal is to modernize mineral ownership so owners can manage their mineral assets more like their stock portfolios and see the impact of commodity prices to make financial decisions that will improve their future.”

ShaleCast currently forecasts all oil and gas wells in the Eagle Ford, Haynesville, Marcellus and Utica shale plays in the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Louisiana and Texas.

http://www.capemaycountyherald.com/community/business/article_30ede...