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PA’s 5 Biggest Shale Drillers Back in the Game, Permits Soar in June
According to an analysis done by S&P Global Market Intelligence, the five largest drillers in the Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale resumed their drilling in June in a big way. S&P’s analysis shows those five drillers were responsible for 51% of the new drilling permits issued last month, up from 28% of new permits issued in May. Perhaps we know why. The price of natgas at regional hubs in PA rocketed over the past month. At the Leidy Hub in the northeast’s dry gas window (centered on Susquehanna County, PA), cash prices went from a low of 93.7 cents/MMBtu on May 3 to $3.07/MMBtu at the end of June.
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A natural gas-fired electric power plant planned for Charles City County (near Richmond, Va.) by NOVI Energy known as C4GT (Charles City Combined-Cycle Gas Turbine) is now officially dead. NOVI has been working on the 1,100-megawatt project for over six years. An even larger plant planned for the same general area, the 1,650 MW Chickahominy Power Station (a project of Balico) is still in the works (see 
Charlie Melançon is a former U.S. Congressman from Louisiana who played an integral role in rebuilding Louisiana’s infrastructure following the devastation caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Melançon served on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversaw energy policy and environmental quality among other issues. He sees a lot of parallels between his home state of Louisiana and Pennsylvania. Melançon has written an editorial appearing in a major PA newspaper hoping to inform and encourage Pennsylvanians to wake up to the fact that pipelines are the key to PA becoming the energy hub of the northeast. Conversely, without (more) pipelines, PA will not realize its potential. Pipelines are the key. Melançon is uniquely qualified to know.
What’s taking the shale oil industry so long to restart drilling in a big way? Shale oil production remains some 1.4 million barrels per day (15%) below pre-COVID pandemic levels despite oil prices reaching near three-year highs of $77 per barrel since the start of this year. When you dig into the numbers it becomes apparent what’s happening. A lot of shale drilling is now done by big, integrated major oil companies–the Exxons and Chevrons and BPs of the world. Shale production from the majors is 68% below pre-pandemic levels. If you look at the output of smaller independent, non-publicly traded oil drillers, their production is only 2% below pre-pandemic levels.
A few weeks ago MDN brought you the news that three far-left Democrat judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overturned a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval for a long-completed and flowing natural gas pipeline in the St. Louis, MO area–a pipeline that flows Marcellus/Utica gas to residents, businesses, and electric generating plants throughout the region (see 
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the U.S. TVA’s service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. TVA is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the country. We have some GREAT news: TVA is spending over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Crestwood and Con Edison announce closing of Stagecoach Gas Services divestiture; Long Island power plant to be site of hydrogen-natural gas hybrid fuel experiment; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: For affordable electricity, keep natural gas; NATIONAL: US drillers add oil, gas rigs for second consecutive week; INTERNATIONAL: Oil prices in flux as OPEC+ remains deadlocked; Global liquefied natural gas trade was flat in 2020 amid pandemic.