Brooke County | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Regulation | Southwestern Energy | West Virginia
Weirton, WV Rejects Southwestern’s Plan for Well Pad in City Limits
Southwestern Energy, which is one of the biggest Marcellus/Utica drillers, previously applied for a conditional use permit from the City of Weirton, WV that would allow them to build a well pad and drill several wells on it all within the city limits of Weirton. The request came before the Weirton Zoning Board of Appeals in August but the board delayed a decision until this month, September. Following almost three hours of comments and testimony yesterday, the Zoning Board of Appeals unanimously voted down Southwestern’s request–a decidedly unfriendly gesture by the normally gas-friendly municipalities in WV.
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Spire STL is a 65-mile pipeline that connects to and flows Marcellus/Utica gas from the Rockies Express (REX) pipeline to residents and businesses in the St. Louis, MO area. The pipeline began flowing gas in late 2019 (see 
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) under current Chairman Richard “Dick” Glick has intentionally slammed the brakes on approving pipeline projects across the country, including those here in the northeast (something we predicted if Biden were to win the White House). Glick’s excuse for delaying new approvals is that FERC is trying to figure out how to account for mythical man-made global warming when evaluating whether or not to approve a new project. It’s pure horse manure, and a prominent Pennsylvania labor union is calling FERC out on its ongoing delay tactic.
MDN first told you about plans to build the Chickahominy Power Station, a 1,650 megawatt state-of-the-art natural gas-fired power plant planned for Charles City County (near Richmond, Va.) in June 2018 (see 
ExxonMobil is the latest big driller to sign on to a certification program called MiQ which aims to prove the natural gas it produces is “responsible.” We guess all the gas it’s produced for decades until now has been irresponsible, right? Anyway, Exxon plans to initially use the MiQ standard to certify some of the gas coming from its Permian Basin facilities at Poker Lake, New Mexico. Depending on how that goes, Exxon plans to expand the MiQ certification to other plays, including the Marcellus/Utica.
Last week only Pennsylvania issued new permits for new shale well drilling–14 of them scattered around the state. Both Ohio (for the seventh week in a row) and West Virginia did not issue new shale permits last week.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Bluefield State trying to make engineers out of the Northern Panhandle; Proposed natural gas and oil industry taxes would hamper economy; Carl Marrara of PMA discusses RGGI and why it is bad in PA; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Enbridge buys N. America’s biggest oil export hub in $3-bln Moda deal; Echols promoting use of CNG across state; NATIONAL: Merger mania is back in North America’s oil patch; Manchin backs as little as $1 trillion of Biden’s $3.5 trillion plan; Give us regulation, not a new tax, gas groups beg Congress; Executive paychecks at U.S. oil-service firms rebound from crash; INTERNATIONAL: High natural gas prices strain Europeans, weighing on recovery.