Marcellus Drilling News

Hydrogen | Industrywide Issues | Statewide WV | West Virginia

WV Submits Official Proposal to Get Federal $2B Hydrogen Hub
March 23, 2022March 23, 2022

Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia are all scrambling to form working groups or other alliances in an attempt to be THE state chosen for one of four regional hydrogen hubs funded by the recently passed so-called Biden infrastructure bill (see WV, OH, PA Compete Against Each Other to Attract $2B Hydrogen Hub). The new law provides $8 billion for four regional hydrogen hubs. It’s a safe bet one of those hubs will be located in either PA, OH, or WV. Out of the gate early in the race is WV. On Monday WV’s U.S. Senators Shelley Moore Capito and Joe Manchin, along with Congressman David McKinley and Governor Jim Justice, submitted the West Virginia Hydrogen Hub Working Coalition’s official application (full copy below) to the U.S. Department of Energy. This is the first (very important) step in the process to select winning hydrogen hubs funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Read More “WV Submits Official Proposal to Get Federal $2B Hydrogen Hub”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Dominion Energy | Electrical Generation | Energy Services | Equitrans/EQT Midstream | Industrywide Issues | Pipelines

MVP Protester Wins SEC Support to Force Dominion Vote on Gas Assets
March 23, 2022March 23, 2022

Environmental radical Freeda Cathcart, who was once arrested for resisting and interfering with a U.S. Forest Service agent at the site of tree cutting for Mountain Valley Pipeline in Giles County, VA (see MVP Tree/Pole Sitters Select Wrong Area, Tree Cutting Continues), has successfully convinced the Bidenistas sitting on the Securities and Exchange Commission to allow a Dominion Energy shareholder vote to force the company to describe “how it is responding to the risk of stranded assets of planned natural gas based infrastructure and assets as the global response to climate change intensifies.” The vote is aimed at forcing Dominion to lessen and eventually dump, all natural gas-fired power generation the company operates.
Read More “MVP Protester Wins SEC Support to Force Dominion Vote on Gas Assets”
CNG/LNG | Exporting | Industrywide Issues | Pipelines

Prospects of Sending M-U Gas to Canadian St. John LNG Not Good
March 23, 2022March 23, 2022

In early March MDN brought you information from the Toronto Financial Post that said the Ukrainian crisis has put East Coast Canada LNG export facilities “back on the map” (see Ukraine Crisis Injects New Life into East Coast Canada LNG Exports). That post talked about two potential LNG export facilities. One of those facilities, Saint John LNG, is currently an LNG import facility. We have more details about that facility from RBN Energy, including information about the pipelines that connect to it. Our question is whether or not there’s a realistic chance that M-U molecules could and would ever flow to the Saint John facility for export.
Read More “Prospects of Sending M-U Gas to Canadian St. John LNG Not Good”
Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | Regulation

NJ Gov Wants to Force Use of Electric Boilers – 500% Higher Rates
March 23, 2022March 23, 2022

NJ Gov. Phil Murphy

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is a “national leader in forcing residents and businesses to pursue climate goals yielding virtuous feelings but resulting in no meaningful change in global or even national greenhouse gas warming.” Here’s the latest Murphy climate debacle. Murphy’s Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has floated a plan forcing all entities using industrial and commercial boilers to power those boilers with electricity instead of natural gas by 2025 (three short years away). The DEP claimed it would only raise costs for operators by maybe 4-5%. As it turns out, someone at the DEP made a math error. The cost of using electricity over natural gas for the boilers, admits the DEP, is actually an increase of 400-500%! Whoops.
Read More “NJ Gov Wants to Force Use of Electric Boilers – 500% Higher Rates”
BP | Coterra Energy (Cabot O&G) | Energy Companies | EQT Corp | Industrywide Issues | Research | Shell

Natural Gas Marketed in North America Remains Even in 4Q21
March 23, 2022March 23, 2022

Each quarter NGI (Natural Gas Intelligence) runs the numbers and publishes a list of the 25 top natural gas marketers in the U.S. (or in the case of 4Q21, the top 22). These are not necessarily the top producers of natural gas, although in some cases they are, but the top sellers (vendors, jobbers) of natural gas. NGI’s latest quarterly report for the fourth quarter of 2021 shows overall the biggest sellers of natgas stayed dead even with the marketed gas from 4Q20, breaking a four-year trend of year-over-year declines in the amount of gas sold. That’s a good thing. As part of the analysis, NGI also provides numbers for all of 2021, showing marketed gas went down 2% overall in 2021 over 2020.
Read More “Natural Gas Marketed in North America Remains Even in 4Q21”
Industrywide Issues

Wells Fargo Bank #1 Fossil Fuel Lender – $28B in Deals Last Year
March 23, 2022March 23, 2022

It seems that every post we write about banks with respect to fossil fuels is about banks that have decided to stop lending and participating in loans made to fossil fuel companies. It’s time to start talking about the good guys–the banks that continue to make fossil energy loans. Sitting at the top of the list, according to the lefties at Bloomberg, is Wells Fargo Bank. In 2021 Wells Fargo put together (as “bookrunner”) some $28 billion of fossil energy deals. The bank is going great guns in 2022 too. It’s time to give Wells Fargo a great big “attaboy” for continuing to fund fossil fuel projects.
Read More “Wells Fargo Bank #1 Fossil Fuel Lender – $28B in Deals Last Year”
Antero Resources | Ascent Resources | Butler County | Chief Oil & Gas | Coterra Energy (Cabot O&G) | Diversified Energy | Doddridge County | Energy Companies | Gulfport Energy | Jefferson County (OH) | Marshall County | Monroe County | Ohio | PennEnergy Resources | Pennsylvania | Sullivan County | Susquehanna County | Tug Hill Operating | Weekly Permits | West Virginia

20 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Mar 14-20
March 23, 2022March 23, 2022

We’re back to covering just a single week of new permits issued. The good news is that the PA DEP’s reporting site was still up and online over the past week, so we have numbers! In Pennsylvania, 11 new permits were issued last week, with Coterra Energy (formerly Cabot Oil & Gas) getting the lion’s share (nine permits), all of them in Susquehanna County on two well pads. Ohio issued seven new permits last week, with Gulfport Energy scoring four of the seven, all on the same pad. West Virginia issued just two new permits, one to Antero Resources and the other to Tug Hill Operating.
Read More “20 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Mar 14-20”
Best of the Rest

Other Stories of Interest: Wed, Mar 23, 2022
March 23, 2022March 23, 2022

NATIONAL: New oil related billboard erected in Times Square; U.S. imports more petroleum products than crude oil from Russia; Biden is in climate denial; INTERNATIONAL: Assessing reliability of estimates of greenhouse gas intensity for crude oil; Oil market players struggling for answers; EU leaders to agree to jointly buy gas, LNG this year.
Read More “Other Stories of Interest: Wed, Mar 23, 2022”