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EQT Finally Completes Acquisition of Tug Hill and XcL Midstream
Nearly one year after EQT announced a deal to buy privately-owned Tug Hill Operating’s West Virginia shale assets for roughly $5.2 billion (see Confirmed: EQT Buys Tug Hill’s THQ Appalachia for $5.2 Billion), the deal is finally done. EQT announced yesterday it had closed on the purchase (revised price ~$4.6 billion), adding roughly 90,000 acres and 800 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of production in West Virginia to EQT’s existing (massive) portfolio. EQT also scores an extra 145 miles of natgas gathering pipelines.
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Using data from several government agencies, the Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia, Inc. (GO-WV) published its annual Gas Facts report last week. According to the report (copy below), West Virginia natural gas production increased 6% to 2.8 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 2022. WV has moved up from fifth to now fourth largest natural gas producer in the country, providing 10% of the entire country’s natural gas supply! Combined severance tax revenue from natural gas, oil, and natural gas liquids contributed 70% (nearly $714 million) of the over $1 billion allocated to the State General Revenue Fund for fiscal year-end June 30, 2023. The O&G sector in WV employs more than 17,000 direct jobs in the state, with an average salary of $93,739. According to a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, indirect jobs in WV related to the O&G industry number over 73,000 and contribute nearly $13 billion to the state’s economy.
Let’s face it: Josh Shapiro has been a major disappointment as Governor of Pennsylvania. He promised the moon to voters–that he would be both pro-gas and anti-gas at the same time. Some believed him, but we didn’t. Each week, new information comes along that reveals Shapiro’s true nature as a radical leftist Democrat. Shapiro said during the campaign he didn’t like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax that forces coal- and gas-fired power plants to close (see 
This is deeply disturbing and angering. The State of New Jersey passed a law in 2020 (signed into law by Phil Murphy) that requires forced teaching (i.e., brainwashing) of so-called climate change (man-made catastrophic global warming and fossil fuels are evil) to the state’s children in grades kindergarten through 12th. We have descended into full Communism. The brainwashing even happens in (of all places) ceramics class! How do you work the fairy tale of global warming into ceramics? By sculpting a crayfish on a clay tile, a species supposedly endangered by global warming. No wonder the students in other countries routinely do better than our students. This is true insanity.
The casual reader of energy-related stories can’t miss the meme spread by “mainstream” media day in and day out. That meme is that renewable energy (wind and solar) is taking over. The world is on the cusp of electrifying everything. Nasty and polluting oil and gas are yesterday. O&G’s day is over and any company that continues to invest in O&G is heading for insolvency. Except it’s all a lie. A new study by powerhouse consulting firm Ernst & Young (EY) finds “US hydrocarbons to be a viable core asset amid the energy transition.” Translation: Oil and gas aren’t going anywhere.
The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research is spending $750,000 in precious grant money, giving it to Penn State University Distinguished Professor of Dairy Nutrition Alexander Hristov to see if he can figure out how to make cows burp less. When cows burp, they burp methane, like fire-breathing dragons do. That methane (called enteric methane) escapes, like a fugitive, into the atmosphere where supposedly it toasts Mom Earth into a cinder. No, we’re not joking. That’s what the left believes. Some nonprofit is spending three-quarters of a MILLION dollars to try and figure out how to make cows burp less. It would be funny if not so tragic.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Tellurian CEO sees road to success for Driftwood LNG; NATIONAL: Shale merger mania heats up amid falling rig counts; INTERNATIONAL: UK charges former OPEC president with bribery; Talks start to avert strike at Australia’s biggest LNG terminal; Reaching 2050 net zero demands large & rapid oil consumption drop.