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Marcellus Drilling News
  • Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA

    Shapiro DEP Tweaks Reg to Publish Frack Chemicals Before Drilling

    January 29, 2024January 30, 2024

    Big, breathless news coming from the do-nothing Josh Shapiro gubernatorial operation last Friday. THE MAN has made an edict to those waskily Marcellus drillers: You WILL disclose the chemicals you will use to frack and drill any given well you receive a permit for. Lights! Fireworks! Loud claps of thunder (and an echo) as if GOD has spoken. It is commanded from on high. Except…Marcellus drillers *already* make those disclosures! There is no “there” there in Shapiro’s edict. He’s (sorry for laughing out loud) jumping up and down, making a spectacle of himself over nothing. Literally. He’s hoping nobody will notice that he’s just served up a cheese puff instead of a sirloin steak.

    1/30/24 UPDATE: We have included a full statement issued by the Marcellus Shale Coalition. See below.
    Read More “Shapiro DEP Tweaks Reg to Publish Frack Chemicals Before Drilling”

  • Industrywide Issues | Statewide WV | Taxation | West Virginia

    NatGas WV Property Tax Mistake a Hot Mess – Counties Out Millions

    January 29, 2024January 29, 2024

    Last summer, MDN told you that the new system to assess valuations of shale wells in West Virginia had turned into a mess (see WV NatGas Property Tax Rule Still a Mess, 303 Cases Appealed). That mess has just gotten messier — what we call a hot mess. A “clerical error” by a third-party vendor in calculating the new formula for natural gas property tax valuations caused newly producing natural gas wells to be undervalued, leading to the loss of millions of dollars for the counties that see the most shale drilling.
    Read More “NatGas WV Property Tax Mistake a Hot Mess – Counties Out Millions”

  • Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA | Taxation

    PA PUC Publishes Fee Schedule for Marcellus Impact Fee/Tax 2023

    January 29, 2024January 29, 2024

    In December, Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office (IFO), the agency charged with providing revenue projections along with impartial and objective analysis of fiscal, economic, and budgetary issues for the citizens and legislature of Pennsylvania, provided its best guess as to how much revenue the PA impact fee (i.e., severance tax) will generate from shale wells drilled or flowing in 2023 (see PA IFO Predicts Impact Tax Revenue to Drop 38% in 2023). The IFO bases its projections on the number of wells and the assessment for each well according to how many years it has been drilled. The agency that publishes the fees to be assessed for each well is the PA Public Utility Commission (PUC). The PUC published the official list of impact fee charges for 2023 in last Saturday’s PA Bulletin.
    Read More “PA PUC Publishes Fee Schedule for Marcellus Impact Fee/Tax 2023”

  • Beaver County | Energy Companies | Ethane | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Processing Plants | Shell

    Shell PA Cracker’s First Birthday – One Unit Still Not Online

    January 29, 2024January 29, 2024

    The Shell ethane cracker plant in Monaca, PA (Beaver County) just hit a milestone: It’s been up and running (in a manner of speaking) for one year. Except during that one year, quite a bit of the time was spent NOT running due to various technical and equipment issues. According to a review done by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “the plant’s polyethylene units — the three clusters of pipes and vessels that turn ethylene into lentil-sized plastic beads — were down as much as they were running in that first year.”
    Read More “Shell PA Cracker’s First Birthday – One Unit Still Not Online”

  • Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Chester County | CNG/LNG | Exporting | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania

    Chester, PA Mayor Claims PA LNG Export Project for Philly “Dead”

    January 29, 2024February 2, 2024
    Stefan Roots

    The mayor of Chester, PA (a suburb of Philadelphia), Stefan Roots, boldly proclaimed over the weekend that an LNG export project planned for his community called Penn LNG is “dead in the water.” He bases his claim on Joe Biden’s recent declaration that all LNG export projects are “on pause” (see White House Makes it Official – Biden Declares War on LNG Exports). The radical-left Roots has been against the Penn LNG project from the beginning. No surprise there — radical is as radical does.
    Read More “Chester, PA Mayor Claims PA LNG Export Project for Philly “Dead””

  • Industrywide Issues | Ohio | Pennsylvania | Research | Statewide OH | Statewide PA | Statewide WV | West Virginia

    Baker Hughes U.S. Rig Count Adds 1 @ 621, M-U Even @ 42

    January 29, 2024January 29, 2024

    The Baker Hughes rig count gained another rig last week. The count went from 620 active rigs two weeks ago to 621 last week — up a single rig. It went up a single rig the week prior, too. And that’s about where we are. We have floated between 620 and 625 for all of December and January — dipping to 619 for one week during that period. It appears we’ve hit the bottom and are stable. The Marcellus/Utica remained constant last week with 42 active rigs, after PA added two rigs the week before.
    Read More “Baker Hughes U.S. Rig Count Adds 1 @ 621, M-U Even @ 42”

  • CNG/LNG | Industrywide Issues

    World’s Largest Cruise Ship Sails from Miami – Powered by LNG

    January 29, 2024January 29, 2024
    Icon of the Seas

    Did you happen to watch the NFL playoff game yesterday between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens? Great game! If you watched the commercials, you would have seen a commercial (about three or four times) for the launch of the world’s largest cruise ship — Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas. The new ship, which set sail from Miami, Florida, on Jan. 27, can carry roughly 10,000 people! Some 7,600 of them are passengers, and the rest are crew. The ship, which cost $2 billion to build, has 20 decks with 40 restaurants, bars and lounges. The best part (for us) is that it’s all powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG).
    Read More “World’s Largest Cruise Ship Sails from Miami – Powered by LNG”

  • Best of the Rest

    Other Stories of Interest: Mon, Jan 29, 2024

    January 29, 2024January 29, 2024

    OTHER U.S. REGIONS: New LNG export capacity upends TX/LA natgas fundamentals; NATIONAL: Baker Hughes expects drop in North America drilling spend; INTERNATIONAL: OPEC+ plans to keep oil production cuts unchanged; Germany’s economy crumbling after chasing green dream.
    Read More “Other Stories of Interest: Mon, Jan 29, 2024”

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