Coterra Energy (Cabot O&G) | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Pennsylvania | Susquehanna County
Coterra’s GDS Subsidiary Lays Off One-Third of Pa. Workforce
Coterra Energy announced a large layoff of employees at its GDS (GasSearch Drilling Services) Marcellus operation yesterday. GDS was founded in 2006 as a subsidiary of Cabot Oil & Gas (now Coterra Energy). GDS is based in South Montrose, PA, and provides services including pad site development, impoundment construction, water hauling, trucking, light equipment rental, and roustabout services supporting Coterra’s natural gas drilling. GDS employs approximately 170 people in Susquehanna County at various locations. Yesterday, 55 GDS employees got a pink slip.
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Two weeks ago, 16 new permits were issued to drill in the Marcellus/Utica region. Last week, May 20-26, the number increased by two to 18. Two drillers tied for the top prize for most new permits. Chesapeake Energy received five new permits, all of them for drilling in Sullivan County, PA. Ascent Resources also received five new permits, with four of them to drill in Jefferson County, OH, and one in Guernsey County, OH. Antero received three permits for drilling in Wetzel County, WV. EQT Corporation got two permits to drill in Washington County, PA. Range Resources, Olympus Energy, and INR each got a single new permit (see below for where).
Anti-fossil fuelers and some residents with portions of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) traversing their land are flooding the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) with comments asking the agency to delay permission for MVP to be placed into service. The latest in-service date MVP outlined to FERC in a recent request for startup permission is “early June” (see 
On Monday, the socialists of the European Union (EU) adopted into law a new regulation aimed at tracking and reducing methane emissions within the energy sector. The onerous new reg introduces new requirements for measuring, reporting, and verifying methane emissions. The reg mandates operators to measure emissions at the source and submit monitoring reports verified by independent bodies. What does this have to do with the Marcellus/Utica? If drillers want to export LNG to any country that’s part of the EU (many M-U drillers do export LNG to Europe), they will have to comply with these new regs. According to MiQ, an independent methane emissions measurement and certification authority, its certification is the only one that satisfies the EU’s new regulation.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that the natural gas consumed for electricity generation this summer in the United States will reach near (or match) the record high set last year. In the agency’s May 2024 Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), EIA forecasts natural gas consumed to generate electricity will average 44.7 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in the U.S. during the peak summer months of June through August, matching the record high set in the summer of 2023. Over the past few years, the balance of sources of electricity generation in the United States — especially in the summer — has shifted to more renewables and natural gas and less coal.
According to Bloomberg News, commodities traders are “bracing for a record-smashing summer that will shake up commodities.” Bloomberg falsely states that people around the world “are already living through the havoc brought on by global temperatures that are breaking records.” Bloomberg ominously warns, “It’s about to get a lot worse.” Nothing sells like bad news, even if the bad news is blatantly false. In a hilarious statement in the same article, Bloomberg attributes high inflation under Joementia to global warming. Talk about sleazy and sick. Based on assumptions that Mom Earth will toast this summer, Bloomberg predicts natgas prices will jump by 50% this summer, to $4/MMBtu, because of all the extra electricity required for air conditioning.
In a companion post today, we brought you Bloomberg’s prediction of $4 natgas this summer based on the false premise of wild, scorching heat from man-made global warming. Whatever. This post contains predictions by analysts with J.P. Morgan for the price of natural gas for the rest of this year and into 2025. J.P. Morgan’s predictions are grounded in reality, not wild speculation like Bloomberg’s. J.P. Morgan predicts the Henry Hub price to average $2.88 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in 2024 and $4.75 per MMBtu in 2025. They break it down quarter by quarter…
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