Beaver County | Energy Companies | Ethane | Industrywide Issues | M&A | Pennsylvania | Processing Plants | Shell
Four Bidders Circle Shell’s Monaca, PA Ethane Cracker Plant
For a year and a half, MDN has tracked the on-again, on-again saga of Shell trying to unload its chemicals business — including the $14 billion Monaca (Beaver County, PA) ethane cracker complex that turns Marcellus/Utica ethane into plastic pellets. We first flagged the rumor in March 2025 (see Shocker: Shell Considers Selling Beaver County, PA Ethane Cracker). CEO Wael Sawan confirmed it that August, saying Shell is “not the natural operator and owner of that asset.” As recently as May, Sawan was still saying “maybe.” Now we finally have names. Read More “Four Bidders Circle Shell’s Monaca, PA Ethane Cracker Plant”
A press release from BKV Corporation (NYSE: BKV) last week announced that a Form S-3 registration statement covering 5.3 million shares held by its Thai parent’s power arm had taken effect. It sounds like news. It isn’t. But it sent us back through BKV’s second quarter numbers, and those tell a story northeastern Pennsylvania landowners ought to hear: the Marcellus assets that launched this company are now 10% of its reserves, and they’re getting essentially none of BKV’s growth money. 
A federal appeals court has handed XTO Energy (ExxonMobil’s shale subsidiary) a win in a long-running Western Pennsylvania royalty lawsuit, ruling Monday that XTO did NOT give up its right to push some landowners into private arbitration — even though it spent 55 months litigating the case before it asked. The case is Salvatora v. XTO Energy Inc., a cousin of the Kriley case MDN has also followed. Same defendant, same Pittsburgh courthouse, same plaintiffs’ firm, same complaint: landowners say XTO shaved too much off their royalty checks for “post-production costs” — the gathering, compression, and processing charges that move gas from the wellhead to a buyer. 
A new Penn State study went looking for radium from fracking in southwestern Pennsylvania drinking water. It tested 91 private wells and springs in Washington and Greene counties and found exactly zero samples above the EPA limit — and the radium it did find carries the chemical fingerprint of the rock the water sits in, not Marcellus brine. You wouldn’t know that from Penn State’s press release headline, which falsely blares, “
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Pa. can — and should — support data centers; Fetterman rejects data center and AI ‘doomsdaying’ after Shapiro executive order; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: SpaceX is hiring in natural gas trading for energy needs; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures edge up; The Climate Change scam may be on its deathbed; INTERNATIONAL: Oil retreats while Iran pressure builds.