Diversified Energy | Electrical Generation | Elk County | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania
Diversified Gives Old Natural Gas Wells New Life Mining Crypto
Diversified Energy (formerly Diversified Gas & Oil), with major assets in the Marcellus/Utica region (and other regions too), owns approximately 8 million acres of leases with close to 70,000 (mostly) conventional oil and gas wells. The company’s business model is to buy lower-producing wells on the cheap and find ways to make them more productive. One of the new ways Diversified is looking to make money with old wells is by mining cryptocurrency at wells in remote locations not hooked to a pipeline network. Diversified wants to try it with a well in northwestern Pennsylvania. Unsurprisingly, it’s generating some controversy…
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Back in January, three Marcellus/Utica companies–Chesapeake Energy, EQT, and Equitrans Midstream–launched what the three call the Appalachian Methane Initiative (AMI), a coalition committed to further enhancing methane monitoring throughout the Appalachia Basin, with an aim to reduce methane emissions throughout the region (see 
Two Marshall County, WV landowners with the same last name (brothers? cousins? father/son?) have sued Southwestern Energy accusing the company of “well bashing.” The landowners seek to have the lawsuit certified as a class action. Well bashing happens when drilling a child well near a parent well causes the parent well to lose pressure or become clogged with fracking fluids and sand. Ultimately the child well causes the parent well to become less profitable (i.e., less revenue from royalties for the landowner). The lawsuit says Southwestern is practicing well bashing intentionally–in order to keep lease rates low.
Last September, Spanish oil and gas drilling giant Repsol, which owns the St. John, New Brunswick (Canada) LNG facility, filed an application with the Canada Energy Regulator (CER) to export up to 300 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of natural gas from the St. John facility (see 
New shale permits issued for Mar. 6-12 in the Marcellus/Utica increased by one from the prior week. There were 30 new permits issued in total last week, including 21 new permits for Pennsylvania, 5 new permits for Ohio, and 4 new permits issued in West Virginia. Last week the top receiver of new permits was EQT with 7 new permits–all of them (interestingly) issued in Lycoming County, PA. The second highest number of permits went to Repsol, with 6 permits in Bradford County, PA. Chesapeake Energy came in third with 5 permits for Bradford County, PA.
Venture Global Plaquemines LNG, LLC is developing an LNG export facility in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, approximately 20 miles south of New Orleans. The Phase One of the project is currently under construction, and the first shipment from the facility will happen in 2024. Earlier this week, Venture Global announced it had pulled the trigger on a decision to build Phase Two of the project and has directed the builder to move forward with construction of Phase Two. Both phases, when completely done and running, will export 20 million metric tonnes per year of LNG.
Ascent Resources, originally founded as American Energy Partners by gas legend Aubrey McClendon, is a privately-held company that focuses 100% on the Ohio Utica Shale. Ascent is Ohio’s largest natural gas producer (352,000 leased acres) and the 8th largest natural gas producer in the U.S. The company issued its fourth quarter and full-year 2022 update yesterday. Ascent net production averaged 2.2 Bcfe/d (billion cubic feet equivalent per day) during 4Q, and averaged 2.1 Bcfe/d for the year. The company made $1.6 billion in profit during 4Q, and $361 million in profit for the entire year (versus losing $806 million in 2021).
CERAWeek, happening this week in Houston, Texas, is one of (perhaps THE) premier oil and gas conferences held each year. Everybody who’s anybody attends, except for yours truly. Sometimes it’s the things you (over)hear around the proverbial water cooler at such events that are more interesting than what is said from the stage or in media interviews. For example, Banpu’s BKV, with major assets in the northeast Pennsylvania Marcellus, filed plans with the Securities and Exchange Commission late last year to launch an initial public offering (see 
Two weeks ago, MDN brought you a summary of the latest quarterly update from Chesapeake Energy, which includes guidance (a forecast) for what the company plans to do in 2023 vis-à-vis drilling in the Marcellus and the Haynesville (see 
As we have been reporting, CERAWeek, the world’s premier energy conference, is happening all this week in Houston, Texas. MDN is not there, but there are a number of news organizations on site. One of them is Bloomberg. Yes, we know, Bloomberg tilts left. But sometimes they send reporters out who actually do real reporting, as is happening from CERAWeek. On Monday, Bloomberg filed a roundup/overview of things said at the event–both in sessions and in interviews with Bloomberg reporters. Below is the roundup from Day One of CERAWeek, which includes an interesting summary of Repsol comments that the company is investing close to $1.5 billion in 2023 in exploration and production in North America. Repsol has major operations in the Marcellus–so we can expect an expanded drilling program in Repsol’s northeastern PA assets.