Radicalized Sierra Club Files Cove Point Appeal in DC Court
The Sierra Club, which may have been founded for good reasons, long ago left the realm of sanity. Sierra Clubbers, as we call them, now live in an alternative universe where clean-burning natural gas and all fossil fuels are from the devil himself. The Clubbers have tried to get multiple LNG (liquefied natural gas) export facilities blocked on the theory that if you cut off the demand you can cut off the supply (i.e. end fracking of new wells). Yeah, crazy. But that’s what they’re trying. Lately they’ve tried to attack and bully both the Dept. of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. With legions of lawyers, they file frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit, hoping if they throw enough legal (ahem) feces against the wall, some it will stick. So far it hasn’t. One of the facilities the Sierra Club continues to fight against is Cove Point LNG in Maryland. They filed an appeal of a Dept. of Energy approval to allow Cove Point to export LNG to non-free trade agreement countries–namely Japan and India. Yep, the Sierra Club doesn’t want us to help out Japan or India. They’d rather have us help Saudi Arabia and Qatar, apparently. After the appeal went nowhere, the Clubbers have no sued in the uber-liberal D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Thing is, that very same court recently handed the Sierra Club a defeat in a similar case…
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Oilfield services company Mammoth Energy Services, headquartered in Oklahoma City, OK, operates in both the Utica Shale and Permian Basin. Mammoth offers services like “completion and production services, natural sand proppant services, contract land and directional drilling services and remote accommodation services.” Mammoth is a baby company, formed in 2014, but already booking $243 million in revenue for the 12 months ended June 30th. In October, Mammoth announced an initial public offering (IPO) hoping to raise roughly $150 million (see 
MDN first told you about IMG Midstream in August 2014 (see 
While the worldwide Baker Hughes rig count slide back a bit in October, from 934 in September to 920 in October, the rig count in the U.S. once again, for the fourth month in a row, went up. The average U.S. rig count for October was 544, up 35 from the 509 counted in September. However, the rig count was down 247 from the 791 counted in October 2015–so we still have a long ways to go. The Marcellus/Utica rig count was up for the third month running. In October the M/U rig count went up by 4 with 3 additions in PA (now 25 rigs) and 1 in WV (now 10 rigs). OH stayed even running with an average of 14 rigs…
Weatherford International is the fourth largest oilfield services company in the world, employing some 44,000 people. They have a branch office in Canonsburg, PA (Pittsburgh area) with major operations in the Marcellus/Utica. By comparison, Weatherford competitor Halliburton is the #2 largest oilfield services company in the world. A strange thing happened to Weatherford in September 2015. The public company floated new shares of stock and new IOUs (i.e., convertible notes) hoping to raise $1 billion in cash. But a few hours after they announced the offering, they withdrew it because “while investor interest was strong for this offering” the price those investors were willing to pay for the new stock and notes was not anywhere near what Weatherford wanted (see 
The energy industry in our country is complicated and takes a while to wrap your brain around just how it works. Especially the utility industry. Companies that produce and then distribute electricity (and natural gas) are in some cases regulated by the government–meaning what they charge is strictly controlled–and in some cases not regulated. Some local utilities produce the electricity, via a nuclear plant, or coal-fired generating plant, or natural gas-fired plant, as well as distribute that electricity to customers. Other utilities just distribute the electricity. And still others just produce the electricity. Sometimes producing electricity is regulated by the government (i.e. price controlled) and other times it is not. Is your head spinning yet? FirstEnergy, based in Akron, OH, is one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric systems, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and New York. FirstEnergy owns a variety of regulated and non-regulated power generation plants. Last Friday the company announced it will sell six power generating plants in PA, four of them natural gas-fired plants. The plants being sold are non-regulated. This is part of FirstEnergy’s strategy to become a 100% “regulated” utility in the next 18 months. Which plants are going on the auction block?…
National Fuel Gas Company (NFG) covers the full span of the oil and gas business–from upstream (with its wholly-owned drilling subsidiary Seneca Resources), to the midstream (with wholly-owned subsidiary Empire Pipeline) to downstream (NFG’s natural gas utility service to 740,000 customers in NY and PA). Big company. Diverse operations. Late last week NFG issued what they call their fourth quarter update (everyone else’s third quarter update), covering July through September. NFG’s CEO Ronald Tanski said lower natural gas prices and higher temperatures didn’t help. However, the company improved. In NFG’s 4Q15 the company lost $188 million–but this year they made $37.5 million. That’s a significant $225 million improvement in just one year’s time. However, NFG ended the full year in the red–losing $291 million (an improvement from losing $379 million last year). As for Seneca’s performance, it was a good year overall, with banner production. Seneca’s production was 161.1 Bcfe (billion cubic feet equivalent) in fiscal 2016, an increase of 3.3 Bcfe, or 2%, versus fiscal 2015. Seneca voluntarily curtailed an estimated 34.6 Bcf (billion cubic feet) of net natural gas production in fiscal 2016. Seneca’s average realized natural gas and oil prices, after the impact of hedging, was $3.02 per Mcf and $57.91 per Bbl, respectively, a decrease of $0.36 per Mcf and $12.45 per Bbl, versus fiscal 2015. Below is the NFG update for all of their subsidiaries including Seneca and Empire, along with a copy of the latest PowerPoint slide deck…
CONE Midstream, a joint venture between CONSOL Energy and Noble Energy (get it? CO from CONSOL and NE from Noble Energy) was formed in summer 2014 (see 
Summit Midstream has a small but growing presence in the Marcellus/Utica region largely through purchasing pipeline systems from other companies, including Mountaineer Midstream, Summit’s Marcellus-area pipeline system in Doddridge County, WV, and an interest in Ohio Gathering, a natgas gathering system in service and under development spanning the condensate, liquids-rich and dry gas windows of the Utica Shale in Harrison, Guernsey, Noble, Belmont and Monroe counties in southeastern OH. In 3Q16 Summit lost $215,000 vs. making $21.2 million in the same period a year earlier. The volume of gas pumping through Summit’s pipelines went up in the Utica, a lot–from 42 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) in 3Q15 to 234 MMcf/d in 3Q16 (up 4.5x). However, Marcellus gas volumes decreased year over year from 457 in 3Q15 to 418 in 3Q16, no doubt due to less new drilling in the Marcellus. Here’s a portion of the Summit update…
As we do every month, MDN tracks how many rigs oilfield services company Patterson-UTI Energy reports operating–as a proxy for when/if the drop in rig counts for the Marcellus/Utica will turn around. Patterson operates a number of rigs in the northeast, as well as other areas of the continental United States (and Canada). Month by month Paterson’s rig count has declined over the past year plus–until June (see 
This story reaches back just a bit, but we found it interesting and instructive. On Thursday, Sept. 29, MarkWest Energy gave a tour of its facilities in eastern Ohio. Ethane was one of the big topics of discussion. During that discussion, MarkWest’s vice president of operations, Dave Ledonne, said this about the announced Shell and hopefully soon-to-be announced PTT Global ethane cracker plants: “The cracker plants are the end game. They are what we really need.” What did he mean?…
Last week saw a flurry of activity for the official ribbon-cutting at Panda Power’s very first built-from-scratch Marcellus gas-powered electric plant going online in Bradford County (see 
TransCanada wants all of Columbia Pipeline–and they want it real bad. Canadian-based TransCanada, famously known for wanting to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast, didn’t want to be left out of the most important midstream story of the century, so they bought Columbia Pipeline Group–closing on the sale in July (see 
Lack of pipelines for natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) in the Northeast has very real economic and financial consequences. Yesterday the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce held a program titled “Fueling A Downstream Economy” in downtown Philly. One of the speakers was from petrochemical giant Braskem America Inc. If the name looks familiar, it should. Braskem and their Brazilian parent company Odebrecht are still considering building an ethane cracker plant in West Virginia (see 
You may recall that in April, New York’s anti-drilling governor, Andrew Cuomo, decided he would cave to pressure from radical environmentalists once again and block the building of the federally-approved Constitution Pipeline (see