Nat’l Rig Count Adds 2 @ 587; Marcellus Even @ 25, Utica Even @ 13
The Baker Hughes U.S. national rig count crept up again last week, adding two more rigs after adding two in the prior week. The U.S. count now stands at 587 active rigs. The M-U rig count remained the same at a combined 38 last week—the second week in a row. We are at the highest combined M-U count since May of 2024. The Marcellus kept its 25 rigs across the three M-U states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. The Utica kept its 13 rigs across the same three states, mainly in Ohio. PA had 18 active rigs for the second week — the highest number it has had since last August. OH operated 12 rigs for the second week in a row, the most active rigs in the Buckeye State in over a year. WV dropped maintained eight rigs for a second week, the lowest number of active rigs in the Mountain State since last September. Read More “Nat’l Rig Count Adds 2 @ 587; Marcellus Even @ 25, Utica Even @ 13”
We spotted a press release that caught our attention. Duke Energy, owner of electricity utility companies serving 8.6 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky, has just sealed a deal with GE Vernova to buy up to 11 7HA gas turbines to power new gas-fired power plants. That’s in addition to eight 7HA turbines Duke has already purchased from GE Vernova. While the timing for deliveries was not specified, the announcement implies that Duke is getting its turbines sooner rather than later, which is saying something because lately there has been a years-long waiting list for these types of turbines. And yes, there is a connection to the Marcellus/Utica. 
Compressor Station 165 in Pittsylvania County (in southern Virginia) is part of the Transco pipeline network, the nation’s largest-volume interstate natural gas pipeline system. CS 165 is also the endpoint of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which carries 2 Bcf/d of natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica Shale from Wetzel County, WV, to Pittsylvania County, VA. Williams, the owner of Transco, replaced an aging fleet of engines at CS 165 with new turbines that decreased emissions and took up far less space. Enbridge, another major midstream company, is replacing hundreds of flow meters with newer models, which deliver much better information to the company in real-time. 
We have some exciting news to share from Kinder Morgan. As part of the company’s quarterly update, KM provided details about eight pipeline projects that are currently being planned or built. Four of the eight will flow Marcellus/Utica molecules. One of the four is brand new: A new greenfield expansion of the Elba Express pipeline into South Carolina to serve growing demand for natural gas in the state. The $431 million Elba Express Bridge project is designed to provide 325 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of firm transportation capacity. KM CEO Kim Dang said on a conference call that the project is “easily expandable to over a Bcf a day.” 
Cayuga Station, owned by Duke Energy, is a three-unit coal-fired power plant built between 1970 and 1993 in Vermillion County, Indiana. The existing plant produces as much as 1,040 megawatts (MW) of electricity. Duke recently filed a request with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) for permission to build two new gas-fired plants at the Cayuga site to replace the coal-fired units. The combined output of the new gas-fired plants will be 1,510 MW. The plan is to build and commission the gas-fired plants first and then shut down the coal-fired plants. 
We spotted a couple of stories, one by PBS and another by the financial publication Barron’s, covering the “groundswell” of opposition to resurrecting the 124-mile Pennsylvania-to-New York Constitution Pipeline project. According to a letter signed by “233 environmental and community groups,” the proposed pipeline poses “a serious threat to state sovereignty.” Here’s the first thing to note: Enviro-lefties file paperwork to form a “group” of one or two people. It looks great on letterhead to list hundreds of organizations, implying thousands of people. However, it would be more accurate to say “233 individuals” instead of 233 groups of people. At any rate, we will repeat an observation we have made almost since beginning to write the MDN site in 2009: Many in the anti-fracking and anti-pipeline movement are old (sometimes young) hippies looking to relive the glory days of Vietnam protests. 
Last week MDN brought you the great news that Boardwalk Pipeline Partners launched an open season to offer an extra 2 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of capacity along its 5,975-mile Texas Gas Transmission pipeline network that stretches from Ohio to Louisiana, running through Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Arkansas along the way (see 
Just as the pandemic began to unfold in early 2020, Shell pulled out of a 50/50 joint venture partnership with Energy Transfer (ET) to build a new LNG export facility in Lake Charles, Louisiana (see 
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the U.S. TVA’s service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. TVA is the country’s sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility company. In May 2023, TVA announced that it would convert the Kingston Fossil Plant (coal-fired plant) in East Tennessee to a natural gas-fired plant capable of generating 1,500 megawatts of electricity (see 
Last week, MDN brought you the exciting news that THE largest gas-fired power plant in the country, along with a MASSIVE data center complex, will be built at a former coal-fired power plant site in Indiana County, PA (see 
Ten years ago, MDN told you that Chesapeake Utilities, a diversified energy company with businesses in natural gas distribution, transmission and marketing, electricity distribution, propane distribution and wholesale marketing (nothing to do with Chesapeake Energy) had purchased a small midstream company in Ohio—Gatherco, Inc (see 
This is VERY exciting news! Boardwalk Pipeline Partners announced yesterday an open season to offer an extra 2 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of capacity along its 5,975-mile Texas Gas Transmission pipeline network that stretches from Ohio to Louisiana, running through Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Arkansas along the way. According to the announcement, the expanded capacity’s express purpose is to connect Marcellus/Utica gas supplies with growing demand from electric utilities, LNG exporters, industrial users, and data centers in the Midwest and Gulf Coast.