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Baker Hughes U.S. Rig Count Drops 2 @ 603, M-U Even @ 40
Last week, the Baker Hughes U.S. rig count lost another two rigs, down to 603, the lowest the count has been since January of 2022. Since last October, the national count had gone as low as 616 and as high as 629, and that was it — a fairly narrow band. That is, until three weeks when it crashed through the floor and went lower, down to 613. Then, two weeks ago, it was down to 605. And now, it has gone even lower, down to 603. Will we see it go lower than 600?
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Canadian-based Enbridge operates, among many other assets, the Dawn Hub in the Canadian province of Ontario. Located in southwestern Ontario, Dawn, with 288 Bcf (billion cubic feet) of gas storage, provides shippers with direct access to North America’s major supply basins — including the Utica and the Marcellus. The Dawn Hub is connected to a myriad of pipelines, including Rover and NEXUS from the M-U region. The new news is that Enbridge has just launched an open season for “peak storage services” at the Dawn Hub storage facility for service beginning as early as April 1, 2025.
The odious and disgusting Food & Water Watch (FWW) organization (anti-fossil fuel fanatics) has taken point on the left’s effort to block Iroquois Gas Transmission’s plan to upgrade compressor stations in the Empire State. Iroquois’ Enhancement by Compression (ExC) project increases horsepower at three compression stations — two in New York and one in Connecticut — by an extra 125 MMcf/d, flowing more Marcellus/Utica gas into New York City and New England. Less than two weeks ago, FWW announced it had recruited 5,000 drones (no doubt paying some of them) to write comments against ExC in an effort to give New York’s weak Governor, Kathy Hochul, political cover to reject ExC (see 
Pipeline giant Williams, with major assets in the Marcellus/Utica and the owner of the mighty Transco pipeline that flows huge quantities of M-U gas south and southwest, issued its first quarter 2024 update yesterday. CEO Alan Armstrong said in prepared remarks that the company, which operates in just about every region of the country, has “20 high-return projects in execution across our business.” That’s 20 pipeline or storage projects of various kinds, many of them in the M-U region. The projects include “approximately 3.1 Bcf per day of expansion on Transco, which equates to a 15% increase in fully contracted long-term capacity that will be coming online over the next few years.” Transco current flows a maximum of 18.6 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day). It’s going to expand by another 3.1 Bcf/d!
One year ago, MDN told you about Zefiro Methane Corp., a private “methane offsets originator” headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, acquiring a majority ownership stake in Plants & Goodwin (P&G), an OFS and oil well-plugging company located in Bradford (McKean County), Pennsylvania, for an undisclosed sum (see 
Last year in March and then again in May, New Fortress Energy (NFE) confirmed to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it plans to apply for updated permits to build an LNG export plant in landlocked northeastern Pennsylvania (see 
We have to admit we’re disappointed. A section of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) ruptured during pressure testing last Wednesday in Roanoke County, Virginia, according to a report from the state’s environmental agency. A landowner observed sediment-laden water in her pasture on Wednesday morning and reported it to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). “The origin of the sediment-laden water reported in the complaint was from the rupture of a section of pipe during hydrostatic testing the morning of 5/1/2024,” wrote the DEQ expert, John McCutcheon.
We’re sad but not surprised. The last time we reported on Williams’ Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) Project slated for New York was last June when Williams asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a time extension to build it (see 
Last week, the Baker Hughes U.S. rig count lost another eight rigs, down to 605, the lowest the count has been since January of 2022. Since last October, the national count had gone as low as 616 and as high as 629, and that was it. No higher and no lower. That is, until two weeks when it crashed through the floor and went lower, down to 613. And now, it has gone even lower, down to 605. The Marcellus/Utica remained even at 40 rigs after losing one rig two weeks ago. Pennsylvania operates 21 rigs; Ohio operates 11 active rigs; and West Virginia operates 8 rigs.
Antero Midstream, a separate company from Antero Resources (at least on paper, although it is managed by the same people), issued a press release yesterday to announce it had purchased a bolt-on acquisition of gathering and compression assets in the Marcellus Shale for $70 million from Summit Midstream Partners. The assets acquired include two compressor stations and 48 miles of high-pressure gas-gathering pipelines located in West Virginia.
Dominion Energy wants to build a liquified natural gas (LNG) storage facility in Person County, North Carolina, to enhance natural gas service reliability for residential and business customers in the growing region (see 
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the country. In 2021, MDN told you that TVA is spending over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines (see 
UGI, a diversified energy company with midstream (pipeline) operations in the Marcellus and one of PA’s largest utility companies, hinted last summer that it was looking to sell or spin off its propane subsidiary into a new company (see 
Equitrans Midstream, builder of the mighty Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), issued its first quarter 2024 update yesterday. The update came without the typical conference call for analysts, given the impending merger with (takeover by) EQT Corporation. Picking through the prepared updates and filings with the SEC, we discovered some useful bits of news. First and foremost, Equitrans expects to begin operations on MVP on May 31st, provided all necessary directives are issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). MVP’s cost went up yet again, from $7.6 billion, estimated earlier this year, to now approximately $7.85 billion. However, MVP wasn’t the only big news coming from the update.
In late 2015, MPLX (i.e., Marathon Petroleum) bought out and merged in the Utica Shale’s premier midstream company, MarkWest Energy, for $15 billion (see 
As we told you earlier this month, the radicals who run the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) are gearing up to block the Iroquois Gas Transmission system from completing its Enhancement by Compression (ExC) project (see