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Baker Hughes U.S. Rig Count Drops 6 @ 613, M-U Drops 1 @ 40
Last week, the Baker Hughes U.S. rig count lost six rigs, down to 613, the lowest the count has been since February 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 last week when we crashed through the floor and went lower, down to 613. The Marcellus/Utica lost one rig last week and now runs 40 rigs. Pennsylvania lost one rig and now runs 21 rigs; Ohio (which lost one rig two weeks ago) remained static with 11 active rigs; and West Virginia remained the same with 8 rigs.
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Two of our favorite companies in the Marcellus/Utica, one a driller (CNX Resources) and the other an oilfield services company (Deep Well Services), have partnered in a joint venture, creating a new company called AutoSep Technologies. The new JV uses groundbreaking new technology developed in CNX’s New Technologies unit that targets flowback, the “junk” that comes out of the borehole for the initial month or two after a well is drilled and fracked. Flowback includes methane and other hydrocarbons, sand, water, and fracking chemicals. All of the junk needs to be cleared so the well can start producing clean gas or oil. CNX has found a way to clean the junk that captures the methane (doesn’t escape into the air), is cheaper than current methods, and (most importantly) is safer. The process is being patented.
In 2018, Equitrans Midstream, the builder of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), proposed to extend MVP (when it’s done) by an extra 75 miles from the current terminus in Pittsylvania County, VA, to Alamance County, NC, to provide natural gas for heating and electric generation. The 75-mile extension is called MVP Southgate. Last year, Equitrans asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to extend Southgate’s project timeline an extra three years. FERC agreed in December (see 
Yesterday, we brought you the great news that Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), the 303-mile, 2.0 Bcf/d pipeline from Wetzel County, WV, to Pittsylvania County, VA, is essentially done (see 
We never thought this day would arrive! We hoped. We prayed. But finally, it’s (almost) here. The 303-mile, 2 Bcf/d Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is almost ready to begin operation. On Monday, Equitrans Midstream filed a letter (below) with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) requesting a May 23 startup date for the pipeline. MVP (Equitrans) says the pipeline will be in the ground, buried, and ready to begin on May 22 (called “mechanically complete”). Get the champagne on ice and ready…
Pennsylvania State Senator Katie Muth’s attempt to block a proposed frack wastewater treatment plant in Dimock (hours away from her own district) has bombed out yet again. Muth tried to challenge and block a permit for the plant, an effort which was mostly rejected in court in June 2022 (see 
Last week, the Baker Hughes rig count regained a couple of rigs; for the first time in five weeks, the count has gone up instead of down. The count went from 617 active rigs two weeks ago up to 619 last week. Since last October, the national count has gone as low as 616 and as high as 629. And that’s it. No higher and no lower. The Marcellus/Utica lost one rig last week and now runs 41 rigs. Pennsylvania remained constant with 22 rigs; Ohio lost a rig and now operates 11 rigs; and West Virginia remained the same with 8 rigs.
We think our headline about says it all. We’ve seen this type of thing many times before — out-of-town (actually, out-of-state) “protesters” show up and disrupt legal construction activity because, well, because they’re looney tunes. They’ve drunk the global warming Kool-Aid and are convinced, against all reason and rationality, that using natural gas and oil is going to destroy Mom Earth. This time around, it was a married couple well past their prime, a couple of old hippies making silly asses of themselves. They sat inside a huge plywood structure made to look like an opposum, blocking access to a Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) construction site in Virginia for several hours.
In November 2022, one of the ten natural gas storage wells at the Equitrans Rager Mountain Gas Storage Area in Jackson Township, Cambria County (in Pennsylvania), began to leak. Equitrans is the owner/operator of Rager Mountain. The well leaked roughly 100 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of gas into the atmosphere (see 
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. ExC 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 (see 
The government screws up just about everything it touches — ever notice that? A perfect example is a water testing program set up by then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro in December 2022. In August 2022, Shapiro, who AG at the time, announced that he had finally bullied Energy Transfer into pleading “no contest” (meaning they don’t admit to a darned thing) in a so-called criminal case against the company for a series of accidents affecting construction for both the Revolution and Mariner East pipelines (see 
SLB (formerly Schlumberger) is the largest oilfield services (drilling and fracking) company in the world. It does a lot of work in the Marcellus/Utica. SLB announced yesterday a deal to buy a smaller rival, ChampionX, in an all-stock deal valued at $7.75 billion. ChampionX specializes in chemistry solutions (fracking fluids), artificial lift systems, and equipment and technologies that help companies drill for and produce oil and gas. Little did we know until we checked, but ChampionX has a major presence in the Marcellus/Utica region via supply chain vendors who sell its products and services. So this combination, which has national and international implications, also has the power to affect drilling and fracking here in the M-U.