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Shale Insight: Lack of Pipes Leaves Appalachia Out of LNG Boom
Expand Energy, the country’s largest natural gas producer, opened Shale Insight 2026 with a price forecast and a warning. Marcel Teunissen, Expand’s Chief Financial Officer, predicted gas prices of $3.50 to $4.00 through 2030 and $4.00 to $4.50 from 2030 to 2035, with plenty of volatility along the way. The warning was that most of the new gas needed to meet Gulf Coast LNG demand won’t come from Appalachia, because there aren’t enough pipelines to get it there. The Haynesville will fill the gap instead. Read More “Shale Insight: Lack of Pipes Leaves Appalachia Out of LNG Boom”
Back in March, a delegation of European heavyweights came to Pittsburgh with their shopping bags, looking to buy more U.S. LNG. Leading the charge was Jovita Neliupšiene, a Lithuanian who now serves as the EU’s ambassador to the U.S. Looks like they found what they were shopping for — in Pittsburgh. Lithuanian state-owned energy company Ignitis has picked a subsidiary of Pittsburgh-based EQT Corporation, one of the largest U.S. natural gas producers, to supply it with 10 cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) — one per year from 2027 through 2036. EQT beat out other bidders in a competitive tender. It’s the first long-term gas supply contract between Ignitis and a U.S. company. Small deal? Yes. Symbolic deal? Very much so. 
Appalachian spot natural gas prices just fell off a cliff. Texas Eastern M-2 — the benchmark hub for Marcellus/Utica gas — dropped 41.5 cents to average $1.245/MMBtu for weekend and Monday deliveries, with some trades printing as low as $1.020, according to NGI (
A small liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Medley, Florida — just outside Miami — is now trucking rocket fuel up the peninsula to Cape Canaveral. Sawgrass LNG & Power announced last Thursday that it has begun supplying LNG to an unnamed “aerospace customer” at the Cape, with the first deliveries completed in August. We’ve written about this plant before, and the interesting question for MDN readers is the same one we asked in April 2025: are any of those molecules ours? 
Precision Drilling, the Calgary-based rig contractor that says it’s the #2 drilling company-for-hire in the Marcellus, announced on Sept. 16 that it will keep buying back its own stock for another year. Yawn, right? Stick with us. The buyback is the boring part. The interesting part is the investor presentation Precision put out this month, which lays out why the company thinks gas drilling for LNG exports will keep its rigs busy for years, and why the price of renting a rig is heading up. 
Four months after pulling the trigger on its $13 billion Commonwealth LNG export plant in Cameron Parish, Louisiana (see 
Back in March, MDN told you that New Fortress Energy (NFE) had entered a voluntary UK Restructuring Plan — the British cousin of a U.S. prepackaged bankruptcy (see 
Duke Energy just handed Marcellus/Utica producers something more useful than another press release. It handed us a calendar. Back in July we told you Duke had picked its sites: two 1,360-megawatt (MW) combined-cycle gas plants on its Davie County, North Carolina parcel, and the largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage facility in company history directly across the Yadkin River in Davidson County (see 
It’s that time of year again. Cove Point LNG, the Berkshire Hathaway-operated export terminal on the Maryland shore of the Chesapeake Bay, is heading into its annual maintenance turnaround — and when the plant goes down, roughly 850 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of demand for Marcellus/Utica gas simply evaporates. MDN has obtained the official notice from pipeline operator BHE GT&S laying out exactly what happens and when. 
A press release crossed the wire yesterday announcing that Edge LNG — the little company that showed the Marcellus how to truck its stranded gas to market — has been sold. Sapphire Gas Solutions of Conroe, Texas, is the buyer. Blue Water Energy, the private equity firm that backed Edge from the beginning, is the seller. And here’s the part that caught our eye: the announcement calls Edge “a Texas-based LNG company” serving customers in the Southern U.S. The Marcellus, where Edge made its name, doesn’t get a single mention. 
A federal appeals court in Washington on Tuesday threw out all eleven claims that environmental groups and Louisiana fishermen filed against Venture Global’s CP2 LNG export terminal and the pipeline that will feed it. The terminal sits 1,300 miles from Washington County, Pennsylvania — but buried in this decision is a holding that should make every Marcellus/Utica pipeline developer very happy. The case is For a Better Bayou v. FERC, No. 24-1291 (consolidated with Nos. 24-1292 and 25-1157). It was argued March 24 and decided August 25. Senior Judge Douglas Ginsburg, a Reagan appointee, wrote for a unanimous panel that also included Judge Karen Henderson (George H.W. Bush) and Judge Patricia Millett (Obama). 
Five Senate Democrats have escalated their fight over Cheniere Energy’s $370 million IRS “alternative fuel” tax payout, formally asking Treasury’s internal watchdog to investigate. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), joined by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Edward Markey (D-MA), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), sent an Aug. 20 letter to Acting Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) Heather Hill. The letter asks TIGTA to determine how and why the IRS decided LNG tankers qualify as “motorboats” under the Alternative Fuel Excise Tax (AFET) credit—and, notably, whether the call was made to reward President Trump’s campaign donors. 
Here’s a number every Marcellus and Utica landowner should tape to the refrigerator: $5. That’s where Colorado-based East Daley Analytics thinks Henry Hub natural gas prices are headed by 2031, and the reason is the LNG export buildout on the Gulf Coast, which the firm says will pull roughly 35 billion cubic feet of gas per day out of the U.S. supply pool by 2035. The catch — and it’s a big one — is that nobody has fully answered where all that gas comes from. East Daley published the analysis Aug. 18 in its Daley Note. Most of it is Gulf Coast and Permian Basin material. But bury the lede, and you miss what matters for the M-U audience. 
On July 1, MDN told you Golden Pass LNG had gone dark — three cargoes out the door and then, on June 29, almost no feedgas flowing into the plant at all (see