Nat’l Rig Count Drops 7 @ 583; Marcellus Down 1 @ 24, Utica Even @ 11
The Baker Hughes U.S. national rig count cratered last week, losing seven rigs. The U.S. count is now 583 active rigs, the biggest weekly decline since June 2024. As for the Marcellus/Utica, the rig count was a combined 35 last week, losing one rig it had gained the week before. The Marcellus lost one of the two rigs it had gained two weeks ago and now sports 24 rigs across the three M-U states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. Rigs focused on the Utica remained unchanged at a combined 11. However, there were shifts among two of the three M-U states. PA picked up one rig and now operates 16 rigs. The last time PA operated 16 rigs was last December. The biggest news is that WV, which had operated 10 or more rigs for most of the past year (34 weeks in a row), broke its streak and lost two rigs. WV now operates nine rigs. Read More “Nat’l Rig Count Drops 7 @ 583; Marcellus Down 1 @ 24, Utica Even @ 11”
EQT Corporation wants to build three miles of gathering pipeline to a well pad in Cascade Township, Lycoming County, PA. The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) published a notice in Saturday’s Pennsylvania Bulletin inviting comments on a Chapter 105 Encroachment permit for a three-mile-long, 8-inch natural gas gathering pipeline being constructed on a 50-foot-wide right-of-way. 
In March, MDN told you about a legislative proposal from newly elected West Virginia Governor Pat Morrisey, a measure called the Power Generation and Consumption Act (House Bill 2014) to expand data center development in the state (see 
Democrat politicians, like Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, are predictable. Shapiro, Murphy, and other Dem governors in the PJM Interconnection electric grid region, which includes all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C., have ratcheted up their rhetoric blaming PJM for higher electricity prices, even though it is their own policies that are driving electric prices higher! Always blame someone else for your shortcomings; that’s their motto. 
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. 
In early April, 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 
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 
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) issued its latest monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook yesterday, the agency’s monthly best guess about where energy prices and production will go in the next 12 months. In this latest assessment, EIA boosted its estimates for the Henry Hub price. The agency now expects the HH price to average $4.30 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in 2025, ten cents higher than last month’s forecast. EIA expects the annual average price in 2026 will be $4.60/MMBtu, also ten cents higher than last month’s forecast. The basis for the rise in the price forecast is lower storage levels. Inventories of stored gas are 4% below the five-year average. 
A month ago, MDN told you about a meeting held in northeastern Pennsylvania between newly-appointed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Congressman Rob Bresnahan, several state elected officials, as well as labor and others (see 
Does Donald Trump ever sleep? He just keeps churning out the hits, day after day and week after week. Two days ago, President Trump signed two more executive orders (EOs) and a memorandum related to energy. On April 9, the President issued a new executive order requiring agencies to adopt one-year sunset dates on any existing regulations affecting energy. A second order requires agencies to identify regulations that limit competition. The President also signed a memorandum implementing a previous EO, directing the repeal of unlawful regulations under 10 recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including the Supreme Court decision overturning the “Chevron doctrine.” 
Yesterday, MDN told you about a newly announced data center (and gas-fired power plant) coming to Washington County, PA (see 
A number of data centers have been announced in Licking County, in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. They all will need enormous amounts of electricity to operate. MDN recently told you about three gas-fired power plants planned for New Albany, including one from PowerConneX and two from Williams subsidiary Will-Power (see 
Permitting in Pennsylvania, overseen by the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), has been a hot mess for years. A Chapter 102 Erosion and Sedimentation permit sometimes takes two, three, or even six months for approval — instead of the policy-mandated 14 days. According to a DEP press release from yesterday, that’s all behind us. Last November, DEP Acting Secretary Jessica Shirley and Gov. Josh Shapiro said the agency had *eliminated* the backlog for oil and gas permits (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 
In what has to be the stupidest trade move in history, China will enact an 84% reciprocal tariff on imports of U.S. goods beginning today. The increase was in response to a 104% tariff that the U.S. placed on imports of Chinese goods, which President Trump raised to 125% yesterday. China will LOSE this trade war. However, if the Chinese want to self-immolate their economy and persist with the tariff war, it has the potential, according to RBN Energy, of “destroying” propane and ethane exports from the U.S. Why? 
In 2022, we reported the sad (and angering) news that then-U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a liberal Democrat from West Virginia, had betrayed his WV constituents and the entire country by secretly cutting a deal to vote for Joe Biden’s New Green Deal bill repackaged under the false and misleading name of the Inflation Reduction Act (see