EQT Provides MiQ-Certified LNG Cargo to Europe in World First
In May, the socialists of the European Union (EU) adopted into law a new regulation aimed at tracking and reducing methane emissions within the energy sector (see MiQ Claims Its Cert the Only One to Meet New EU Methane Regs). The onerous new reg introduces new requirements for measuring, reporting, and verifying methane emissions. The reg mandates operators to measure emissions at the source and submit monitoring reports verified by independent bodies. If drillers, including those from the Marcellus/Utica, want to export LNG to any country that’s part of the EU (many M-U drillers export LNG to Europe), they must comply with these crazy new regs. According to MiQ, an independent methane emissions measurement and certification authority, its certification is the only one that satisfies the EU’s new regulation. EQT, the largest natural gas producer in the U.S. (exclusively working in the M-U), uses MiQ and is about to send an LNG cargo to Germany as a test of the MiQ certification system. It’s a worldwide first. Read More “EQT Provides MiQ-Certified LNG Cargo to Europe in World First”
Toby Rice, CEO of EQT Corporation, currently the largest natural gas producer in the U.S., spoke yesterday at the Gastech event in Houston. Rice expressed his view that the Henry Hub price for natural gas will remain below $3/MMBtu “in the short term.” He also had thoughts on how long companies like his will continue to curtail natgas production. Rice said curtailments will “ease by next year” when more LNG exports begin to pick up. Said another way, Rice expects to continue holding back at least some supply for the balance of this year. 
Chesapeake Energy has gone through some major changes over the past four years. In June 2020, Chessy declared bankruptcy (see 
Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Senate approved Senate Bill (SB) 1058 that would repeal the state’s participation in the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an illegal carbon tax enacted via executive order by then Gov. Tom Wolf in 2019 (see 
An extensive article appearing in Mountain State Spotlight, a liberal publication aimed at publishing “sustained outrage” stories about happenings in West Virginia, boldly proclaims, “The natural gas boom was supposed to bring prosperity to West Virginians in poverty. That didn’t happen.” The article focuses on several individuals who are living (metaphorically) without a pot to pee in, claiming natgas was supposed to make them fat, dumb, and happy but didn’t. So why didn’t that happen? 
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In February, the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) met to award contracts to drill under (not on) several Ohio state parks, including 5,700 acres of the 20,000-acre Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County (see 
The radicalized Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), in partnership with the equally radicalized Moms Clean Air Force (MCAF), is joining forces with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and (very oddly) McGill University, which is located in Montreal, Quebec (Canada) to launch a project to identify and “facilitate remediation of” orphan and abandoned oil and gas wells across Western Pennsylvania. The group will fly specially outfitted drones about 100 feet above ground in Clarion, Venango, and McKean counties in western PA to try and identify and catalog orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells. 
In yet another attempt to deflect attention away from Kamala Harris’ extreme position on fracking (she wanted to ban it completely everywhere in 2019), mainstream news continues to publish stories on other Pennsylvania energy topics. For example, yesterday, the New York Times published a story with this headline: “Big Energy Issue in Pennsylvania Is Low Natural Gas Prices. Not Fracking.” We forced ourselves to read it all the way through. We “took one for the team,” so you won’t have to. The story started out fine and made some legitimate points. The NYT article is (more or less) right as far as it goes. The problem is that the article doesn’t go far enough. It stops with only half of the story told. Here at MDN, we tell you the whole story—all of the facts, not just some of the facts. 
On Friday, June 14, Equitrans Midstream, the builder and majority owner of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) that runs from Wetzel County, WV, to Pittsylvania County, VA, announced the pipeline had, after a decade of planning and building, finally begun to flow Marcellus/Utica molecules (see 
In September 2019, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gave its blessing to Eagle LNG to build a small LNG export facility project at a site on the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, Florida (see 
A group of 10 Republican U.S. Senators, led by the great Ted Cruz (from Texas), have introduced a new bill titled “The Safe and Secure Transportation of American Energy Act.” The proposed law expands criminal penalties to cover vandalizing, tampering with, or disrupting the operations or construction of a pipeline. The Senators say current laws criminalize eco-terrorism and the destruction of infrastructure but don’t go far enough and don’t have “enough teeth” when it comes to acts disrupting the operation or construction of a pipeline. Like the situations we saw with protesters constantly delaying the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia. 
Hidden in last Friday’s weekly Baker Hughes official rig count is a big story happening in the Marcellus/Utica. From the 30,000-foot level, Friday’s latest rig count report appeared just fine. The national rig count, which counts all oil and gas rigs, added an astonishing eight rigs to the count after languishing for months — the biggest weekly gain in a year. Very nice. The M-U count maintained at 33, down from a few weeks ago, but still not completely terrible. But then you open the hood and look at the engine, and something startling happens. Pennsylvania is losing rigs, bleeding rigs, like crazy—four rigs gone in the last two weeks. And West Virginia is gaining those lost rigs. Typically, there’s no one answer as to why these things happen. Our best guess is that Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), coming online from the northern panhandle of WV to southern Virginia, carrying natgas to markets outside the immediate region for higher prices, has much to do with this realignment.