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Carnage: U.S. Rig Count Drops Another 10 Rigs, M-U Picks Up 1 Rig
The rig count carnage continues. For the seventh week in a row and the 16th of the last 17 weeks, the U.S. active rig count lost rigs. A lot of rigs. Last week, the number decreased by 10 rigs after falling by 12 for the prior week. The total is now down to 632 active rigs across both oil and gas. Oil rigs have now fallen for a ninth straight month, while the combined oil and gas count has fallen for four straight months. After losing three rigs two weeks ago, the Marcellus/Utica count added one rig last week–in West Virginia.
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An out-of-state, paid protester locked herself to a piece of excavating equipment used to build the Mountain Valley Pipeline early Saturday morning in Montgomery County, Va. She used a sleeping dragon device (arms in a PVC pipe wrapped in duct tape). She was there for seven hours, causing a delay. Virginia State Troopers and Montgomery County Sheriffs finally freed and arrested her. The unnamed protester was charged with a misdemeanor, and bail was set at $2,500. Here’s the thing: She was there protesting the pipeline because it’s fossil energy–yet the device she used, the sleeping dragon, was made from fossil energy! What a dodo bird.
Last summer, Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 2644 was passed into law, becoming Act 96 of 2022 (see 
Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) drills in the Greater Pittsburgh region, in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. Olympus owns a pipeline subsidiary called Hyperion Midstream that builds gathering lines to the company’s wells. Hyperion applied to build a compressor station on a recently approved Olympus well pad in rural West Deer Township (Allegheny County). The PA State Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) will hold a public hearing on Sept. 26 about the proposal. Grab the popcorn.
Columbia Gas of Massachusetts (NiSource) never quite recovered from a series of explosions in September 2018 that occurred with its local delivery pipelines north of Boston (see 
Over the past 12 months, the NYMEX Henry Hub price for natural gas (front month contract) has traded as high as $9.68/MMBtu (August 22, 2022) and as low as $2.01/MMbtu (April 13, 2023). Lately, we’ve been hovering around the $2.50 mark. One of the energy industry’s favorite parlor games is guessing where the price will go over the next year or so. Once a month, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) hauls out its dart board and makes a prediction. Various analysts and consulting/analytics firms chime in from time to time. Today, we have a price prediction through the end of 2024 from a highly respected source: RBN Energy.
Last November, 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. The well leaked roughly 100 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of gas into the atmosphere (see 
East Daley Analytics, based in Colorado, is a consulting firm that specializes in identifying, understanding, and monitoring operational risk throughout the oil and gas value chain. A “Daley Note” published yesterday by the company focused on the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), providing a status update and a couple of intriguing (some might say controversial) comments. East Daley says while Equitrans, the builder of MVP, says it will finish the project by the end of this year, East Daley’s analysts don’t think so. East Daley also says when (not if) the pipeline gets done and comes online, the newly available capacity won’t translate into new/more shale drilling in the Marcellus/Utica–at least not initially.
The U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) is giving utility giant Duke Energy (mega profitable) and one of its natural gas suppliers, Williams (i.e., the Transco Pipeline, also mega profitable) $1 million of taxpayer money to do their jobs of monitoring for methane leaks. Dontcha love corporate welfare? Of course, if the government is going to blow taxpayers’ money on energy projects like uncompetitive and unreliable renewables, why not give a little love to fossil energy too, right? Still, it bugs us.
Carbon offsets are the same thing as carbon taxes. A carbon offset refers to reducing so-called greenhouse gas emissions by buying a credit from someone who plants trees or agrees not to cut down trees. A company gets to keep on polluting as long as it pays a tax to do it–pretending they are helping the precious environment by paying to plant or not chop down trees. It is the darnedest feat of mental gymnastics we’ve ever seen. Who thinks up this stuff? (Hey, wanna buy a bridge in Brooklyn? We have one to sell!) A new study by the leftists at the University of Cambridge published yesterday in the journal Science exposes the sale of carbon credits as a scam.
Bonus post today! Something we came across after completing our list of stories to write and share–but just too good to pass up. This story perfectly illustrates what has happened inside the Democrat Party from its fearmongering about climate change and demonization of fossil energy. A group of kids in their early 20s (thoroughly brainwashed from K-12 and now in college) showed up at a hoity-toity, very exclusive fundraiser for Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, herself a hardened anti-fossil fuel leftist. The kids crashed her party being held at a private Nantucket Island home. The kids demanded Healey shut down all new fossil-fuel projects in the Bay State, and demanded she answer “yes or no” right then and there to their demands. Healey demurred, and the wacko kids got loud and mouthy and had to be escorted out of the event. It came close to a fistfight between some of the older leftwing libs attending the event and the kids. Civil war in the Democrat Party.
An Act of Congress (the Fiscal Responsibility Act) cleared away the remaining obstacles to completing the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (see 
Two Marshall County, WV landowners with the same last name (obviously related) sued Southwestern Energy (SWN), accusing the company of “well bashing,” in March of this year (see