M-U Drillers Learn How to “Walk the Line” When/Not to Drill
In the early days of the shale revolution, Marcellus/Utica drillers (all shale drillers) were incentivized by shareholders to drill at any cost. The philosophy was “drill baby drill,” believing pipelines would somehow get built to handle the increasing production volume. Over the past three years or so, since about the time the pandemic began, things have changed. Instead of “drill baby drill,” the rallying cry is now “curtail volumes,” “delay completions,” and “game-time decisions.” M-U producers have learned to “walk the line” of matching production with local demand, storage, and firm pipeline capacity.
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One of the biggest complaints from drillers and pipeline companies doing business with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), going back for years, is the lack of speed when reviewing and approving new permits. In particular, Chapter 102 (erosion and sediment control) and Chapter 105 (water obstructions and encroachments) permits. At a budget hearing in Harrisburg in March, then-Acting (now confirmed) DEP Sec. Rich Negrin presented a 10-point plan to improve the DEP’s response times in issuing permits (see 
The Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity Initiative (VCMI), formed with funding by some of the biggest funders of Big Green causes, has officiously announced the publication of a new “Claims Code of Practice” that private companies WILL adopt–or be forced out of business. The Code of Practice is aimed at forcing companies to stop using anything to do with fossil fuels, on the theory it will Save the Planet. Companies can disregard the Code of Practice (a supposedly voluntary standard) at their own peril. If you don’t hew to VCMI’s standards, you WILL be targeted.
The left thought it had won the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) battle and had stopped this 94% completed pipeline project cold. But then Congress passed the “debt ceiling” bill that forces the completion of MVP (see 
In April, MDN told you about a radicalized faction within the Pennsylvania Democrat Party trying yet another ploy to block all new Marcellus drilling in the state (see 
The Pennsylvania Senate voted yesterday to confirm Rich Negrin as the Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). No more “Acting” in front of his title. The vote was 48 to 1 to confirm, with the lone holdout being Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Adams). As we reported yesterday, Sen. Gene Yaw gave Negrin a grilling about several issues, one of them being the DEP’s apparent support for House Bill (HB) 170 that would end all new Marcellus drilling by using extreme setbacks (see 
The Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission operates the largest sewage treatment plant in the entire state of New Jersey–in Newark. When Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012, the sewer plant lost power and dumped billions of gallons of raw sewage into the Passaic River. The Commission has a plan to prevent that from happening again: Build a tiny natural gas peaker plant to generate electricity. It would only be used to prevent such environmental damage again (i.e., rarely used). Yet Earthjustice and other radicalized leftists accuse the plan to the build the peaker plant as racist.
Domestic consumption and export of natural gas in the U.S. grew a combined 34.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), or 43%, from 2012 to 2022. One of the biggest reasons for the dramatic increase was a mass change from producing electricity with coal plants to using natural gas-fired plants instead. So says the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in a new post.
Earlier this year, British oil giant BP announced it would no longer publish its vaunted annual Statistical Review of World Energy, a publication it has issued each year since 1952 (see 
Everyone is fixated on hydrogen as the savior of humankind. However, there is no widespread demand for hydrogen because we still don’t have pipelines and appliances that can use pure hydrogen (see 
It really is sad (and angering) to behold the tactics of the left. Their favorite #1 tactic is fear. If the left can convince you the end is near à la “climate change” and “ticking time bomb pipelines” and “bomb trains” and “radiation” and “water contamination” and other incendiary (false) claims about fossil energy, they have you. The left thought it had won the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) battle and had stopped this 94% completed project cold. But then Congress passed the “debt ceiling” bill that forces the completion of MVP (see 
The Henry Hub price of natural gas (even physically traded spot prices around the country) are ever-so-gradually moving higher. Yes, we’re cheerleaders for higher natgas prices! (Not too high, but certainly higher than the current $2-$3 range.) Even though we’re pro-gas and cheerleaders for higher prices (we openly admit our bias), we’re also realists, and we try to bring you the unvarnished truth. Are prices really moving higher? Or is this just another short-term up/down cycle?
NGLs, or natural gas liquids, are an essential revenue stream for Marcellus/Utica drillers in the “wet gas” regions of the play. Those regions are found in southwestern Pennsylvania, the northern panhandle of West Virginia, and eastern Ohio. There are several pipelines that flow M-U NGLs to other regions or to export facilities. Among them is Enterprise Products Partners’ 1,230-mile Appalachia to Texas Express (ATEX) pipeline to the Gulf Coast, and Kinder Morgan’s 270-mile Utica-to-Ontario-Pipeline-Access (UTOPIA) pipeline from Harrison County, Ohio, to Windsor in Canada’s Ontario province. However, most M-U NGLs travel through Energy Transfer’s Mariner East and West pipelines, with Mariner East flowing to the Marcus Hook export terminal near Philadelphia.