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M-U Real Estate Market Booming – Manufacturers Invest $100+ Billion
The Marcellus/Utica region is becoming a booming real estate market and manufacturing destination in the U.S., with manufacturing investment currently estimated at over $100 billion, according to Bryce Custer from NAI Spring Commercial Realty. What’s drawing manufacturers to the M-U region? Geopolitical instability, supply chain disruption, the reshoring trend, and abundant raw materials, including cheap (and clean) M-U natural gas.
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Glenn O. Hawbaker, Inc., long known for providing stone quarries and asphalt plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio, also provides civil construction services for shale well sites. In August 2021, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced a plea deal with Hawbaker to pay back $20 million in alleged “stolen wages” from over 1,000 Hawbaker employees (see 
Here’s a question: What are the 15 biggest (by company revenue) natural gas-owning pipeline companies in the world? The U.S. has the biggest natural gas pipeline infrastructure in the world, covering a distance of 333,000 kilometers (206,917 miles). Even so, only one U.S.-based company is in the top 5 biggest pipeline companies. Can you guess which country takes the top 2 spots on the list?
It hasn’t been a problem-free startup for the mighty Shell ethane cracker plant in Monaca (Beaver County), PA, now called the Shell Polymers Monaca facility. We’ve noted some of the more prominent issues as we’ve spotted them in the news. Things like the plant exceeding allowed air emissions (see 
Last Thursday, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court dismissed the Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) claim that the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an obscene carbon tax on gas-fired power plants being forced on PA businesses (and electricity consumers) by former Gov. Tom Wolf and his henchman DEP Secretary Pat McDonnell, was unlawfully delayed by the PA Senate. It is a good news/bad news decision.
On January 18, every single Republican member of the Pennsylvania State Senate signed (and sent) a joint letter to newly-minted Gov. Josh Shapiro urging him to take steps “immediately” to undo PA’s entrance into the insane Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax, a plan forced on the state by Shapiro’s wacky predecessor Tom Wolf. During the campaign, Shapiro prevaricated on whether or not he would pull PA’s plan to enter RGGI.
In what has become something of a parlor game, we have yet another prediction about when the 2 Bcf/d Freeport LNG export terminal, located in Quintana Island, Texas, will return to service. Freeport has been offline since June 2022, when the plant experienced an explosion and subsequent fire (see 
Do you remember studying Prohibition in grade school? In the United States, from 1920 to 1933, a nationwide constitutional law prohibited the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. A bunch of ninny nannies thought they knew better than everyone else whether or not anyone should consume adult beverages. The ninny nannies eventually got enough politicians to vote in favor of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. The 21st Amendment, passed some 13 years later, repealed the 18th Amendment. A modern-day version of the same thing is now happening, with cities (and some states, like New York) attempting to ban natural gas stoves, based on false claims that gas stoves are a health hazard. Just like alcohol was a health hazard 100 years ago?
Zooming out for a broader view of issues around the world that affect the natural gas market here in the U.S. is helpful from time to time. What’s happening in Europe right now, and how will that affect our gas market in 2023? How about China? Is supply/demand in balance, and how does that affect the Henry Hub price? And what about LNG? Rigzone looks at six things the natural gas market can expect in 2023. Their insights give us an interesting view of what the year may hold for natgas.
For more than a year, we have covered the topic of the Bidenistas’ Hunger Games contest to award $7 billion to some 6-10 “hydrogen hubs” across the country. Each winning hub will receive $500 million to $1 billion of government largesse to help build a hub in a given region. The money for the hub projects was allocated as part of the so-called Infrastructure bill, passed in November 2021 (see 
Joe Manchin, the rather pathetic, has-been U.S. Senator from West Virginia, is sitting his bum in Davos, Switzerland, wining and dining and hobnobbing with leftist elites from around the world at the World Economic Forum. Manchin, you might recall, sold out the United States by voting for the Green New Deal, renamed to Build Back Better, and further renamed to the Inflation Reduction Act (see 
Yesterday Chesapeake Energy announced it has cut a deal to sell the majority of its Eagle Ford oil assets to WildFire Energy I LLC for $1.425 billion. The sale includes approximately 377,000 net acres and approximately 1,350 wells in the Brazos Valley region of its Eagle Ford asset, along with related property, plant, and equipment. In 2018 Chesapeake, under the direction of then-CEO Doug Lawler, purchased 420,000 net acres in the Eagle Ford shale and Austin Chalk formations in Texas from WildHorse Resource Development Corp for $4 billion (see 
We have two related lawsuits to report on involving landowners in Susquehanna County, PA, and Callon Petroleum. As most lawsuits are, these two are complicated. But, at a very high level, the concept is simple. The landowners allege that Callon Marcellus (formerly Carrizo Marcellus) shorted them on royalty payments. The landowners sued, but Callon sold its assets in northeastern PA (to BKV) and engaged in a shell game to move the proceeds of that sale ($74 million) directly to the mothership, Callon Petroleum, as a way of avoiding liability to pay, just in case they lose the royalty lawsuit.