5th Circuit Lets Gulfport Cancel Pipeline Contract via Bankruptcy
Gulfport Energy has successfully wiggled out of legally-signed and binding long-term contracts with multiple pipeline companies, including deals that move Marcellus/Utica gas through the Rover and Rockies Express (REX) pipelines. In 2020 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) told Gulfport a very loud NO in breaking those contracts (see Gulfport Energy Looks to Cancel Pipeline Contracts via Bankruptcy). Earlier this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (5th Circuit) overruled FERC and gave Gulfport a get-out-pipeline-contracts-free-by-declaring-bankruptcy card. It’s good for Gulfport but really bad for the entire pipeline industry.
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What’s fair is fair. If a county blocks drilling under county-owned land, as the Allegheny County Council recently did (see 
Baker Hughes, one of the biggest oilfield services companies on the planet, issued its second quarter earnings update yesterday. The company reported a net loss of $839 million during 2Q, but more than half that number is due to a write-off of its oilfield services business in Russia. What caught our attention was not the company’s financial performance, but the words of its top leaders in describing the near- and long-term future for natural gas. Baker Hughes is VERY bullish on natural gas and natural gas infrastructure (including LNG and pipelines).
The second-largest LNG export terminal in the U.S., Freeport LNG located near Galveston, Texas, experienced an explosion and fire in early June (see 
We spotted a story that, while not uncommon, has us scratching our head. The story is about yet another company in the oil and gas industry touting its conversion to electricity as a way to improve the climate and the company’s own ESG credibility. In this case, the company manufactures, fabricates, rents, sells, and maintains natural gas compression technology for oil and natural gas upstream providers and midstream facilities. Does the following strike you as odd?…
Here’s something you don’t often see: The price that natural gas is fetching in the eastern part of the country is significantly higher than the price gas fetches at the benchmark Henry Hub in southern Louisiana. The heat wave hitting the country’s middle section and points east is the main driver, but so is a lack of natural gas pipelines from the Marcellus/Utica to southern states.
Pennsylvania State Police are investigating the vandalism and theft of copper from a Coterra Energy well pad on Stockholm Road in Rush Township in Susquehanna County, PA, sometime between July 8 and 14. The case appears to be your garden-variety case of lowlifes stealing copper to resell it (a “crime of opportunity”), and not some sort of statement by environmental wackos. But, one never knows with wackos…
The leftist members of the Allegheny, PA County Council have proven just how leftward they have lurched (and how unhinged they have become). Last night the Council voted to overturn the veto of a ban on drilling for natural gas under (never on top of) county parks. The Council’s action denies taxpayers millions of dollars in revenue to fix and repair and expand county parks. County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, a Democrat himself, vetoed the idiotic ban, but the Democrats of the County Council just couldn’t help themselves. They voted to override Fitzgerald’s veto. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Welcome to the People’s Republic of Allegheny County.
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat from West Virginia, did the country (and his own party) a huge favor when he pushed the temporary pause button on committing trillions of dollars of new inflationary spending on Big Green programs called the Biden Build Back Better bill (see 
Given the record of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) with blocking new natural gas pipeline projects (and harassing already-built pipelines), Congressional Republicans are questioning the role FERC should play in approving hydrogen pipelines. The U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing yesterday, and Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming expressed concerns that FERC may use blending hydrogen with natgas in pipelines as an excuse to impose new restrictions on existing natgas pipelines.
In a March 3rd Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) asked Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chairman Richard “Dick” Glick this question: “Has anyone higher up in the [Biden] administration ever spoken to you in regards to somehow slow-walking or otherwise impeding or otherwise accentuating policy that would have the effect of impeding the development of natural gas pipelines?” Chairman Glick responded with an unambiguous “no.” Yet FERC refuses to release records of communications and meetings with the White House to back up Glick’s statement. FERC has just been sued to force the release of those records.
In the most recent U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), the EIA predicted that by the end of this year, the United States will produce an average of 96.2 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas (see 
Last week MDN reported that Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, in a final act of thumbing his nose at the prolific Marcellus industry in his own state, vetoed a bill, Senate Bill (SB) 275, that would have prohibited municipalities from banning the use of natural gas (see 
The number crunchers at the U.S. Energy Information Administration once again overestimated natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica in the agency’s monthly Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). Last month the EIA predicted total production in the Marcellus/Utica region (which they call Appalachia in the report) would be 35.39 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) during July. In the monthly DPR issued yesterday, EIA revised the July number down to 35.12 Bcf/d. Not a huge difference. It translates to 270 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) less in production–roughly 1/4 Bcf/d.