Enverus Rig Count @ 707 (+1); Marcellus @ 38 (+1), Utica @ 10 (+0)
For the week ending Jan. 6, the Enverus U.S. oil and gas rig count rose by one on the week to 707. That’s still a bit lower than the post-pandemic high of 719 hit a few weeks ago, but working in the right direction. The Marcellus gained one rig for 38 active rigs, while the Utica held steady at 10 active rigs. The combined M-U had 48 active rigs last week.
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Since early 2015 (seven years ago!) we’ve been tracking stories about various proposals to build Marcellus gas-fired power plants in the Mountain State (see 
In December a jury in Ritchie County, WV awarded the county’s Economic Development Authority (EDA) nearly $1 million in damages in a trespassing case. The case is complicated, but at its heart is the issue of a Marcellus-focused company, Ronald Lane Inc., and land Lane deeded to the local EDA. A lawsuit against Lane alleged the company leased the deeded land for “oil and gas purposes” (to Columbia Gas as a heavy equipment storage facility) and that Lane never told the EDA about the lease nor shared the profits received from that lease.
The Biden-controlled Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has rubber-stamped a request by regional electric grid operater ISO New England to cancel a contract with the proposed Killingly Energy Center, a 650-megawatt, gas-fired plant slated to be built in eastern Connecticut. FERC effectively killed Killingly. ISO New England said Killingly would not get built in time to fulfill a previous power agreement it had signed. The reason for the delays? Vicious attacks by anti-fossil fuel fanatics, particularly the odious nutters of the Sierra Club. It’s quite a game antis run. They slow down and delay a project with multiple frivolous lawsuits, then get it canceled because it’s slowed down and delayed.
We hope the current and future teachers who get a pension from the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System enjoy getting less money in their golden years. Pension payments for teachers are about to go DOWN because the people managing their retirement investments have decided to divest from fossil fuel companies. Translation: The Retirement System portfolio will take a major financial hit (i.e. won’t be as profitable). The Retirement System is about to flush pension money right down the toilet.
Five Chinese researchers recently published a study in Springer’s Environmental Science and Pollution Research International journal that claims to have identified environmental and health threats in unconventional oil and gas by analyzing old compliance reports from the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection. The study claims to have found problems with erosion and sedimentation issues and with water pollution issues. Their conclusion is that PA fines aren’t high enough to change the bad behavior of shale drillers.
Last September UGI Corporation, one of Pennsylvania’s largest natural gas utility companies, completed a deal to buy Mountaineer Gas Company, one of West Virginia’s largest natural gas utility companies, for $540 million (see 
We’re not sure why this story is not the top story on all of the state and national news networks. Using the threat of withholding public money, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf outright extorted Democrat members of the PA legislature to support his odious carbon tax plan, otherwise known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Before a key vote last month in the PA Legislature, Wolf offered a quid pro quo: Democrat legislators either support RGGI or Wolf will withhold approval for state funding for local projects in their districts. Why are there no investigations and demands for jail time?
Two subsidiaries of Connecticut hedge fund Kensico Capital Management filed a lawsuit against EQT on December 28 alleging EQT committed securities fraud during its $6.7 billion acquisition and merger with Rice Energy in 2017. The suit was filed by Saxena White PA on behalf of Kensico Associates and Kensico Offshore Fund Master Ltd. Kensico is not the first large investor to sue EQT over the 2017 merger (see 
After going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and winning, PennEast Pipeline, a 120-mile, primarily 36-inch pipeline that would have cost $1 billion to build and run from Dallas, Luzerne County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, and terminate at Transco’s pipeline interconnection near Pennington, Mercer County, New Jersey, threw in the towel last September (see 
In June 2020 the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), in coordination with the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), published final rules to allow LNG (liquefied natural gas) to be safely transported by special rail cars (see 
Once again we return to the topic of pipelines in the Marcellus/Utica. Specifically, lack of pipeline capacity to handle all of the production we could be making were it not for constraints. Those constraints are because of vicious, anti-American leftists who oppose new pipeline projects by abusing our own court system. The M-U is forecasted to hit production of 42 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) by 2025–and there it will stay because no new pipelines will get built or completed after 2023. We will be stunted.
Baby, it’s cold outside! At least here in the northeastern U.S. Cold temps in the northeast are causing an increase in the use of natural gas for both heating and electricity production. That increase in demand is (you guessed it) causing an increase in prices, and the increase in prices is causing some natural gas flows to reverse course and head north instead of south out of the Marcellus/Utica.
Economists are still analyzing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic from 2020, let alone assessing impacts from 2021. Cleveland State University researchers have run the numbers and have discovered something interesting. Of Ohio’s 88 counties, only 18 grew their economies in 2020. Of those 18, two counties stood head and shoulders above the rest for increases in economic activity. Both counties have something in common: Utica Shale drilling.