Gas-Fired Electric Demand in Midwest to “Remain Strong”
A vital market for Marcellus/Utica shale gas is the southern U.S. Another market equally important is the Gulf Coast. We have pipelines that flow our molecules to both destinations. A third market, not quite as important but important nonetheless, is the Midwest. Via a network of pipelines, M-U molecules flow to the Midwest, including via the Rockies Express (REX) pipeline. When Enbridge’s Texas Eastern Transmission (TETCO) pipeline was recently flow-restricted by the PHMSA, some of the M-U gas that previously went south went to the Midwest instead (see M-U Molecules Head to Midwest with TETCO Throttling to Southeast). Our point: The Midwest is an important market for M-U gas.
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Earlier this month MDN brought you information on the kinds of efforts and initiatives oil and gas companies are adopting to prove to those who hate us that we’re green and good for Mom Earth (see 
The federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) recently issued a “warning letter” to Shell concerning the company’s ethane pipeline, called the Falcon Pipeline. PHMSA claims the pipeline committed two “probable violations” by failing to place pipeline sections at a construction site in Beaver County on protective padding. PHMSA told Shell to fix it, or else.
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) released their latest quarterly Natural Gas Production Report for April through June 2021 (full copy below). It’s sort of a mixed bag with some good and some not-so-good. In 2Q21 the number of wells spud (begun to be drilled) was 120 new shale wells, up from the 113 spud in 2Q20, which was the point when the pandemic began to take hold in a big way. Sadly, gas production slipped in 2Q over the previous quarter, but not by much. It was still the second-highest quarterly production in the state for all time.
Have you ever noticed how politicians like to “study” things? Why is that? We suppose the results of all those studies gives them political cover to make unpopular votes on key issues. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management is in the process of conducting a study on the prospects for a petrochemical industry in the Marcellus/Utica. As part of that study, DOE held an online/virtual hearing yesterday to elicit comments on the environmental, health and community impacts of the petrochemical industry from ethane crackers and pipelines. In what appears to be a put-up job, a dog and pony show, the hearing was packed with radical anti-fossil fuel nuts who bashed away at the shale industry.
When the executive branch of the federal government operates outside the law and nobody holds them to account, we have a lawless country. Under federal, established law, states have a maximum of one year to review applications for pipeline permits under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act. Yet now the Biden administration and its rogue EPA is telling states they can take all the time they want to review these permits, instructing “co-regulators” like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) it’s OK if states go beyond one year. What a disaster. This is yet one more way Biden gets around the law in his mission to destroy the fossil fuel sector.
You can’t miss the breathless headlines, many of which are misleading, that big oil and gas companies are beginning to force employees to get vaccinated for COVID-19. What’s missing from the headlines, especially those touting Chevron’s new vaccine mandate, is the all-important word “some,” as in “some” employees who work in tight quarters for long periods (like offshore platforms) are being required to get vaccinated.
Henri, the huuuuge, “first hurricane to hit New England in 30 years” storm, turned out to be a relative nothingburger. Some 100,000 electric and gas customers lost service for a day or so. We don’t minimize the pain and trauma they experienced, but frankly, Henri was minimal compared to most hurricanes that strike land in the U.S. Already the spot price for natural gas in places like Boston and New York City (and elsewhere across the M-U) is soaring once again. It’s hot and humid in the northeast, and natural gas is needed to power air conditioners and electric power plants, driving up demand. That’s good for drillers and landowners.
A far-left “environmental” group calling itself POWER pretends to be religious in nature. Perhaps it is religious–the religion of worshipping the creation instead of worshipping the Creator. The Pennsylvania-based group claims fossil fuels are racist, that fossil fuel companies intentionally target communities of color to install pipelines, compressor stations, and oil/gas wells. Yes, these people are wack in their views. But they have the ear of PA’s failed governor, Tom Wolf, and they intend to try and pack the state’s Public Utility Commission (PUC) with people who are as equally wack as they are.
A natural gas-fired electric power plant planned for Charles City County (near Richmond, Va.) by NOVI Energy known as C4GT (Charles City Combined-Cycle Gas Turbine) is officially dead as of last month (see 
Since 2017 we’ve had our eye on a proposed natural gas-fired power plant, tracking the project in our “best of the rest” stories. The Nemadji Trail Energy Center would be built near Superior, Wisconsin but provide much of its electricity to nearby Minnesota. We don’t believe any of the molecules slated to flow to the plant will come from the Marcellus/Utica, so the project has never risen to the level of getting its own dedicated post here on MDN–until today. No, we still don’t believe M-U gas will power the plant, but a recent court decision about the plant caught our eye and gave us hope that other places like New York may yet be salvageable.
Oilfield services (OFS) companies are bouncing back. Oil and natural gas drilling is “ramping up as demand continues to hold on despite a global resurgence of coronavirus infections.” And that is “sweet music to the ears of oil-field services providers in the United States.” So says Dan Eberhart. He should know. Eberhart is CEO of Canary, one of the largest privately-owned OFS companies in the United States. He also serves as a consultant to the energy industry in North America, Asia, and Africa. Eberhart, writing on the Forbes website, says drilling and equipment contractors “are preparing for a multi-year upcycle on the back of recovering demand and rising commodity prices.”
Several mainstream media outlets who either didn’t read or intentionally lie about the results revealed in a new study are reporting a link between fracking and impacts on surface waters–particularly in the Marcellus Shale. In fact, the study, published in the journal Science, shows the authors found no such link. They found “a small increase in certain ions associated with hydraulic fracturing across several locations” that likely come from accidental spills of brine. And those slight increases disappear after a few months.
Yesterday the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published a puff piece praising Brian Anderson, director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and now the head of the Biden administration’s Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization, an effort to kill the use of fossil fuels (see 
