FracTracker Lies Exposed re Fracking Impacts on PA Watershed
FracTracker Alliance, a virulent leftist group that pretends to offer up science about fracking but instead offers demonstrably false lies about fracking, has just been exposed for the frauds they are. The FracTracker Alliance recently released a report (a “digital atlas”) supposedly showing the harmful impacts of natural gas development in the Lycoming Creek Watershed, located primarily in Lycoming County, PA. It’s a complete fraud and sham, financed by Big Green money. The Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) is not letting the fraudsters get away with it.
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In something of a strange twist, the Bloomberg News service is sounding the alarm that the world is headed for a shortage of natural gas. Bloomberg hates fossil fuels and anything to do with them. Yet they now sense an impending shortage of natural gas and it’s causing the Bloomies some existential angst. Bloomberg reports natgas prices in Europe have “surged more than 1,000%” since May 2020 with no end in sight. Earth to Bloomberg: Europe has no one to blame but themselves. They don’t want our “fracked gas.” Let them buy Putin’s pipelined gas at extortionist rates.
The latest weekly Enverus U.S. rig count shows total rigs in use recovering to within one rig of a post-pandemic high. For the week ending August 4, the rig count stood at 603, up 4 rigs from last week. The Marcellus play lost one rig from the previous week, while the Utica picked up one rig. Collectively the M-U is currently running 45 rigs, the same level as the previous two weeks.
Last December MDN told you that a REV LNG small-scale LNG facility near Towanda (in Wyalusing, Bradford County, PA), had successfully supplied LNG to support the bunkering of a marine vessel at the Port of Hamilton in Ontario (see 
Equitrans Midstream issued its second quarter update earlier this week. Naturally, all eyes were on information and updates related to the company’s 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) from West Virginia to Virginia, which is now 92% complete. We have an update on MVP. However, it was a stray comment by Diana Charletta, President and COO, that caught our attention. Equitrans recently conducted an open season related to the Equitrans pipeline, looking to expand capacity along the pipeline to the Midwest and Gulf Coast.
Northeast Pennsylvania high schoolers are getting a look at what a career in the shale energy field looks like. The Susquehanna County Career and Technology Center in Dimock, in cooperation with Cabot Oil & Gas, is hosting its annual week-long Energy and Oilfield Career Experience summer camp. Susquehanna County, the only county where Cabot drills, is the #1 producer of natural gas in PA. Has been for years.
No doubt you’ve heard plenty in mainstream media recently about the $1 trillion so-called infrastructure bill currently being debated in Congress. What the mainstream media won’t tell you is the truth–that this bill is incredibly bad for the country in its current form. The bill includes measures allowing more federal control over state and local building codes to force everyone to adopt Biden’s “appliance electrification” plan by discouraging the use of natural gas in homes and businesses. Yes, Biden plans to phase out your right to burn natural gas in your furnace and in your stove. Welcome to the USSR.
Once again the price of natural gas–both the financial futures price (the NYMEX) and even spot physical prices in many locations, like the M-U, increased dramatically. The NYMEX is back above $4/MMBtu once again. Just two months ago we longed for, prayed for, yearned for gas above $3! Why are natural gas prices moving higher and (for now) staying higher? In a nutshell, for three reasons: record exports, hot weather, and self-restrained drillers.
Analysts are predicting natural gas prices in the northeastern U.S. market area “could hit their highest [rate] in four years or more” this coming winter. Why? Producers have not ramped up drilling to the same levels we saw prior to the COVID pandemic. Lack of new drilling is causing a storage deficit–less gas being socked away for the winter months. With “strong demand” coming this winter, futures prices for the coming winter months in the northeast is already on the climb–in some places more than $14/MMBtu!
Pipeline giant Williams delivered its second quarter update yesterday. It was obvious from the chatter by company executives, including CEO Alan Armstrong, that the Marcellus/Utica continues to play a key and important role in the company’s future. However, Williams is also expanding its footprint in the Haynesville Shale in Louisiana. Armstrong announced a second joint venture in the Haynesville, with private producer GeoSouthern Energy Corp.
The CO2 Coalition, a nonprofit established in 2015 for the purpose of educating thought leaders, policymakers, and the general public about the important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy, has just published a detailed analysis of Pennsylvania’s plan to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI (full copy below). In the report, more than 70 top scientists conclude that PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s justifications for the RGGI carbon tax “are invalid and its claims of environmental and economic benefits are fiction.”
Back in June, MDN brought you insights from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) which noticed the decreasing number of 
Privately-owned Penn Production Group, LLC, which concentrates on exploration and production for oil and gas in western Pennsylvania, closed on the purchase of certain assets owned by Greylock Energy in Clearfield County, PA on July 30. The assets include 20 miles of pipeline (called Mid Stream) that feeds the gas-fired Shawville GenOn Generating Station and the Dominion pipeline.
The radicals at the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation (PEDF) are not just content to block any future use of royalties from drilling on state land to fund only Big Green priorities, as they recently won the right to do (see