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Unplanned Outage at MarkWest WV Gas Plants Fixed, Prices Go Up
Last week MDN told you about an unplanned outage at two MarkWest natural gas processing plants located in West Virginia (see Unplanned Outage at 2 WV MarkWest Plants Knocks 2.4 Bcf/d Offline). We have more details about what happened that led to the shutdowns. More importantly, we have new information that the outage is now over and full production capacity has been restored at the two plants.
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Patterson-UTI Energy, which operates 15 active rigs in the Marcellus/Utica (out of 45 active M-U rigs, or fully one-third of all active M-U rigs) announced yesterday it is buying a smaller competitor, Pioneer Energy Services Corp., for approximately $295 million. Patterson will add Pioneer’s fleet of 16 super-spec drilling rigs to Patterson’s own current fleet of 150 super-spec drilling rigs in the U.S. What are super-spec rigs?
The natural gas markets just made a bit of history. Friday, July 2nd, marked the last day in a series of nine days that the NYMEX futures price for natural gas increased from the previous day. Beginning Monday the price has slide down just a bit. Nine straight trading days of higher natgas prices is the longest period of day-over-day price rises in the past 20 years! The weather certainly had a lot to do with the increase in prices, but a key part, perhaps the starring role in why prices have continued to climb, is the role of LNG exports.
On June 24, the operator of the SOS D-2 injection well in Cambridge, Ohio (Guernsey County) reported a small release from a pipeline that transfers fluid from a storage tank to the injection well. The well’s owner/operator, Silcor Oilfield Services Inc., contained the leak. The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) was alerted and is overseeing remediation of the affected area and repair of the line. End of story. Except…
Last week MDN told you that EQT Corporation, the largest natural gas driller in the U.S., had released its 2020 ESG report and announced the company would be “net carbon zero” by 2025 or sooner (see 
The tinpot dictators who run the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries plus Russia (OPEC+) can’t agree on increasing overall production levels of oil. What a surprise. Meanwhile, America’s own shale frackers refuse to increase their own drilling to meet the increase in world demand, having been cowed by woke leftists into “behaving” themselves. And so the world’s oil production (not supplies, but actual production) continues to decline at a time when more oil is needed. Lack of supply is driving the price of oil higher.
The Energy Equipment and Infrastructure Alliance (EEIA), a trade association representing the companies and people that provide contractor services, equipment, materials, and labor to shale oil and gas exploration and production, infrastructure, transportation and processing, has just published its Spring/Summer 2021 Energy Logistics & Distribution Report (full copy below). The report features more than 75 individual charts and graphs tracking price and volume metrics for energy including crude oil, natural gas, NGLs, drilling activities, renewables, consumption, logistics, and financial data. It is the single best source of charts and graphs to understand what’s happening in the energy markets.
Is our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, being corrupted by the Biden White House? Maybe. The EIA published a post on their Today in Energy website yesterday to trumpet the fact that “nonfossil fuel sources” accounted for 21% of all energy consumed in the U.S. in 2020. The post should have had the headline that fossil energy provided 79% of all energy consumed in the U.S. last year. Yes, that was a new low for fossil energy (and a new high for nonfossil fuels) in the modern age, but not by much. We dug into the numbers and discovered a startling revelation: natural gas was the #1 source of energy consumed in the U.S. last year–even more than oil!
The Supreme Court decision from earlier this week allowing PennEast Pipeline to use the federally delegated power of eminent domain to cross tiny pieces of land owned (or controlled by) New Jersey is still reverberating across the country (see 
In April, CNX Resources Corp. announced instead of just blowing smoke about ESG (environmental, social, governance) with pretty slide shows and hoopla, they would donate $30 million to local, underserved communities and populations in the tri-state region (see 
With all of this blather about ESG (environmental, social, governance) and net zero and so-called “renewable” natural gas (RNG), has anyone stepped back to ask the question, Will utility companies (and their ratepayers) actually pay more for green gas? Reuters has asked the question and it seems that right now, the answer is a resounding NO!
More details have emerged from what has to be one of the oddest combinations in recent memory–the merger of Permian driller Cimarex Energy with Marcellus driller Cabot Oil & Gas (see