Youngstown Biz Journal – Ohio O&G Does/Does Not Generate Jobs
Thanks to a sharp MDN reader/friend, we were alerted to a rather bizarre situation with the current issue of the Youngstown Business Journal. Once upon a time, the YBJ wrote encouraging (and accurate) stories about the Utica Shale industry and its many benefits in the Buckeye State. Lately, the YBJ has been taking potshots at the Utica, claiming it hasn’t panned out as advertised. Take the latest MidSeptember edition where two articles appear. One article boldly states that after 10 years there is “No Gusher of Jobs” in the Utica. Yet another article contradicts the first and states, “It’s Construction Jobs in Gas and Oil.” Bizarre.
Read More “Youngstown Biz Journal – Ohio O&G Does/Does Not Generate Jobs”
LNG, or liquefied natural gas, is increasingly a vital market for natural gas drillers, both in the Marcellus/Utica and in other plays across the country. In the M-U we have two LNG export facilities–Cove Point, Maryland (currently down for maintenance) and Elba Island, Georgia. Most of the other LNG facilities are located along the Gulf Coast, with the largest LNG export facility operated by Cheniere Energy in Sabine Pass, Louisiana. Cheniere received permission on Friday to begin flowing feedgas to Train 6 at Sabine Pass. Train 6 will likely be online by the end of this year.
Ohio’s House Bill (HB) 6 law granted billions (plural) of dollars to FirstEnergy in an attempt to prop up the company’s economically failing nuclear power plants. FirstEnergy bribed state legislators to pass, and keep passed, HB 6 by paying out $61 million to a small group of insiders, including the now-former Speaker of the House (see 
In early 2019, EQT, the largest natural gas producer in the U.S. (and in the Marcellus/Utica) settled a class action lawsuit in West Virginia with landowners and rights owners ending EQT’s practice of post-production deductions from royalty checks (see 
We’ve noticed nearly all of the public companies (and many private companies) in the oil and gas space are talking about their ESG (environmental, social, governance) programs. There’s a lot of hot air surrounding ESG programs. How does one separate out fact from fiction? Enverus, the company that produces (in our opinion) the best and most accurate weekly rig count numbers, has a solution. Enverus has developed a new framework/system to compare one oil/gas company’s ESG efforts against its competitors. Of the top 10 best ESG programs in the oil and gas industry are four companies (drillers) in the Marcellus/Utica. Coming in at the #1 position is none other than the largest natural gas driller in the country: EQT.
Enbridge Gas is holding a binding open season for C1 (methane) transportation services from St. Clair (DTE) and/or Bluewater to the Dawn Hub in Toronto, Ontario (Canada) starting Nov. 1, 2023 for a minimum of five years. Shippers seeking access to a reliable, cost-effective means to move gas from St. Clair (DTE) and/or Bluewater to Dawn can submit bids for up to 62,000 GJ/d of annual capacity (12-month term) and up to 107,000 GJ/d capacity for winter only (5-month term). Marcellus/Utica gas is eligible since it finds its way all the way to the Dawn Hub.
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 
What will happen to the United States if it embarks on sleepy Joe Biden’s “vision” for dumping fossil fuels via regulation and over taxation and instead turns to so-called renewable sources of energy, all in a bid to keep Mom Earth from supposedly toasting? We know what will happen. It’s already happening in the United Kingdom. We have a perfect preview of what will hit us if we adopt the same policies the UK and Europe have adopted: electricity prices out of sight, shortages of natural gas, blackouts and brownouts, high unemployment, and an economy in the crapper.
Lest you think we’ve been overstating the case that Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf wants to end the use of natural gas-fired electric power plants as evidenced by his actions in forcing the state to join the draconian Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax scheme, Wolf’s latest so-called climate plan will remove all doubt for you. Yesterday Wolf and his obsequious Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Pat McDonnell released a 278-page “climate” plan that, among other things, essentially bans natural gas-fired power plants.
The weather turning a bit cooler along with a three-week planned maintenance outage at the Cove Point LNG plant in Maryland is causing the spot price for natural gas in the Marcellus and Utica to fall precipitously. Of course the price recently, over the past few weeks, rose precipitously–so a sudden fall is not all that unusual. How much has the price fallen and how far will it go down?
While natural gas prices have always floated up and down, lately we’ve seen a rapid run-up in the NYMEX futures price that hit a seven-year high last week (see 
Five Big Green groups (some of them funded by foreign governments) led by one of the worst–the Sierra Club–are lobbying the Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board (EQB) to force PA’s oil and gas drillers to prepay the full amount to decommission wells they drill today and likely won’t be played out for at least 30, maybe as much as 50 years from now. It’s yet another attempt to make drilling for natural gas and oil in the Keystone State so onerous, so expensive, drillers will give up.
Although the price of natural gas has rocketed this year and cash flows for Marcellus/Utica drillers have ballooned, showering drillers with plenty of free cash flow, M-U drillers are spending less (19% less) on capital expenditures than they did in 2020. Production in the M-U is up slightly by 4% so far in 2021 vs. 2020. The experts at RBN Energy have dived into this latest twist in the shale story to help explain what’s going on and why.
If this doesn’t prove that the environmental left isn’t really interested in the environment, but instead only in their leftist (Communistic) policies, nothing will prove it to you. A radical faction of Physicians for Social Responsibility calling itself “Concerned Health Professionals of Pennsylvania” (a false statement if ever there was one) is actively, aggressively trying to end the ability of Pennsylvania’s fracking companies to recycle wastewater (brine) that comes from naturally-occurring water deep in the ground. They figure if they can stop fracking’s green recycling program, maybe they can shut down fracking period. Sick.