Berkshire Hathaway | Bradford County | CNG/LNG | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania
Warren Buffett’s Towanda LNG in Wyalusing, PA Officially Online
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 Northeast PA LNG Powers Cargo Ship from Canada to Detroit). That facility, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, is now fully online and producing 50,000 gallons per day of LNG (liquefied natural gas). In fact, the facility has produced more than 1 million gallons of LNG to date.
Read More “Warren Buffett’s Towanda LNG in Wyalusing, PA Officially Online”
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 
America’s natural gas and oil industry announced “a landmark partnership” in late 2017 called The Environmental Partnership, to “accelerate improvements to environmental performance in operations across the country” (see 
We happen to think the oil and gas industry has sort of lost its collective mind. We’ve lost the battle over fossil fuels by conceding that carbon dioxide, the stuff you emit with every breath you take, is somehow polluting the planet. If we concede that point, it’s all downhill from there. Environmentalist wackos will not stop until all fossil fuels are permanently eliminated from the energy mix–which will be devastating to humankind. But they don’t care. Still, you can’t miss the fact that O&G is “doing its part” to reign in carbon and methane emissions, playing along with the demands of the left. ESG has become a more common phrase in the quarterly updates of O&G companies than barrels of oil and thousands of cubic feet of natural gas. What is O&G doing with respect to ESG, hydrogen, and carbon capture sequestration? And where is it all heading? Will O&G companies actually hit net carbon zero?
In June MDN brought you the news that Enbridge’s Texas Eastern Transmission (TETCO) pipeline is being flow-restricted by the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA). Some 40% of the Marcellus/Utica molecules that flow through TETCO’s pipeline to destinations in the southeastern U.S. disappeared and were predicted to stay that way until the end of September (see