Ohio HB 152 Forced Pooling Bill Disadvantages Unleased Landowners
Gateway Royalty is sounding the alarm over a new bill that’s quickly advancing in the Ohio legislature. Ohio’s House Bill (HB) 152 allows drillers to force-pool landowners if 65% of a drilling unit is signed to a lease–a pretty low bar if you ask us. But that’s not even the worst part. The reluctant landowner would receive a standard 12.5% royalty, no matter what the royalty is for the rest of the leases in the unit, AND post-production deductions would be taken out. Landowners could realistically see a 6.25% royalty…or less! It’s time to burn up the phone lines to either get this bill changed, or defeated.
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In theater of the absurd, yesterday a bunch of sleazy politicians, headed by the grandmaster sleazoloa himself, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, unveiled proposed new anti-Marcellus legislation based on a ginned-up, fake anti-shale grand jury report that Shapiro manipulated and orchestrated last year (see 
You have two days left to make your voice heard with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concerning whether or not the Corps should issue a new permit to the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline project as it crosses rivers and streams in both West Virginia and Virginia. Back in April we told you the Corps had given antis an extra 30 days to comment on (complain, manipulate, lie about) issuing MVP a new permit (see 
Radical environmentalists continue to use the City of Oberlin, Ohio to try and advance their agenda of ending the use of natural gas pipelines. And Oberlin willingly lets them do it. We’re referring to the latest court filing by Oberlin (actually by Big Green lobbyists using Oberlin) contesting the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) decision to approve the NEXUS pipeline, a pipeline from the Utica Shale into Michigan that’s been flowing for years connecting to a pipeline that exports some of the gas into Canada. Oberlin says FERC’s approval of NEXUS is faulty because some gas gets exported and is not “in the public interest.”
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) released their latest quarterly Natural Gas Production Report for January through March 2021 (full copy below). The main indicators are moving in the right direction. In 1Q21 the number of new wells spud (begun to be drilled) was 133 new shale wells. That’s less than the 153 spud wells in 1Q20, which happened prior to the pandemic, but more than the spud numbers for the second, third, and fourth quarters of 2020. Even with less new drilling over the past few years, production numbers continued to soar, hitting a brand new, all-time high of 1.863 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) during 1Q21.
Yesterday we shared the devastating (for us) news that Cabot Oil & Gas, one of the premier drillers in the Marcellus, is merging with (being acquired by) Permian driller Cimarex (see 
The judge in a lawsuit initiated by Cabot Oil & Gas against a Susquehanna County, PA landowner and his lawyers has had it up to here with the ongoing stonewalling and delay tactics by the landowner’s lawyers. “Four years we’ve been spinning our wheels on this nonsense,” the judge said. “The court is extremely frustrated, to put it politely.” The judge bordered on being impolite at a hearing last Thursday…
As we reported a month ago, a group of West Virginia landowners/rights owners filed a claim against EQT alleging the company had allowed leases to lapse, then at a later date reentered their property and drilled new wells (see 
MDN has been writing about a privately-owned dump near Scranton, the Keystone Sanitary Landfill, for the past decade (
We’re devastated. We know you’re not supposed to have favorites, but we do. Our favorite Marcellus/Utica driller for years has been Cabot Oil & Gas. We know some great folks who work for Cabot. It has been a peerless operator in the northeast Marcellus–making money when nobody else could. Cabot treats its landowners well, cares about the environment, gives big money to local nonprofit causes, and in general is the best kind of corporate citizen anybody could wish for. We suppose it was only a matter of time before Cabot became a target in this merger mania we’re currently going through. This morning Cabot announced a “merger of equals” with Cimarex, a big driller in the Permian and Midcontinent. The truth is Cimarex is buying out Cabot.
NGL (natural gas liquid) revenues for U.S. drillers soared in the first quarter of 2021–up 100% (i.e. doubled) over the same quarter in 2020, which was the quarter when COVID-19 began to seep into the public consciousness. In particular international demand for U.S. liquefied petroleum gas (LPG, or propane) helped propel NGL revenues higher in 1Q21. Guess which company posted the highest year-over-year increases for both NGL prices and revenues?
The Democrats in Congress are making another run at punishing (eliminating) the use of fossil fuels. About a month ago Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (wacko from Oregon) and 24 fellow Senate Democrats introduced a bill called “The Clean Energy for America Act”–an overhaul of the federal energy tax code, aimed at combating nonexistent human-caused climate change. This time around the Dems are targeting (among other things) repeal of the percentage depletion allowance that landowners and investors use in offsetting royalty payments for tax purposes. In other words, mom and pop landowners that receive royalties will see their federal income tax bills go up. Unless you stop this disgusting bill now, before it becomes law.
Every time the Weymouth, Massachusetts compressor station experiences an unplanned shutdown, as it did for the fourth time last week, it gives anti-fossil fuel activists more ammunition to try and convince the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Congress, and anyone else who will listen that this compressor should be permanently shuttered. Shutting it down now would have dire consequences for natural gas customers in places like Maine (see 
Democrats and RINOs just hate it when someone else uses the same tactics against them that they so frequently use themselves. The shoe tends to pinch when it’s on the other foot. Such is the case with a bit of brilliant political maneuvering last Thursday at the most recent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) open meeting when one of the Republican Commissioners, James Danly, insisted (at the last minute) on appending language for approvals of two western pipeline projects that says, in essence, considerations of man-made global warming played no role in approving or disapproving the projects. Danly’s last-minute sandbagging enraged FERC Chairman Richard “Dick” Glick and his fellow far-left Democrat sidekick Allison Clements. It also had Republican-in-Name-Only (and backstabber) Neil Chatterjee spitting and sputtering. In the end, the three Republicans, including Chatterjee, went ahead and approved the two projects, over fierce objections by Glick. Three cheers for James Danly!