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Most Important Lawsuit in PA Shale History – Review & Fallout
It was exactly one year ago that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in THE most consequential lawsuit for Marcellus Shale drilling we’ve seen, a case called Briggs v Southwestern Energy (see HUGE NEWS: PA Supreme Court Keeps ‘Rule of Capture’ for Fracking). Now that the dust has settled, it’s a good time to take a look at the case and the lingering fallout from the case on both landowners and drillers in the Keystone State.
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The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) received some 13,000 public comments on its horrible plan to force PA residents to pay $2.36 billion in new energy taxes (a carbon tax) for electricity produced by coal and natural gas power plants–a scheme called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The plan would greatly reduce the number of gas-fired power plants operating in the state and create energy insecurity for the entire PJM portion of the national electricity grid.
With Richard “Dick” Glick as the new Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), life just got harder for the PennEast Pipeline project. Not impossible, but certainly harder. On Tuesday FERC gave PennEast a little bit of love when it turned down a request by a Pennsylvania landowner that PennEast not be allowed to use eminent domain to cross the landowner’s property. But also on Tuesday FERC removed from its agenda a final decision on whether or not to approve PennEast’s request to split the project into two phases.
Last fall Mountaineer NGL Storage, a $500 million project in Monroe County to build underground storage for ethane and other NGLs, asked Ohio to cancel a key permit for the project (see 
After literally *years* of complaints that simple permits in Pennsylvania required in drilling new shale wells–like a Chapter 102 Erosion and Sedimentation permit–are taking two, three, even six to eight months for an approval (instead of the law-mandated 14 days), the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) is finally doing something about it. Why? They’ve just received a swift kick in the seat of the pants.
President Joe Biden is already a complete disaster for the oil and gas industry. His first two days in office (day and a half, actually) can only be described as a full-on attack against our industry. That’s according to the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA). We received a rundown of the damage Biden has already caused. Here’s just one example (out a list of 100+): Biden has put a freeze (pun intended) on the Dept. of Transportation’s rule that allows LNG to be shipped by rail. The rule is being “reviewed” with an eye to reversing it.
Over the past week, the Enverus U.S. rig count added another 6 active rigs, making the new count 430. The Marcellus wet gas region (in southwest PA and WV) lost a rig, while the Marcellus dry gas region (in northeast PA) gained a rig. Overall the Marcellus/Utica combined rig count remained stead at 42 active rigs. The M-U’s chief competitor, the Haynesville Shale, lost one rig, now with 48 active rigs.
Last week MDN told you the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) had given final approval to Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to install pipeline through 3.5 miles of woodlands, and under the Appalachian Trail, in the Jefferson National Forest in Monroe County in West Virginia, in and Giles and Montgomery counties in Virginia (see 
Et tu, Brute? Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioner Neil Chatterjee, a Republican who used to work for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is showing his true swamp-dwelling colors. On Tuesday Chatterjee voted against several critical natural gas projects (ones he voted in favor of previously), including a vote against allowing the Weymouth, MA compressor station, fully built, tested and ready to start, to begin operations.
Did you know that the Appalachia Basin, made up of the Marcellus and Utica Shale, accounted for more than 40% of the natural gas produced in the US in 2020? The M-U averaged 32.19 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas production in 2020, and 33.44 Bcf/d in 2019. A new report from GlobalData says the outlook for the Marcellus and Utica plays is closely tied to the demand for LNG exports from the U.S. You might say they’re “joined at the hip.” Unfortunately, most LNG exports happen along the Gulf Coast.
On Joe Biden’s very first day of occupying the White House, he signed an executive order revoking a permit for the $9 billion Keystone XL oil pipeline that would cross from Canada into the U.S. According to the leftists at Bloomberg (giddy with excitement), Biden’s move to cancel Keystone “is the clearest sign yet that constructing a major new pipeline in the U.S. has become an impossible task.” The CEO for pipeline giant Williams, Alan Armstrong, agrees.
You can’t say we didn’t warn you about new Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioner Allison Clements, a radical leftist (see 
The KeyState Zero petrochemical plant project that includes natural gas synthesis and carbon storage (coming to Clinton County, PA) just gets more fascinating every time we read or hear about it. We spotted a new article with more details about the project, like the fact LNG is already being produced at the site. In addition to carbon capture, the new petchem plant will produce four products…