Biden EIA Predicts Renewables Still <50% of Electric Prod. by 2050
Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), is a sub-unit of the Dept. of Energy. The DOE, as you know, is now part of the Evil Empire (aka the Biden Administration). As you also know, old dementia Joe has been bashing away at fossil fuels since he took office, promising to “transition away” from fossil fuels during his tenure of occupying the White House. Yet the EIA is out with a projection that shows “renewables” (includes not just wind and solar but hydro and “other”) will still make up less than half (42%) of electric power production 30 years from now! Fossil fuels (natural gas and coal) will still have a larger share of electric production than renewables 30 years from now. How’s that for a “transition away” from fossil fuels?
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Reuters is reporting natural gas prices across North America have “soared” over the past few days as homes and businesses cranked up their heaters to escape a blast of arctic air and snow moving from Canada to the U.S. Midwest and northeast. The price of natgas trading at the Waha Hub in the Texas Permian Basin is at its highest since December 2018. Here in the northeast prices in Boston and New York City hit fresh one-year highs over the past few days. And it’s the same in Pittsburgh and northeastern PA.
Last Friday National Fuel Gas Company (NFG), the parent company for Seneca Resources and Empire Pipeline, issued its latest quarterly update for the quarter ending Dec. 31 (NFG’s first quarter 2021, everyone else’s fourth quarter 2020). Among the pearls of good news for NFG is that the company is adding a rig back in Tioga County, PA to drill on acreage NFG purchased from Shell.
Analysts at S&P Global Platts say that with the current cold snap underway in the northeast, already decreasing natural gas production from the Marcellus/Utica may accelerate with wellhead freeze-offs. Sometimes in colder temps (hey, it was 2 degrees at MDN HQ this morning) water and other liquids in the gas can freeze and block the flow of gas, called a wellhead freeze-off.
In January MDN told you that after five loooong years, a federal judge in Scranton, PA had finally ruled the Wayne Land and Mineral Group (WLMG) v. Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) lawsuit will go to trial this year (see 
The West Virginia Office of Oil and Gas (part of the Dept. of Environmental Protection) reports there are some 60,000 active and 15,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in the state. Staffers at Oil and Gas respond to complaints and do the inspection for all those wells. Currently, there are just 14 field staffers with three moving to other positions leaving just 11 staffers who are in the field to monitor all those wells.
On Friday, representatives of a “dark money” political action committee called Generation Now signed a guilty plea admitting their part in the biggest bribery scandal to ever hit Ohio. Generation Now was set up as a social welfare nonprofit but in reality was a shell organization that received “tens of millions of dollars” from FirstEnergy as part of a $61 million bribery scandal to pass and keep passed House Bill (HB) 6 which funnels over $1 billion from Ohio ratepayers to FirstEnergy in order to keep the company’s unprofitable nuclear power plants running.
Early last week MDN shared the great news that Enbridge’s Weymouth, Mass. compressor station finally, after years of government delays in building it, went online (see 
Earlier this week MDN brought you the big news that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear the PennEast Pipeline vs. New Jersey eminent domain case (see 
On Joe Biden’s first day in occupying the White House, he signed an Executive Order (EO) suspending new oil and gas leasing while the Interior Department reviews existing leases and permitting practices for 60 days. The aim is to make the federal lease ban permanent. However, some permits on existing leases will continue to be issued during the 60-day review period. You may think Biden’s federal lease ban does not affect the Marcellus/Utica region. You would be wrong.
Over the past week, the Enverus U.S. rig count jumped up by another 14 active rigs, making the new count 456. That’s the highest the rig count has been since April 2020 when the count began to drop like a rock as the coronavirus pandemic began to bite deeply. While the dry gas Marcellus lost one rig, the wet gas Marcellus gained one rig and the Ohio Utica also gained one rig, for a net +1 gain to 43 active rigs in the M-U combined region.
Northern Oil and Gas, Inc., a company that invests in non-operated oil and gas assets (they let others do the drilling), announced yesterday it has purchased 64,000 net acres producing ~120 MMcfe/d (million cubic feet equivalent per day) in the Marcellus/Utica from Reliance Industries Limited (RIL). The cash purchase price is $250 million.
Doug Lawler, CEO of Chesapeake Energy, has swung his ax once again and is firing (i.e. laying off) another 220 employees–just as the company exits from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Most of the layoffs are happening in Chessy’s headquarters located in Oklahoma City.
Mansfield Energy Corp, with products and services that span fuels, natural gas, diesel exhaust fluid, data management, and price risk management tools, announced it is buying out and merging in eServices Energy Management, a natural gas marketing, logistics, and trading organization headquartered in Glen Allen, Virginia with a presence in Pittsburgh, PA and Houston, Texas. According to Mansfield, the deal expands the company’s reach to Marcellus and Utica shale producers.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is openly admitting that his cockamamie plan to force PA to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)–a carbon tax scheme that will cost PA residents $2.36 billion over ten years–will in fact cause the closure of coal and gas-fired power plants throughout his state. Wolf’s brilliant plan to overcome the big negatives of power plant closings? A new government program, funded by taxpayers.