Belmont County | Energy Services | Ethane | Industrywide Issues | Ohio | Processing Plants | PTT Global
Trump Official Visits PTT OH Cracker Site, Pledges Full Support
Prior to joining EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler in Pittsburgh to unveil rollbacks of egregious overregulation of methane by the Obama Administration (see today’s companion story), Deputy Secretary of Energy, Mark Menezes, first visited Belmont County, Ohio–at the site of the proposed PTT ethane cracker plant. Menezes was there to offer moral support from President Trump for the project. Menezes was recently confirmed (on Aug. 4) as Deputy Secretary of DOE. The PTT cracker site visit was Menezes’ first official visit (to anywhere) in his new role.
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In June MDN told you that a New York City law firm was “investigating” Cabot Oil & Gas with an eye to filing a class action lawsuit, on behalf of investors, over false allegations made by the Pennsylvania Attorney General who had filed felony charges against Cabot regarding a long-closed regulatory issue in Dimock, PA (see 
Another week, another look at the rig count. The onshore rig count continues to bump along near the bottom of historic lows. It’s not AT the bottom (thank God), but it does continue to flirt with low numbers. According to Enverus, which tracks rigs using GPS units, the count bottomed at the beginning of July with 264 active rigs. Since then it’s risen and currently stands around 280 rigs. Week to week it goes up and it goes down, but not down significantly. According to Enverus, the count lost a rig last week.
Looks like top management at Chesapeake Energy getting millions in bonuses just before declaring bankruptcy isn’t the only company to engage in this disgusting practice (see 
Anti-fossil fuelers are on a holy mission to stop a 3.37-mile, 8-inch pipeline from being built under the Potomac River by Columbia Gas (see 
Eastern Shore Natural Gas Company (ESNG), a subsidiary company of Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (a company 
Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), posted an interesting article yesterday revealing information the left and mainstream media don’t want you to know: Natural gas-fired electricity is growing faster than renewables. The media would have you believe that so-called renewables are taking the world (and the U.S.) by storm–growing far faster than any other source, including natural gas. Not true.
Holy smokes! We didn’t see this one coming. Just yesterday MDN brought you the second-quarter update from Montage Resources (see 
Democrat governors across the country are now mimicking the example set by the dictator of New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo abuses state power to reject fossil fuel projects (unconstitutional in our opinion), telling NY’s state environmental agency to reject all new pipelines. Roy Cooper, governor of North Carolina, is the latest Cuomo wannabe. Cooper instructed his state’s environmental agency, the Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ), to reject permits for Equitrans’ proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) Southgate project. Which the DEQ did yesterday. The agency tried to disguise the rejection using lame excuses, but the reason for the rejection was politics, plain and simple.
Underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) for the Mariner East 2 pipelines (two of them, 2 and 2X) have a history of springing leaks. They’re called “inadvertent returns”–when you drill horizontally underground for a pipeline and the drilling mud you put down the hole pops up in a place it’s not supposed to. The good news is that the drilling mud is non-toxic, the same stuff used in toothpaste. The bad news is that it can overwhelm little fishies and other aquatic life and kill (suffocate) them. ME2X drilling had another such incident earlier this week–in Chester County, PA.
Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), is singing a different tune than it did less than two months ago. In late June, EIA published a post discussing the drastic drop in U.S. LNG (liquefied natural gas) exports, saying a recovery to pre-COVID levels would not happen until sometime next year (see 
