PA Marcellus Gas Production Declines in 2Q, News Not All Bad
Last Thursday Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) released its latest quarterly Natural Gas Production Report–for April through June 2020 (full copy below). The report shows natgas production in PA rose 2.8% compared to the same period last year. However, overall production fell 2.8% compared to 1Q20–the second quarter in a row production has fallen quarter-over-quarter.
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Last December both Rover Pipeline and NEXUS Pipeline, two large Utica-gas pipelines traversing Ohio, appealed their property tax valuations to the Ohio Dept. of Taxation, looking to trim their tax bills in Stark County by up to 50% (see 
Two weeks ago while drilling in Chester County in Marsh Creek State Park, Energy Transfer’s Mariner East (ME) 2X pipeline experienced an “inadvertent return”–nontoxic drilling mud coming up out of the ground where it’s not supposed to (see 
Pittsburgh-based IntegrServ, a trucking company partly owned by former Pittsburgh Steeler Jerome Bettis, filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against EQT claiming discrimination against the company as a minority-owned company after it canceled a contract worth some $66 million last year. This is an involved story and of course, there are always two sides to every story (and two sides to every lawsuit).
FirstEnergy Solutions (now called Energy Harbor) allegedly paid $60 million in bribes to (now former) Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four of his associates to gain their assistance in passing the hugely unpopular House Bill 6 (see 
We spotted a great editorial in an Ohio newspaper that succinctly and accurately describes what will happen in Ohio if Joe Biden’s environmental socialism program (cost of $2 trillion) actually gets implemented. What would happen? Some 700,000 jobs in Ohio will disappear. So too will some $245 billion in Ohio GDP (gross domestic product). It is, literally, a nightmare.
In June the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), in coordination with the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) published final rules to allow LNG (liquefied natural gas) to be safely transported by special rail cars (see 
We spotted a story from ace reporter Paul Gough (Pittsburgh Business Times) titled, “5 things to know about Pennsylvania’s new energy report.” According to Gough, earlier this week PA released a new “Pennsylvania Energy Jobs Overview” report. Wait, what? Why didn’t the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) or Gov. Wolf’s office issue a press release to announce this new report? We don’t know why, but they didn’t. The DEP did issue a press release about an uptick in jobs in the so-called renewable energy sector–but nothing about all the other forms of energy. However, we have a copy of the full report (below). It shows the total number of jobs in the Marcellus/Utica went down last year by 7.4%, or 1,897 jobs lost.
At a ceremony in Pittsburgh last week, federal EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) Administrator Andrew Wheeler unveiled two new rules for the oil and natural gas industry that removes ineffective and duplicative methane detection requirements while streamlining others (see 
Yesterday our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issued our favorite monthly report, the Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The DPR estimates how much oil and natural gas each of the country’s seven largest shale plays produced in the previous (i.e. current) month, and how much each will produce in the coming (i.e. next) month. The August report, which predicts production for the coming month of September, estimates natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica will decrease by 203 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d)–the biggest (by far) decrease in any of the seven shale plays tracked.
The Appalachian Trail Conservancy, The Conservation Fund, and Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) yesterday issued a joint announcement that MVP is paying $19.5 million to the Conservancy to “conserve land along the Trail corridor and support outdoor recreation-based economies in Virginia and West Virginia.” It is the largest “funding package” in the Conservancy’s history to advance conservation efforts in a single geography.
“Hurry it up, will ya?” That was the upshot of a message sent by TC Energy to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) with respect to giving final approval for its Louisiana XPress project. FERC granted the project a favorable environmental assessment (EA) on February 6 (see 
Last week, in one of the biggest news stories (for us) so far this year, Southwestern Energy announced it is buying out and merging in Montage Resources (see