US Senate Confirms James Danly as New FERC Commissioner
Last October President Trump nominated Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) attorney James Danly as the third Republican commissioner for FERC (see Trump Selects FERC Attorney James Danly as New Commissioner). Because the Democrats stall and delay anything they can to harass President Trump, a vote to confirm Danly didn’t happen by the end of last year, so Trump resubmitted Danly’s name a second time in January. The good news is that three Democrat Senators joined all the Republican Senators and yesterday voted 52-40 to confirm Danly as the newest FERC commissioner.
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If you operate a company that sells a product (particularly a commodity product) you only have two ways of making a profit: Sell the product for more money or cut expenses (or both). For oil drillers, the price of the product sold is pretty much fixed. Some drillers have “hedged” their production, pre-selling future production at a specific price. But many don’t hedge. And hedging contracts typically don’t extend beyond a year. In the case of oil, the world market sets the price, and the price this week is about half of what it was last week. That means most shale oil drillers won’t make a profit–unless they can trim costs. One of the ways drillers are attempting to cut costs is by asking the companies that do the actual drilling and perform services for them (oilfield services companies, or OFS) to cut the rate they charge.
Back in the day, your humble editor, Jim Willis, worked first an intern and later as a paid staffer in the Ronald Reagan White House. Very cool experience for a hick kid from Upstate New York. After a stint at the White House, Jim stayed in D.C. and went to work on Capitol Hill, working for Congresswoman Helen Bentley (Republican from Maryland). One of Bentley’s favorite issues was to fight against the dumping of machine tools by foreign companies on the American market. Companies in other counties would sell machine tools here more cheaply than it cost them to make, using backdoor funding from their governments to make up the difference. Eventually, our machine tool companies couldn’t compete and would go out of business, leaving the market wide open to foreign competitors, at which time they would jack their prices up.
The 600-mile Dominion Energy Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project has completed about 35 miles of the project and that’s it. Why? Lawsuits, brought by Big Green groups. The biggest challenge the project faces is a lawsuit that ruled ACP could not cross under the Appalachian Trail. Dominion appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court where it now sits. By all accounts, the recent oral arguments before the Supremes went well for ACP (see 
In January PennEast Pipeline, a $1.2 billion new greenfield pipeline project from Luzerne County, PA to Mercer County, NJ, asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for permission to break the project into two phases (see 
Last week MDN brought you news (from the Associated Press) that Cabot Oil & Gas had “abandoned” negotiations to settle a lawsuit they brought against attorneys who had sued Cabot for something already settled in a previous lawsuit (see 
The price of natural gas in various locations, including the NYMEX futures price, has been inching up over the past few days. Yesterday the NYMEX price closed down slightly, at $1.88/Mcf. But that’s better than the $1.60 territory where it’s been bumping around. The price is inching up because of the Saudi-Russian oil price war. Most traders figure there will be less shale oil drilling in the U.S., and because of it, less associated natural gas production from places like the Permian (and Bakken). Which in turn means less supply, driving up prices for natgas. How long will prices go up? And, how high will the price go? We spotted one trader’s take on where he believes prices are heading.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer and other liberal Democrats don’t give a fig about the American shale industry. Yesterday there was talk about President Trump and his administration offering low-interest loans to shale oil companies to keep them afloat during this Saudi-Russian oil price war (see 
According to super-secret sources, The White House is “strongly considering” a federal aid package for oil and gas companies affected by the Saudi-Russia oil price war and lingering effects from COVID-19 coronavirus panic. The proposed federal aid is called by some a “bailout.” But the Trumpsters and the O&G industry reject that label. Reportedly under consideration is a program of low-interest government loans. Regardless of what you call it (bailout or help), the U.S. has a vested interest in ensuring our domestic O&G industry does not get wiped out, plunging us back into dependence on despotic foreigners for our energy.
We continue our coverage of the historic (in a bad way) oil price war started by Russia against American shale drillers, now complicated by Saudi Arabia as they have turned the spigot wide open to pump as much oil as they can, resulting in a price crash for oil. From time to time we’ve featured comments and reports issued by IHS Markit, a global analytics company that tracks data in the oil and gas industry. Yesterday we received IHS Markit’s “key conclusions” from the latest assessment of oil markets. It’s called, “Oil Markets and Industry Brace for Crash as Supply Floodgates Open.” We think it’s about the best summation of what has happened (so far), and what’s likely to happen in the near- and medium-term.
Enverus, a leading oil and gas SaaS and data analytics company, yesterday released its latest FundamentalEdge report, called “Marcellus Natural Gas Flows,” which is focused on natural gas production and pipeline flow patterns in the Marcellus and Utica formations in the Northeast, MidAtlantic, and Midwestern regions of the U.S. Enervus measures gas flows along pipelines and as part of the preview of their report has shared with MDN some fascinating information. Like this: Some 41% of the gas produced in the Marcellus flows to the Mid-Atlantic region. Who knew?!
On Monday there were dueling rallies at the Capitol in Harrisburg, PA, for and against a new petrochemical bill, House Bill (HB) 1100, that promises to bring thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars of investment to the Keystone State (see 
Although in 2019 the price of natural gas began a decline, and gas-focused companies scaled back drilling programs, the U.S. still hit a new all-time high record of natural gas production. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says U.S. natural gas production measured as gross withdrawals (the most comprehensive measure of natural gas production) averaged 111.5 Bcf/d in 2019, the highest volume on record. The biggest jump in production in 2019 did not come from associated gas in the Permian Basin. Rather, the biggest jump came from (yep) the Marcellus/Utica.
Something truly historic happened yesterday. And there is a tie-in to the Marcellus/Utica (which we’ll get to, stick with us). At its core, what happened yesterday is pretty simple to grasp, although most media stories you read either miss it or bury it. Last Friday Russia told OPEC it would no longer participate in coordinating production cuts with Saudi Arabia and the other OPEC countries in an effort to boost the price of oil (see