US Supreme Court Shows Interest in Taking PennEast Pipe Case
We see a very positive sign that the U.S. Supreme Court is potentially interested in accepting and ruling on a case of tremendous importance to the oil and gas industry. The case is PennEast Pipeline v State of New Jersey. NJ is attempting to block the PennEast project by denying it access to run across tracts of land either owned or controlled by the state, claiming federal eminent domain authority does not apply to state-owned land. NJ won the case in lower courts and PennEast appealed it all the way to the Supremes, who have now taken an active interest. No, they haven’t officially accepted the case…yet. But they have just signaled a strong interest.
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Economists at consulting powerhouse The Brattle Group have released an assessment/report on the impacts through early April 2020 of COVID-19 on the electric and natural gas industries. The report (full copy below) summarizes recent developments in energy commodity spot and forward pricing, electricity demand, and financial markets, and speculates on what will happen if the pandemic persists. One of the surprising findings (for us) is that weather is having far more effect on keeping natgas prices low than COVID-19. There’s plenty of charts and analysis–really good stuff to ponder. Battle Group has a lot of smart people thinking about this stuff.
“Keep it in the Ground” (KIITG) has been the rallying cry of idiotic, low-brain function environmentalists for the past 3-4 years. They want “fossil fuels” to be kept in the ground, never to be developed. President Trump is mulling over a plan to KIITG–but not in the same way. Advisers to the President are proposing that the federal government pay for oil from American producers now, at historically low prices, but that the producers don’t deliver the oil right now. In fact, don’t drill at all–just keep it in the ground, out of the world market, in an attempt to lower world oil supplies and prop up the price.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has reached an agreement with Range Resources that forces Range to pay $198,920 in fines for violations of state regulations and the Air Pollution Control Act–violations that happened in 2013, 2014, and 2015. Our reading is that most of the violations revolve around Range not filing the right paperwork.
A lot of things have changed over the past month since COVID-19 coronavirus lockdowns were instituted in many states, including New York and Pennsylvania. Some sleazy politicians, like Andrew Cuomo and the far-left Democrats in the New York State legislature, took advantage of the crisis to pass damaging legislation while no one paid attention (see 
We’ve previously brought you various articles, and comments on articles, describing how Marcellus/Utica drillers may benefit from the current crash in global oil prices. How? A number of oil drillers in Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota and other oil states are not only not drilling new wells right now, but they’re also not completing previously drilled wells and in some cases, they are shutting in existing/flowing wells. All of which means there will be a rapid decline in the amount of “associated gas” being produced in those states. Less associated gas means less supply and less supply means higher prices–for M-U drillers. We spotted an article that does a good job at defining how this will likely play out. How much less associated gas can we expect? What does that mean for natgas prices (when will they go higher)? What if the price of oil is $40/barrel rather than $30/barrel?
We’ve been dreading this month’s edition of normally our favorite report, the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) 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 (current) month, and how much each will produce in the coming (next) month. The past few months have seen a big decline in Marcellus/Utica gas production, more than half a Bcf/d (see 
A newly passed and signed-into-law bill in Virginia, House Bill (HB) 167, purportedly aims to “protect” electric consumers from shouldering the costs of new pipelines that would feed gas-fired power plants. What the bill actually does is remove freedom of choice for utility companies, driving 
We spotted a new scientific study published in an upcoming edition of the journal Water Research. The study is called: “Sulfate precipitation in produced water from Marcellus Shale for the control of naturally occurring radioactive material.” Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh have found a way to strip out radioactivity from produced water coming from Marcellus wells so the water can be boiled to produce clean water and usable minerals/salts.
Last week MDN highlighted an article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about the low low prices Marcellus/Utica condensate has fetched since the beginning of the year (see 
Last year MDN told you about New Jersey-based Omni Energy Group and their application to build two new injection wells in Belmont County, OH near St. Clairsville (see 
In February Williams official gave up on building a long-delayed project to flow natural gas from northeastern Pennsylvania into central New York, called the Constitution Pipeline (see 
Reuters is reporting a disturbing allegation that Big Banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Citigroup, are each in the process of setting up shell companies that can own shale oil and gas assets. Why? Because of a coming wave of bankruptcies. The banks, with big loans to a number of oil companies, plan to take ownership of the companies or their assets (foreclosure) as repayment of the loans owed. In other words, Big Banks are planning to get into the oil and gas business as a form of self-defense, so they don’t take a bath on the value of the assets they’ve helped underwrite.