PA Superior Court Rules Landowner Can’t Nix Lease for Shut-ins
A recently decided court case, while not precendential (doesn’t apply to anyone else other than the landowners/drillers in this case), is still instructive. This story begins when the Wilson family in Armstrong County, PA (western part of the state) leased three different tracts of land totaling 473 acres to Synder Brothers in 2003 for vertical drilling.
Read More “PA Superior Court Rules Landowner Can’t Nix Lease for Shut-ins”

Big Green is doing its best to stir up opposition to PTT Global Chemical’s proposed ethane cracker plant in Belmont County, Ohio. Big Green is also trying to hide its involvement and pass itself off as organic, local community opposition. Not true. Last week the same so-called community organizer addressed an anti meeting at a local church and organized a “protest” a few days later.
Phoenix Logistics, headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, targets supply chain companies in a number of industries with warehousing, distribution, and transportation. One of the industries they target is the oil and gas sector. Phoenix has just opened a new 400,000 square foot warehousing facility in Athens (Bradford County), PA, targeting companies in the Marcellus.
Last week three Big Green groups–the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, The Watershed Institute, and THE Delaware Riverkeeper–asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission via a joint letter to not issue an extension to the PennEast Pipeline, long-delayed largely because of those groups’ ongoing lawsuits (see
As we reported in December, New York Attorney General Tish James and her highly-paid associates were thoroughly, completely, 100% humiliated in court when their case against Exxon Mobil accusing the company of screwing shareholders by keeping secret knowledge they are toasting Mom Earth, is itself toast (see
In 2019 Pennsylvania raised a record high of $247 million from its version of a severance tax, called an impact fee, based on drilling activity from 2018 (see
Corning Natural Gas (based in Corning, NY) has a 50% joint venture partnership in Leatherstocking Gas Company and Leatherstocking Pipeline Company with another Upstate NY-based company, Mirabito. Leatherstocking runs gas mains to residents and businesses in small, mainly rural communities–like Montrose, PA (see
Three weeks ago MDN told readers the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts a slight reduction in Marcellus/Utica production will happen this month–that M-U will produce an estimated 74 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) less in January than we did in December (see 
The researchers at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) have done a deep dive into natural gas prices from 2019 and found the average spot price at the Henry Hub last year was $2.57 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf), down about 60 cents from 2018’s average price. Ouch. The researchers tease out the factors that influenced prices last year, pushing it higher (in some cases) and lower (in others). It is useful analysis, giving us a window into what may happen this year.
In September 2016, MDN reported that EmberClear has plans to fund and build a new $900 million electric generating plant in Harrison County, OH (see
The West Virginia legislature kicked off its 2020 60-day session yesterday with a bang–at least for the shale energy industry. House Speaker Roger Hanshaw introduced House Bill 4001, aimed at reassuring China it’s OK to begin investing some of that $84 billion they promised to invest in WV’s shale and downstream sector. The bill also would help fund the Appalachian NGL Storage and Trading Hub project and other big petrochemical projects (maybe even a cracker plant!).
We spotted a newly published study (published just yesterday) in Scientific Reports, an online open access scientific mega journal published by Nature, that looks at a new and better way to evaluate shale oil and gas reserves–the amount of stuff in the ground. What’s special about this report, written by researchers at the University of Utah, is that it specifically used the Marcellus Shale as its test subject.
Ever hear of something called the oil-to-gas price ratio? It’s a simple concept. You take the price at which oil is trading per barrel, and compare it to the price of natural gas trading per MMBtu (million BTUs). What can that ratio tell us about the natural gas market in general, and the Marcellus/Utica gas market in particular?
It’s not only Russia and the Ukraine attempting to interfere in U.S. elections and our system of government. It’s also a British billionaire, by the name of Chris Hohn. A blockbuster investigative report reveals millions flowing from Hohn to push American cities and counties to sue American energy companies by using the false claim they cause “climate change.” It is an outrage and it must stop.
The Lorax Judge strikes again. One year ago the Virginia State Air Quality Board, at the prompting of Gov. Ralph Northam, voted to approve a low-emissions compressor station for Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), to be built about an hour outside of Richmond, Virginia (see