EIA July ’19 Drilling Report: M-U Roars, Up Another 396 MMcf/d
In the coming month, the U.S.’s seven major shale plays will produce a cumulative 82 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of natural gas, a new record! All but one of those seven shale plays will increase its shale gas output. The Marcellus/Utica region, the “beast in the east” is about to roar in the next month, increasing natgas production *another* 396 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d), to a new high of 33 Bcf/d. This is the fourth month in a row the M-U will have increased production by at least one-third of a Bcf.
Read More “EIA July ’19 Drilling Report: M-U Roars, Up Another 396 MMcf/d”


Speaking of New Fortress Energy and their planned northeast Pennsylvania LNG liquefaction facility (see today’s story, Work Begins to Clear Site for NEPA Landlocked LNG Export Plant), in addition to chilling natural gas into LNG, you also need a way to load it onto ships and move it to other markets. New Fortress plans to build a $96 million, 1,600-foot-long pier on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River at the former DuPont dynamite factory site to dock and load two ships at a time.
Last week Shale Support, a frac sand producer and shipper headquartered in Louisiana, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company is not able to deal with $128 million in debt it has accumulated, hence the filing. Shale Support maintains three frac sand terminal facilities in the Marcellus/Utica region.
Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) finally broke ground and began to build a new Marcellus gas-fired power plant in Cambria County, PA in October 2017 (see
LS Power, which owns a number of competitive power generation projects including the 700 megawatt dual-fuel simple cycle Troy Generating Facility located in Luckey, OH, is threatening to pull a $500 million plan to expand the Troy facility if Ohio proceeds to pass a new law subsidizing the state’s two nuclear plants. The subsidies would create an uneven playing field for natural gas-fired electric plants like the Troy facility.
Do you consider it “free speech” to assemble a mob outside someone’s home at 2 o’clock in the morning and start hollering and shouting, beating a drum, thereby threatening and menacing an innocent family in that home? We sure don’t call it free speech. We call it gang activity–or maybe even terrorism. When the people inside the home feel threatened, what else can you call it? That’s what happened to EQT’s then-CEO Rob McNally and his family in the early morning hours of July 10, the day he lost his job following EQT’s annual meeting. Those outside doing the terrorizing were radical anti-fossil fuel nutters–some from out of state. Crazies. They should have been arrested. They weren’t.
One of West Virginia’s two U.S. Senators, Joe Manchin, is not happy that the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by China and his home state is hush hush. Manchin has not seen a copy of that agreement and he wants to see it, NOW. At a Senate hearing last week, Manchin made noise about the $83.7 billion deal signed by WV and China, part of a Trump Administration effort, back in 2017 (see
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has just published its 2018 Oil and Gas Annual Report. This is the third year in a row the DEP has published the report in an interactive, electronic (i.e.online) format ONLY. What does the 2018 report show?
A little good news coming from New England, for a change. Over objections of radical anti-fossil fuel nutters, the Massachusetts Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) on Friday granted an air permit for a compressor station in Weymouth. The compressor station is part of the Spectra Energy/Enbridge Atlantic Bridge expansion project, stalled since 2017. The administration of MA Gov. Charlie Baker (RINO) issued an air permit for the project in January of this year (see
Dominion Energy began work on the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project in West Virginia in May 2018 (see
Last July a group of 100+ southwestern Pennsylvania landowners sued EQT for failure to pay them rental fees for storing natural gas under their properties (see
Little by little, piece by piece, the evidence continues to mount that PTT Global Chemical and their partner Daelim Chemical will make a positive final investment decision (FID) to build a multi-billion dollar ethane cracker in Belmont County, OH. On Monday we told you the State of Ohio is investing another $30 million in the project, even though the project is not officially a done deal, yet (see 