Industrywide Issues

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    DOE Nixes Use of “Climate Change” Phrase, Enviros Throw Tantrum

    We found this story kind of funny. Apparently the word has gone out at the Trump Dept. of Energy that staffers, when preparing reports for the public, should avoid using the phrase “climate change.” Which is an asinine phrase, let’s admit it. By definition the climate changes. It changes every day and has since there’s been a climate. Anti fossil fuel zealots have tried to co-opt the phrase to mean “man-made global warming.” Because Mom Earth isn’t actually warming, it’s kind of hard to keep calling it “global warming.” So they invented the euphemism “climate change” instead. Team Trump has had enough of that kind of verbal dissembling. No more. Say what you mean and mean what you say. And so the egghead prima donnas who think they’re SO much smarter than everyone else are in full, fake outrage mode. They’re making fun of the adults in the room who have told them to straighten up and quit acting like petulant children…
    Read More “DOE Nixes Use of “Climate Change” Phrase, Enviros Throw Tantrum”

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    PA Court Says Snyder Bros Wells are Strippers, No Impact Fees Due

    In 2014 MDN brought you the interesting story of strippers in the Marcellus–stripper wells, that is (see High-Priced Strippers in PA: Semantic Gymnastics with Impact Fee). Synder Brothers is an oil/gas producer in Pennsylvania. Most of the wells they drill are vertical-only wells. Among them are 24 wells from 2011 and 21 wells from 2012 that are vertical only–but all targeting the Marcellus. According to the definition of a stripper well under the Act 13 law passed in 2012, a well qualifies as a stripper well if it doesn’t produce over 90 thousand cubic feet (Mcf) of natural gas per day for at least one month. Synder Bros. says although their wells may have produced over 90 Mcf in some months, they didn’t produce that much in at least one month during the years in question. Ergo, their wells qualify as stripper wells and not liable to pay an impact fee. The PA Public Utility Commission (PUC), charged with evaluating what does and does not qualify, said nope–your wells target the Marcellus formation and produced above 90 Mcf for “at least” one month out of the year, therefore must pay the impact fee. So the PUC sued Snyder Bros., intending to collect $500,000 in unpaid fees PLUS a $50,000 fine for inconveniencing the PUC (see PA PUC Sues Snyder Bros to Collect $500K in Unpaid Impact Fees). In January of this year, more than a year after first hearing the case, PA Commonwealth Court wanted to hear it all over again (see High-Priced PA Strippers Go Back to Court, Impact Fee Semantics). The court has finally ruled: the law clearly means if production is less than 90 Mcf in any single month, that well is a stripper. Snyder Bros. doesn’t have to pay the $500K impact fee on those wells…
    Read More “PA Court Says Snyder Bros Wells are Strippers, No Impact Fees Due”

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    WV’s “Forced Pooling Lite” Bill Passes Senate, Heads to House

    Earlier this week MDN reported that West Virginia Senate Bill (SB) 576, which addresses the issues of co-tenancy and joint development, was a freight train on a fast track to approval (see Co-Tenancy/Joint Dev Bill Heads to WV Senate – On Fast Track?). We call SB 576 “forced pooling lite” because it targets two of many issues that previously were bundled under WV bills aimed at creating forced pooling in the Mountain State. The freight train continues on down the tracks, although it’s lost a little bit of its steam. Yesterday the full WV Senate voted on the bill and passed it, “narrowly,” voting 19-14 in favor of the bill. It was an interesting bipartisan mix both voting for and against. There were 15 Republicans and 4 Democrats voting for the bill, and 6 Republicans and 8 Democrats who voted against. The bill now heads to the WV House. If it passes there, Gov. Jim Justice has signaled he will sign it…
    Read More “WV’s “Forced Pooling Lite” Bill Passes Senate, Heads to House”

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    OFS Mammoth Energy Buys Second Sand Co. to Keep on Frackin’

    Oilfield services company (OFS) Mammoth Energy Services, headquartered in Oklahoma City, OK, operates in both the Utica Shale and Permian Basin. Last week MDN reported that Mammoth, a new company formed in 2014 (but growing rapidly), had bought itself a sand mine/processing plant (Taylor Frac) in an effort to keep Mammoth’s fracking crews stocked with frack sand (see OFS Mammoth Buys Sand Co. to Ensure Steady Supply for Fracking). A couple of days later Mammoth did it again–purchasing a second sand mine (Chieftain Sand and Proppant) with twice the capacity. And they picked it up on the cheap, in a bankruptcy auction for $35 million…
    Read More “OFS Mammoth Energy Buys Second Sand Co. to Keep on Frackin’”

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    Antis Deliriously Happy with Maryland Frack Ban, Who Paid Who?

    The same old (very small) cast of environmental radicals is claiming victory in Maryland over the recently passed bill to ban fracking statewide–a bill that now sits on traitor Gov. Larry Hogan’s desk (he’s promised to sign it). Radicals from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (and Food & Water Watch, and the Sierra Club, et al), who are waging a holy war against fossil fuels, say this momentous occasion is evidence of new “bipartisan” support sweeping the nation–that Maryland’s vote has “national implications.” It’s nothing of the sort. Anti-fossil fuel nutters are still by and large Democrats (and Socialists) and confined to a few far-left states (Maryland, New York, Vermont). Larry Hogan is an anomaly–a Republican who ran on a platform of support for fracking who suddenly, without warning and for inexplicable reasons, flipped and promised to sign a ban bill should one be proffered. We wonder, who paid who? There is corruption at work in this situation, of that we have no doubt. All of the so-called “leaders” of the ban frack movement in the Maryland legislature come from either the Washington, D.C. suburbs, or the Baltimore area. They are located on the opposite side of the state from where fracking would, theoretically, take place. These enviro radicals have hijacked the property rights of landowners in Allegany County and Garrett County, the only two Maryland counties with commercially viable shale deposits that could be fracked. It will be a sad day when Hogan turns his back on the people of Maryland and signs the law…
    Read More “Antis Deliriously Happy with Maryland Frack Ban, Who Paid Who?”

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    Wayne Co. Landowner Welcomes Decision in Dismissed DRBC Lawsuit

    As MDN reported, last week U.S. District Judge Robert Mariani ruled against a Wayne County landowner in a lawsuit that challenged the right of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to stop fracking in the Delaware River Basin (see Judge Tosses Wayne County, PA Landowner Lawsuit Against DRBC). At first blush this may see like a setback for landowners in Wayne and Pike Counties who have been denied the right to lease and allow drilling under their land for the past 10 years. But looks can be deceiving. As we pointed out in our article, if you read the judge’s decision, he harpoons all of the DRBC’s legal arguments, but in the end rules against the landowner. Why? Because that judge wanted to send this case to a higher court for an ultimate decision–the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. In fact, Judge Mariani set up the appeal of the case perfectly, we’d say intentionally, and that has the DRBC and their cohorts at THE Delaware Riverkeeper really nervous. It also has the Wayne Land and Minerals Group, the plaintiff in the case, really happy. MDN friend Tom Shepstone (Natural Gas Now) does a superb job of analyzing Mariani’s decision, and in predicting where things will (rapidly) go from here…
    Read More “Wayne Co. Landowner Welcomes Decision in Dismissed DRBC Lawsuit”

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    Google’s Methane Sniffing Cars Featured in New “Study”

    For years anti-fossil fuel agitators have been making noise about so-called fugitive methane. According to antis, methane (CH4) is a zillion times more “potent” than carbon dioxide (CO2) in making Mom Earth toast (i.e. global warming, which isn’t happening). If only we could capture every last molecule of methane so it couldn’t escape, life would be better, according to antis. We’ve written countless stories dealing with fugitive methane, because both the federal and state governments try to regulate it from time to time (see MDN’s fugitive methane stories here). The big, gaping hole in the antis search for fugitive methane and fixing it is that agriculture (farting and burping cows) emit far more methane into the atmosphere than oil and gas operations. From time to time we note the bizarre behavior of antis in strapping devices on cows to try and control methane emissions (no lie, they do it, driven insane by global warming hysteria). One of the most recent efforts to sniff out fugitive methane has been to use Google Street View cars, strapping on equipment that can “sniff” methane and report leaks (see Google’s Privacy-Invading Cars Map “Methane Leaks” in Pittsburgh). Google’s methane-sniffing skunk works project has now become an official scientific study–published in the “peer reviewed” journal Environmental Science & Technology. No doubt the publication of the study is an attempt to give methane-sniffing efforts gravitas, authenticity, and aura of scientific objectivity. We think it’s kind of fishy…
    Read More “Google’s Methane Sniffing Cars Featured in New “Study””

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    PA DEP Issues 2 Wastewater Injection Well Permits, Sues 2 Towns

    Good news for Pennsylvania drillers: the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) finally, after years of review, granted permission to two different companies to operate two new wastewater injection wells in the Keystone State. One well is located in Elk County, the other in Indiana County. With these two new injection wells coming online, the state will have a total of eight operating injection wells (vs. hundreds in Ohio). You may have seen news about the newly authorized injection wells from other news sources yesterday. But you read MDN for “the rest of the story.” And here it is, something you won’t find anywhere else (until other news sources read MDN): As soon as the DEP issued the permits for the injection wells, the DEP filed lawsuits against the two townships where the injection wells will be located, because both of those townships–Highland Township in Elk County, and Grant Township in Indiana County–had previously passed so-called Home Rule Charters in an attempt to prevent the injection wells from being located in their towns. The DEP has sued each of them (copy of the Highland lawsuit below) to correct laws that attempt to prevent the DEP from doing its job in authorizing the injection wells. We have the full news of the DEP’s decision to permit the injection wells, along with details about the lawsuits, below…
    Read More “PA DEP Issues 2 Wastewater Injection Well Permits, Sues 2 Towns”

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    Energy Sanity Day: Trump Exec Order Axes CPP, Methane Rule

    Yesterday President Trump made a trip to the Environmental Protection Agency to sign an executive order titled the “Energy Independence Executive Order” which takes aim at rolling back Obama’s disastrous Clean Power Plan. The new executive order also lifts a ban on leasing federal lands for coal mining, nixes new regulations aimed at trapping every last molecule of methane from oil and gas drilling & pipelines (unrealistic and very costly), and reduces, but does not eliminate, the role of so-called global warming when making decisions about authorizing new infrastructure projects. It was, by all accounts, a red letter day for responsible environmental policy–a day to correct some of the extreme overreach we’ve seen by the EPA over the past eight years under the Obama regime. Below we have a copy of the executive order and some of the reaction to it…
    Read More “Energy Sanity Day: Trump Exec Order Axes CPP, Methane Rule”

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    Did Pruitt Hold Trump Back from Going Further re Climate Order?

    Scott Pruitt – EPA Administrator

    Yesterday President Trump signed an executive order titled the “Energy Independence Executive Order” which takes aim at, among a number of things, rolling back Obama’s disastrous Clean Power Plan (see Energy Sanity Day: Trump Exec Order Axes CPP, Methane Rule). However, did Trump’s executive order yesterday go far enough? Some conservatives say, “NO!” And some conservatives are angry with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt–fingering him as the reason why Trump’s executive order didn’t do enough. Specifically, the Paris climate deal is not mentioned. In December 2015 then-President Obama signed the Paris climate agreement/treaty that commits the nations of the world to lower carbon dioxide emissions (see Paris Climate Treaty Signed by Obama NOT Binding on U.S.). Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the stuff you exhale with every breath you take. An overabundance of it is supposedly warming up ole Mom Earth–catastrophically. Except it’s not. There is no empirical data that shows the earth is heating up–only doctored computer models. Satellite data shows the opposite, the average temp of Mom Earth is not heating up and hasn’t been for nearly 20 years. But facts aren’t what the Paris agreement was about. We can tell you what the agreement is about in two simple points: (1) transferring massive amounts of hard-earned wealth away from America to other countries, via a carbon tax; (2) banning the use of all fossil energy–asap. Critics of yesterday’s Trump executive order say it was a sterling opportunity to officially pull out of the Paris treaty, and Trump didn’t, because (they say) Scott Pruitt wants to run for governor of Oklahoma, or the Senate…
    Read More “Did Pruitt Hold Trump Back from Going Further re Climate Order?”

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    WV DEP Grants Mountain Valley Pipeline Water Crossing Permit

    The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is a $3.5 billion, 301-mile pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA. The project, which filed an official application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in October 2015, is being built by EQT, NextEra Energy and several other partners. The project has faced stiff opposition from landowners in both West Virginia and Virginia. Although the project is not yet fully approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the project did get a favorable Draft Environmental Impact Statement from FERC last September (see FERC Gives WV to VA Mountain Valley Pipeline Provisional Thumbs Up). MVP had wanted a final Environmental Impact Statement by March 10th, but that didn’t happen. They’re still waiting. But there is a bit of good news for MVP: the WV Dept. of Environmental Protection yesterday issued a State 401 Water Quality Certification for the MVP project. However, there are still a couple of other WV permits under review, so MVP has not yet gotten the all clear signal in the Mountain State just yet…
    Read More “WV DEP Grants Mountain Valley Pipeline Water Crossing Permit”

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    Rover Pipe Uses Local Sheriff’s Deputies for Security in Mich.

    Sadly, it’s come down to this. Even when entering a property to cut a few trees, pipeline companies like Energy Transfer’s Rover Pipeline must now have a police escort. Rover is paying $60/hour to have Sheriff’s deputies escort tree trimming crews in Livingston County, MI, following an incident where one landowner told tree clearing workers working near (not on) his property that he was going to kill them–according to court records. Seems like a sensible precaution to have the cops handy, to keep the peace and to keep the nutters in check…
    Read More “Rover Pipe Uses Local Sheriff’s Deputies for Security in Mich.”

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    PA DEP Conducting “Listening Tour” for “Environmental Justice”

    Last December the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) said it would go on a “listening tour” in early 2017, to focus on so-called environmental justice–whatever that is (see PA DEP to Conduct ‘Listening Tour’ for ‘Environmental Justice’). It’s no longer early 2017, but the DEP has finally set up a schedule for its listening tour. Our take: “environmental justice” means asking poor people if they’ve been abused by the oil and gas industry in any way–and if they have a beef, the DEP will “do” something about it. This isn’t the first “listening tour” conducted by the DEP. You may recall in 2013 the agency conducted a listening tour for new drilling regulations (see PA DEP Launches Public Comments on New Drilling Rules, Roadshow). It went so well, they extended it into 2014 (see PA DEP Extends Roadshow for Public Comment on New Drilling Rules). In 2015, the now-fired DEP Sec. John Quigley went on a 14-stop listening tour to elicit input on PA’s version of Obama’s disastrous Clean Power Plan (see DEP launches public talks on Clean Power Plan). Yesterday President Trump essentially dumped the CPP (dreams DO come true!). The DEP’s newest listening tour will hit nine whistle stops beginning in April and ending in May…
    Read More “PA DEP Conducting “Listening Tour” for “Environmental Justice””

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    New Report Shares Key Insights from 100+ Qtly Earnings Reports

    Quarterly earnings calls are a great source of industry information, particularly during the question & answer sessions, when analysts help breathe life into stale earnings press releases by asking questions that many times force managers to go off-script. They are also excellent ways to check on the competition, and to “channel check” by seeing how different parts of the value chain are performing, such as oilfield service, E&P, and midstream companies. MDN highlights these calls from time to time, extracting salient comments. A typical earnings call lasts an hour. Unless it’s your business to listen to these calls, who has the time to review them all? We’ll tell you who: NGI (Natural Gas Intelligence). NGI’s research department is top notch, lead by former Wall St. analyst (and MDN friend) Patrick Rau. As he does each month, Pat (and other NGI analysts) have just sat through 100 earnings calls (over 200 hours!). Each quarter, going back years, Pat and NGI’s analysts have created a concise report that summarizes the main/big/wickedly interesting points to come from these calls. Normally that quarterly report is for internal purposes only–for NGI’s sales and journalistic arms. This time, however, NGI has decided to publish it. Among the companies analyzed in the “4Q16 U.S. Oil & Gas Earnings Report: Research & Analysis” report are some of the biggest and best in the Marcellus/Utica, including Chesapeake Energy, EQT, Halliburton, Marathon, Range Resources, Rice Energy and Williams. This is an important report that will help you make sense of the oil and gas sector–where it’s at right now, and where it’s most likely heading in the coming year…
    Read More “New Report Shares Key Insights from 100+ Qtly Earnings Reports”

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    Williams Files with FERC to Expand Transco Pipeline to NYC, NE

    In May 2016, Williams’ Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Company (Transco) pre-filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for a project called the Northeast Supply Enhancement project (see Williams Pre-Files with FERC to Expand Transco Pipeline in PA, NY). The new project is meant to increase pipeline capacity and flows heading into northeastern markets. In particular, Transco wants to provide more natural gas to utility giant National Grid beginning with the 2019-2020 heating season. National Grid operates in New York City, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Also in May, Williams ran an open season to lock up commitments for the Northeast Supply Enhancement project (see Williams Announces Open Season for Northeast Supply Enhancement). The open season worked. National Grid committed to all 400,000 dekatherms (400 million cubic feet per day) of extra gas the project will provide. Last September Transco held four public hearings about the proposed project. The time for hearings and comments and pre-filings is over. Yesterday Williams announced they have made an official, full application for the Northeast Supply Enhancement project…
    Read More “Williams Files with FERC to Expand Transco Pipeline to NYC, NE”

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    FERC Gives Columbia WB XPress Enviro Thumbs Up

    Click image for larger version

    In Jan. 2016, Columbia Pipeline Group (now owned by TransCanada) filed their full, official application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for approval of the $850 million WB XPress Project (see Columbia Pipeline Files to Build $850M WB XPress Project in WV/VA). WB XPress consists of two new compressor stations, 26 miles of pipeline replacement located along existing corridors, and 2.9 miles of new pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia. The WB XPress Project will expand capacity of the Columbia Gas Transmission pipeline system in the region by 1.3 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), linking Marcellus gas supplies to new markets. The first and most important step in an approval process is an environmental review conducted by FERC. If the environmental assessment (EA) comes back positive, the project is virtually assured of approval. Good news: FERC just delivered a favorable EA for WB XPress…
    Read More “FERC Gives Columbia WB XPress Enviro Thumbs Up”