EQT Drilling Causes Coal Mine Water to Leak in Mon River
An accident related to shale drilling is responsible for dumping some (not sure how much) acid mine drainage (AMD) from an abandoned coal mine into the Monongahela River last weekend. Which sounds worse than it actually is. Water that seeps into old coal mines mixes with pyrite (iron-sulfide) and oxidizes, turning the water an orange/brown color. The water becomes somewhat acidic. We previously talked at length about acid mine drainage coming from the Old Forge bore hole near Scranton, and about Marcellus money being used to help clean it up (see Marcellus Drilling Helps Fix Biggest Polluter of Chesapeake Bay). The Old Forge bore hole pours 60-100 million (!) gallons of AMD into the Lackawanna River EACH DAY. Yes, it is a problem, but PA has been living with it for the past 50+ years–and people aren’t keeling over dead from it. With that as background, a contractor working for EQT was drilling under a roadway in Allegheny County (near Pittsburgh) to install a water pipe for EQT’s fracking operations when they hit an abandoned mine and the water collected in it began pouring out–and into the Mon River. It didn’t take long to contain the leak and stop it from reaching the Mon. How many gallons actually went into the river? We don’t have any word on that, but we can’t image it was more than a few thousand gallons. In the larger scheme of things, a relative drop in the bucket. Here’s what we do know…
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Kinder Morgan has proposed the UTOPIA (Utica To Ontario Pipeline Access) pipeline, a 12-inch ethane pipeline that will run ~240 miles across the state of Ohio where it will connect with another pipeline and (eventually) flow ethane all the way to a cracker plant in Canada. That is, if they can get some holdout landowners to allow them onto their land (see 
Quick. Who has the largest core acreage position in the Marcellus/Utica? And which company runs more than one-third of all the rigs operating in the Marcellus/Utica? The answer to both those questions would be Antero Resources. They also have some of the lowest drilling (i.e. breakeven) costs in the industry–and some of the highest hedges (prices they get for the gas). Put it altogether and Antero is one of the most important drillers in our beloved shale plays. Antero won’t release full year 2016 numbers until later this month, but ahead of that, they’ve just released two helpful documents. The first is a press release announcing proved reserves and drilling/development costs. The second is the latest series of PowerPoint slides, the February 2017 company presentation (a preview of the 2016 update). We have both items for you below…
Midstream and utility giant Dominion issued their fourth quarter and full year 2016 update yesterday. Just to give you an idea of the depth and breadth of the company, Dominion has ~26,000 megawatts of power generation, 14,400 miles of natural gas transmission, gathering and storage pipeline, and some 6,500 miles of electric-transmission lines. They are “a producer and transporter of energy.” Among the key projects we keep an eye one: the Cove Point, Maryland LNG export facility (under construction), the Greensville Power Station (under construction), and the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (soon to be under construction). The numbers are looking good. Revenue for Dominion in 4Q16 was $457 million, up $100 from 4Q15. Full year revenues were $2.1 billion, up from $1.9 billion in 2015. Below we have yesterday’s update, along with select portions of a conference call by Dominion’s muckety mucks and their comments about projects like Cove Point and Atlantic Coast Pipeline…
We’ve always thought the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was populated with environmental leftist with an agenda–a mission. And that support for the agency by groups, and even by businesses who come under their regulation, was driven by a warped philosophy. However, two recent bits of information now snap the picture into full focus. The reason the EPA is so zealously defended and promoted by those inside and outside the agency isn’t really about protecting humans and protecting the planet. Oh, that has something to do with it. But the primary motivator is (you guessed it), money. Greed. Graft. Payola. This began to come into focus for us when we ran a post yesterday that stated President Trump will “seek significant budget and staff cuts” and when an aide to Trump on the transition team “suggested it was reasonable to expect the president to seek a cut of about $1 billion from the EPA’s roughly $8 billion annual budget.” What does EPA do with all that money? “About half the EPA’s budget passes through to state and local governments for infrastructure projects and environmental cleanup efforts.” But that’s not all. The EPA also funnels money to researchers and even to private businesses in the form of grants. In other words, the EPA has been a gravy train for a good many people, and the train is about to come to a screeching halt…
Last year MDN told you about researchers in Argentina strapping methane backpacks on cows and hooking up hoses to their digestive tracts (reminding us of the Borg in Star Trek) in order to capture global warming methane emissions from bovines (see 
In December 2013 MDN first reported a new $250 million pipeline on the way in the Utica Shale from Marathon Petroleum Corporation, the largest refiner in the Utica Shale region (see 
In December MDN reported on the huge West Virginia Supreme Court decision against driller EQT that disallows EQT from deducting post-production expenses from royalty checks, even with signed contracts in place (see 
MDN reported in September that American Electric Power is selling four electric generating plants to a newly formed joint venture of Blackstone and ArcLight Capital Partners (see 
Finally, something is being done about draining the swamp that has been (until now) a rogue, out-of-control federal Environmental Protection Agency. As we previously reported, Trump could not have picked a better person to head the agency than Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (see 
The PBS “reporters” at the taxpayer-funded StateImpact Pennsylvania, like Marie Cusack, are as biased as bias gets. The frustrating thing is that they pretend to be journalists–pretend to be unbiased. They are, instead, radical leftists with an agenda, and it leaks through with every article. Some articles more than others. Take, for example, Cusack’s recent article railing against Donald Trump and his first days in office–and how poor enviro wackos have a fight on their hands. We thought it would be fun to append Cusack’s article with some truth, so you have the full context–to see what she leaves out. Enjoy!…
Recently a biased editorial ran in the biased Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, taking aim at methane. The editorial, penned by Brian O’Neill, misrepresented the facts about methane in PA, in an attempt to garner support for onerous new regulations put forward by Gov. Wolf’s Dept. of Environmental Protection. State Sen. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Jefferson Hills (representing parts of Allegheny County and Washington County), responded with his own editorial. To their credit, the Post-Gazette published it. Reschenthaler said the air is actually getting cleaner in PA, not dirtier, thanks to Marcellus Shale gas. And the new regulations being pedaled by Wolf will not make things better environmentally. The only thing the new regs will do is kill jobs…
As we reported yesterday, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) chairman Norman Bay has his knickers in a twist over getting a demotion by President Trump, who has named another sitting FERC Commissioner, Cheryl LaFleur, to become the chairwoman of FERC (see 
World Oil calls itself “the premier trade publication for the international upstream industry.” Perhaps it is–who are we to say otherwise? The folks at World Oil have done us all a favor. They surveyed the upstream (i.e. drilling) oil and gas industry to find out what drillers are planning for 2017. Overall, they find drillers plan to drill 18,552 wells in North America this year–a big 26.8% jump from last year. In releasing a summary of the results, Wold Oil outlines region by region in the U.S. what they predict will happen this year, based on survey results. The northeast section caught our eye. World Oil predicts Pennsylvania will see a 29% increase in new well drilling this year (total of 774 new wells drilled). Ohio will see an increase of 19.1% in new well drilling (380 new wells). And West Virginia will see a big 21.9% increase (245 new wells). Here’s the full summary from World Oil…