IEA World Energy Outlook 2020: The Long Road Out of COVID
Each year the International Energy Agency (IEA) issues a special World Energy Outlook report. The 2020 edition was released this morning. Of course, the pandemic and energy demand destruction resulting from the pandemic is front and center in this report. The report forecasts global energy demand will drop by 5% in 2020, energy-related CO2 emissions by 7%, and energy investment by 18%. When will things turn around?
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After a couple of weeks of double-digit gains in the Enverus national rig count, last week the count slipped backward by 3 (for the week ending Oct. 7). The Marcellus lost two rigs last week. The Haynesville, a gassy shale play in Lousiana and competitor to the Marcellus/Utica, picked up 2 rigs.
The results of a new study conducted by Penn State researchers surprised them. The study looked at who and how much influence happens with state regulations adopted for fracking. The operating assumption, based on an incessantly biased media, is that states are in the dark and beholden to the oil and gas industry. That “frackers” ride roughshod over state regulators. The researchers found that’s simply not the case.
It’s like the coming and going of the four seasons (or two seasons if you live in Binghamton, NY, summer for two months, winter the rest of the time). On a regular schedule, anti-fossil fuel organizations fund “studies” that supposedly show links between fracking and harmful effects to humans who live near fracking. The latest junk science study (in a long line of such studies) claims to show there have been harmful effects from air emissions from gas well sites in southwest Pennsylvania.
Another week of double-digit gains in the Enverus rig count! The US oil and gas rig count jumped 18 to 326 in the week ended Sept. 30, according to a Platts report evaluating Enverus numbers. Last week the rig count was up by 15 (see 
Consulting powerhouse Ernst & Young (EY) has just published results from a new survey titled “Oil & Gas Digital Transformation and Workforce Survey.” The survey/study finds “digital transformation” of oil and gas companies is essential to the future of our industry. What, exactly, is “digital transformation”? We’ll tell you.
In the first half of 2020, the U.S. exported 5.4 million barrels per day (bpd) of petroleum products, a slight increase of 48,000 bpd (1%) from the first half of 2019. Wait, what? Exports went UP and not down? Even though the entire world shut down and used far less fossil fuels during 1H? That’s right. The reason we exported slightly more petroleum products is because NGLs (natural gas liquids) are part of those numbers, and the world kept using NGLs, like propane and ethane, even during the COVID shutdown.
Two days ago MDN brought you news that natural gas prices in the Marcellus/Utica region are about to get really ugly, at least for the next couple of months (see 
Time for our weekly check of the rig count. We like to check the Enverus count because we believe it’s more accurate than the Baker Hughes count. According to S&P’s analysis, the Enverus rig count climbed by a big 15 for the week ending Sept. 23 to hit a nine-week high of 308 active rigs. That’s the biggest one-week gain since the current price war/coronavirus downturn.
S&P Global analysts have been looking at natural gas production numbers for Pennsylvania. The most recently available data is from June (numbers are always delayed a few months). S&P found that shale gas production in PA dropped 2% in June from May, to 18.48 Bcf/d. June’s numbers were essentially flat to the same time in 2019.
Analysts at S&P Global are making a bold prediction: It will take a full ten years for the world to recover from the coronavirus and begin growing its demand for natural gas once again. Something about the prediction just seems “off” to us.
Each quarter the Dallas Federal Reserve conducts a survey of 150-200 oil and gas firms located or headquartered in the Eleventh District–Texas, southern New Mexico, and northern Louisiana. The energy company executives surveyed run companies that operate regionally, nationally, and some even internationally. The Dallas Fed released its latest quarterly Energy Survey results yesterday. We have a full copy below.
Yesterday our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issued our favorite monthly report, the 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 (i.e. current) month, and how much each will produce in the coming (i.e. next) month. The September report, which predicts production for the coming month of October, estimates natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica will decrease by 162 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d)–the eighth month in a row the M-U has seen a production decrease.