U.S. CO2 Emissions Dropped Another 1.7% in 2016, Thx to Shale Gas
The main reason anti-drillers are hellbent on preventing any new drilling, and indeed the use of natural gas, is because it’s a “fossil fuel” and when burned, it creates carbon dioxide (CO2). However, what many non-thinking antis often overlook is that the use of natural gas instead of coal, oil and other fossil fuels leads to LESS carbon dioxide emissions. They blather on about limiting natural gas usage when it is because of natgas that CO2 emissions continue to go DOWN, year after year. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has just published an article highlighting the fact that CO2 emissions in the U.S. went down again in 2016–mostly because of a change from using coal to generate electricity to using natural gas, much of it extracted from the Marcellus/Utica…
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The Baker Hughes rig count in the U.S. continued to rocket skyward in March. In January the average number of U.S. rigs was 683. In February, the count zoomed to 744, up 61 rigs in just a month. And in March, the U.S. rig count zoomed to 789, up another 45 rigs in a month. Each active rig translates into hundreds of jobs, both directly working at the rig and indirectly in services delivered to the rig and its workers. It also means more landowners will soon have royalty payments heading in their direction. When rigs are active, life is good. What about rig counts in the Marcellus/Utica? Disappointingly our region’s rig count lost a rig in March. PA lost two rigs, OH gained a rig, and WV stayed even. What does it all mean? It means that this zooming up in rig counts is happening in other locations–primarily in the Permian Basin in Texas. That is, oil rigs rushing to take advantage of an increase crude prices to a sustained $50+/barrel. While we’re happy the rig count is up, we’re not happy more it is not happening in the northeast. But honestly, without pipelines to take away an increase in production, can you blame our drillers? Once there is more takeaway capacity, you’ll see rig counts begin to climb again in our neck of the woods…
Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) provides revenue projections for use in the state budget process along with impartial and timely analysis of fiscal, economic and budgetary issues to assist Commonwealth residents and the General Assembly in their evaluation of policy decisions. It’s only been around since 2010 and in the past we’ve wondered if it’s populated with liberal Democrats that don’t hew to the state mission of being objective in their analysis. However, our confidence in the organization has grown over the past year or so. Recent IPO predictions about Marcellus Shale impact fee revenues have been pretty accurate (see 
Last July anti-frackers at the Johns Hopkins-Bloomberg School of Public Health expelled another bought-and-paid-for (by anti-drillers) “study” that implies the presence of fracking in Pennsylvania leads to causing, or making worse, asthma attacks (see 
Let’s play “What if?” What if we followed the advice of the kooks who tell us to “keep it in the ground”–by which they mean we should immediately stop all extraction of fossil fuels–oil, gas, coal, etc. We’re told by the enviro left that renewables are here and ready now to take over the job of providing all of our energy needs. So what would REALLY happen if we stopped using all fossil fuels? The American Petroleum Institute commissioned a study of just that scenario. They released the study two days. Titled “The Impacts of Restricting Fossil Fuel Energy Production” (full copy below), the report reads like apocalyptic book of Revelation in the Bible. What would happen if there were no new private, state, or federal oil and natural gas leases; a complete ban on hydraulic fracturing; no new coal mines or expansion of existing mines; and no new energy infrastructure including pipelines? The U.S. economy would lose 5.9 million jobs. Our gross domestic product (GDP) would lose $11.8 trillion. Your household’s annual energy bill would jump by $4,552, per year! Crude oil prices would jump $40 per barrel, back to the bad old days of $100/barrel prices. (As an aside, because renewables really can’t take over the role of fossil fuels, we would become completely dependent on enemy countries in the Middle East for our oil.) Natural gas would jump from $3/Mcf to $21/Mcf. And your electric bill will go up by 56%. And that’s just for starters…
The nation’s electric grid is a complex system. You don’t ever think twice about–you flip a switch and the electricity flows, powering lights, appliances, etc. But ensuring the power is always there, always on when you need it, keeps a lot of people awake at night. The U.S. “grid” is actually a bunch of smaller grids. In the northeast there are several such organizations. One of them is called the PJM, a regional transmission organization (RTO) coordinating the movement of wholesale electricity in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia (including PA, OH and WV). PJM, like other RTOs, faces challenges with ensuring there will always be enough electricity produced to meet demand. Over the past several years coal-fired electric generating plants have been closing. Natural gas, and in a much smaller sense renewables (wind and solar) have taken up the slack. Wind and solar are notoriously unreliable. The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. Natural gas needs pipelines to get where it’s going. There has been a concern that with coal disappearing from the generation mix, that an “over-reliance” on natgas and renewables will make electricity supplies problematic and unreliable. In an effort to address questions of reliability, PJM just completed and published a 44-page study titled, “PJM’s Evolving Resource Mix and System Reliability” (full copy below). What does the study find? Even with fewer coal plants producing electricity, PJM’s electric supplies, using more and more natgas and renewables, will be just fine…
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 
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 “
Back in January MDN reported that Denise Brinley, a special assistant to the Secretary of the state Department of Community and Economic Development, spilled the beans on an upcoming report PA had commissioned. Brinley said the report would be released “in the coming weeks” and it would show that Pennsylvania can easily handle another two ethane cracker plants (aside from the already under construction Shell cracker), and that Ohio or West Virginia could also handle another two cracker plants (see 
We are super excited to bring you an exclusive report that has just been released by MDN subscriber 
Regina Mayor is leader of energy and natural resources for the consulting firm KPMG. She’s located in Houston. However, she recently made a trip to California to speak at the Stanford University Precourt Institute for Energy. Her topic? “How Energy CEOs are Adapting in the Downturn.” We have a video of her full talk below. It’s compelling. Mayor recounts how oil and gas companies had to figure out how to make money in a low price environment. She also observes that all sectors of the energy industry are pumped on Trump: “Everyone in the industry seems to think that they’re going to be a winner under this administration. The wind and solar guys and gals, the coal folks, the gas, the upstream, the downstream, everyone believes that they’re going to win…where I come from, you always know that that can’t be the case. Logic tells you that can’t be the case. But I do find the level of optimism quite fascinating.” Below is a summary of her talk, and the video…
The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) has just issued production numbers for the fourth quarter of 2016. The bad news is that oil production continued to slide in 4Q16, down 44% from the same quarter in 2015. The good news continues to be natural gas production, which was up 14% over the same period in 2015. The even better news: Natural gas production in Ohio for all of 2016 was 1.37 trillion cubic feet, vs. 955.61 billion cubic feet in 2015. Awesome! Ascent Resources (formerly Aubrey McClendon’s American Energy) continued to dominate in natural gas production. Ascent had the top producing well in 4Q16, as they did in 3Q16. In fact, Ascent had 9 of the top 10 producing natural gas wells in Ohio during 4Q16. Gulfport Energy was the only other producer to break the top 10, with one well. Over on the oil side of the isle, Eclipse Resources once again had the top producing oil well with their Purple Hayes well–currently the longest horizontal well drilled in the United States at 3.5 miles long (located in Guernsey County). Purple Hayes is the gift that keeps on giving, quarter after quarter! Below we have the ODNR’s high level overview of the numbers, along with MDN’s own exclusive analysis showing: the top 25 producing gas wells, the top 25 producing oil wells, and then the top 25 gas and oil wells as ranked by average production per day. There is a difference…
The International Energy Agency (IEA) works to ensure reliable, affordable and clean energy for its 29 member countries and beyond. IEA’s mission focuses on four main areas of focus: energy security, economic development, environmental awareness and engagement worldwide. A somewhat self-important group that issues reports periodically–particularly on mythical man-made global warming. The core of the man-made global warming argument is that mankind is burning fossil fuels, releasing loads of extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The CO2 in the atmosphere acts as a canopy to trap the earth’s heat and to (someday soon) catastrophically warm the planet, killing off species, causing sea levels to rise, melting polar ice caps. Except none of that is actually happening (the Emperor has no clothes). Which we keep pointing out over and over. We won’t head down that rabbit trail again right now. CO2 levels are important for the eggheads at IEA. In conducting research for the next release of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook report (for 2017), researchers at the agency say worldwide CO2 levels were “flat” in 2016, even though economic activity (or the use of energy) increased. One of the major points in the IEA’s preview of what’s to come in the World Energy Outlook report is this: “The biggest drop [in CO2] came from the United States, where carbon dioxide emissions fell 3%, or 160 million tonnes, while the economy grew by 1.6%. The decline was driven by a surge in shale gas supplies and more attractive renewable power that displaced coal. Emissions in the United States last year were at their lowest level since 1992, a period during which the economy grew by 80%.” Translation: Shale gas is good for global warming, if you believe in global warming…
Yesterday MDN’s favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issued our favorite monthly report–the Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The DPR is the EIA’s best guess, based on expert data crunchers, as to how much each of the U.S.’s seven major shale plays will produce for both oil and natural gas in the coming month. For the past five reports, estimating production for November, December, January, February, and March, Marcellus natgas has increased. The trend continues in this latest report, which forecasts production for the coming month of April. In fact, EIA says natgas production for all seven major shale plays will go up–the first time we can remember that happening in more than a year. Last month EIA predicted the combined output of the seven major shale plays would hit 49.1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), a new record (see 
A group of anti-fossil fuel nutters from the Philadelphia suburb of Middletown, PA (Delaware County) spent good money to buy themselves a report from an “independent” consultant that they say proves the Mariner East 2 Pipeline is too dangerous to build through their township. We don’t know how much the Middletown Coalition for Community Safety blew on the study, but we do know that Middletown Township is blowing $45,000 of taxpayer’s hard-earned money for a similar study (see