Ohio Still Employs ~200,000 in Oil & Gas, Even Thru the Pandemic
There is no denying that permits issued to drill new wells in all of the Marcellus/Utica, including Ohio, have gone down over the past couple of years. Price is the main reason–the low price of natgas, that is. Even with all of the lower drilling budgets, less drilling, and (yes) layoffs, we spotted a statistic about Ohio that gives us encouragement. According to JobsOhio, the state’s economic development agency, “about 200,000 Ohioans are employed by the oil and gas industry.” That’s great news!
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How’s this for serendipity? We were just thinking about the latest violation of expectations by PTT Global Chemical. In February the company adamantly said a final investment decision (FID) to build the $10 billion ethane cracker plant project in Belmont County, OH would happen by “middle of 2021” (see 
The states that produce Marcellus and Utica Shale are ensuring no rogue local municipalities will get it into their heads to ban the use of natural gas like some municipalities in left-leaning states including California and New York. Both Pennsylvania and Ohio have bills that would “ban bans” of natural gas (see 
A “reporter” at the Columbus Dispatch has just published a hatchet job on a shale waste handling and processing facility located in Belmont County, OH. The facility is located (gasp!) a half-mile away from a high school and a hospital. It’s also located near the Ohio River and it handles (gasp!) “radioactive waste.” That’s how the article begins. It goes downhill from there, making wild claims of “overflowing barrels” of radioactive waste at the facility.
In May MDN brought you the news that landowner Gateway Royalty was sounding the alarm over a new bill quickly advancing in the Ohio legislature. House Bill (HB) 152 would use forced pooling if 65% of a proposed unit’s landowners are leased (too low a bar) and also would force the landowner to accept a 12.5% royalty and force them to accept post-production deductions with royalties in some cases potentially going down to nothing (see 
On Joe Biden’s first day occupying the White House, he signed an Executive Order (EO) suspending new oil and gas leasing on all federal while the Interior Department reviews existing leases and permitting practices for 60 days (see 
Two of three Marcellus/Utica states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania issued just 4 new permits, spread all around the state, all in different counties. Ohio issued 8 new permits, split equally between Encino Energy (EAP) and Southwestern Energy (Eclipse). West Virginia’s shale industry got skunked last week with no new permits for a second week in a row! We can’t remember that ever happening.
Several weeks ago we brought you the news that landowner Gateway Royalty was sounding the alarm over a new bill quickly advancing in the Ohio legislature. Ohio’s House Bill (HB) 152 would use forced pooling if 65% of a proposed unit’s landowners are leased (too low a bar) and also would force the landowner to accept a 12.5% royalty and force them to accept post-production deductions with royalties in some cases potentially going down to nothing (see 
Ohio’s House Bill (HB) 6 law granted billions (plural) of dollars to FirstEnergy in an attempt to prop up the company’s economically failing nuclear power plants. FirstEnergy bribed state legislators to pass, and keep passed, HB 6 by paying out $61 million to a small group of insiders, including the now-former Speaker of the House (see 
The state treasurers from all three actively producing Marcellus/Utica states, including Stacy Garrity (PA), Robert Sprague (OH), and Riley Moore (WV), along with the state treasurers from 11 other oil and gas producing states, sent a letter to John Kerry, Biden’s so-called Climate Envoy, telling Kerry and other Biden officials to stop pressuring banks and other financial institutions to divest from fossil fuel companies. The treasurers also issued a warning to those banks and financial institutions letting them know their states (all 14 of them) will collectively pull their money out of those banks and financial institutions–BILLIONS of dollars–if the banks and financial institutions persist in divesting from fossil fuel companies. Fossil fuel haters: BACK OFF!
Gateway Royalty is sounding the alarm over a new bill that’s quickly advancing in the Ohio legislature. Ohio’s House Bill (HB) 152 allows drillers to force-pool landowners if 65% of a drilling unit is signed to a lease–a pretty low bar if you ask us. But that’s not even the worst part. The reluctant landowner would receive a standard 12.5% royalty, no matter what the royalty is for the rest of the leases in the unit, AND post-production deductions would be taken out. Landowners could realistically see a 6.25% royalty…or less! It’s time to burn up the phone lines to either get this bill changed, or defeated.
Radical environmentalists continue to use the City of Oberlin, Ohio to try and advance their agenda of ending the use of natural gas pipelines. And Oberlin willingly lets them do it. We’re referring to the latest court filing by Oberlin (actually by Big Green lobbyists using Oberlin) contesting the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) decision to approve the NEXUS pipeline, a pipeline from the Utica Shale into Michigan that’s been flowing for years connecting to a pipeline that exports some of the gas into Canada. Oberlin says FERC’s approval of NEXUS is faulty because some gas gets exported and is not “in the public interest.”