Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Belmont County | Energy Services | Ethane | Industrywide Issues | Marshall County | Ohio | Processing Plants | PTT Global | West Virginia
Big Green Tries to Whip Up Opposition to PTT Ohio Cracker
Big Green is doing its best to stir up opposition to PTT Global Chemical’s proposed ethane cracker plant in Belmont County, Ohio. Big Green is also trying to hide its involvement and pass itself off as organic, local community opposition. Not true. Last week the same so-called community organizer addressed an anti meeting at a local church and organized a “protest” a few days later.
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In September 2016, MDN reported that EmberClear has plans to fund and build a new $900 million electric generating plant in Harrison County, OH (see 
Good news for oilfield services companies that offer fracking services in the Ohio Utica Shale. The Tenth District Ohio Court of Appeals recently ruled that an amendment to an existing law granting tax exempt status for oil and gas equipment not only applies to equipment purchased by frackers from now on, it also applies to equipment they’ve purchased (and paid sales tax on) going back in time too. In other words, some frackers are owed refunds on the sales tax they’ve paid in the past.
If you use the number of active rigs operating in a given shale play/state as the measure for “success,” 2019 wasn’t such a good year for the Marcellus/Utica. In January, Pennsylvania entered 2019 with 48 active rigs. In December that number was cut nearly in half, to 25 active rigs. It was a similar story for Ohio, which entered 2019 with 17 active rigs and exited with 12 rigs. West Virginia, on the other hand, entered 2019 with 15 rigs and exited the year with the same number. But at one point during the year WV had 21 active rigs. We have the monthly rig stats below for all three states.
The Ohio Supreme Court, on Christmas Eve, threw a lifeline to an effort to overturn an Ohio law that provides corporate welfare in the form of $1 billion of ratepayer (taxpayer) money to FirstEnergy (which recently changed its name to Harbor Energy). The Ohio law provides the funds to FirstEnergy so they can keep two economically failing nuclear power plants up and running, giving the plants an unfair advantage over gas-fired plants that don’t receive corporate welfare.
Columbia Gas of Ohio (NiSource) recently announced a new $135 million pipeline project to bring new supplies of Utica-sourced natural gas to homes and businesses located north and west of Columbus, in central Ohio. The project, called the Northern Loop Project, will file for regulatory approval with the Ohio Power Siting Board and hopes the OPSB will approve the project in 2020, with construction set to happen in 2022.
Empire Pipeline LLC, based in New Orleans, Louisiana, NOT to be confused with the National Fuel Gas Company subsidiary Empire Pipeline (in NY and PA), has purchased “an operational and financial interest” in TROO Clean Environmental LLC, based in Belmont County, Ohio. TROO provides recycling of Marcellus/Utica frack wastewater.
The Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP), a nonprofit energy education and public outreach organization, recently commissioned a poll of Ohio voters in eight eastern counties–in the Ohio Valley area. The counties surveyed include those with the most active Utica Shale drilling in the state. The poll asked residents’ about their views on shale drilling and its related activities. Some 88% said the natural gas and oil industry is important to their community, and 78% support natural gas and oil development in the Ohio Valley area.
The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) issued third quarter 2019 numbers for Utica shale oil and gas production last Friday. Drum roll please! The numbers show new state record highs for quarterly oil AND natural gas production, the most ever since quarterly reporting began in 2013. Through the roof! Utica oil production was up 29.8% over 3Q18, and Utica natural gas production was up 11.3% over 3Q18.
In Nov. 2017 the Ohio Attorney General’s office under then-AG Mike Dewine (RINO swamp dweller, now governor) sued Energy Transfer at the prompting of the Ohio EPA claiming the company’s Rover Pipeline project was guilty of “polluting state waters while constructing a natural gas pipeline across Ohio” (see 
Columbia Gas of Ohio says it can’t build local natural gas delivery pipelines fast enough to meet the demand for new customers. “We’re adding new customers, commercial, industrial, residential, in every quadrant of the region” according to Columbia Gas President Dan Creekmur. And he doesn’t it see it stopping any time soon. So the company is spending big bucks (nine figures) to build new local gas pipelines–this year!
The rig count in the Marcellus/Utica region is crashing–down to its lowest level for a December since the M-U became a “thing.” It’s now lower than the levels reached in 2014, which was the advent of the first “crash” in rig counts. BUT (and this is a big BUT), lower rig counts do not necessarily mean less drilling or less production. How can that be?