PA New Wells Drilled Up in 1Q22, but Production Down from 1Q21
Last week the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) released its latest quarterly Natural Gas Production Report for January through March 2022 (full copy below). There was 136 new horizontal wells spud (drilled) in 1Q22, an increase of nine wells (7.1%) compared to 1Q21. However, natural gas production volume was 1,851 billion cubic feet (Bcf) in 1Q22, a slight decrease (-0.6%) from 1Q21. It is the first quarterly decrease in production in over a year.
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The Bidenistas at the Dept. of Interior breathlessly announced the agency is (finally) releasing $33 million to plug 277 orphaned oil and gas wells across the country located on federal lands. The average price per plugging is $119,000. Spending $33 million to plug wells on federal lands is chump change compared to the $4.7 billion allocated for plugging old wells under the so-called Biden infrastructure bill. Why is the government paying $119K to plug wells that normally cost maybe $50,000 to plug? We’ll answer that question with another question. Why does the government pay $400 for a hammer it could buy at Lowes for $18?
Just last week MDN told you we will, from now on, bring you new permit data for the previous week on Fridays. Yet here it is Thursday and we’re sharing the permit data for last week. What gives? MDN and its author, Jim Willis, are taking a break Friday (tomorrow) and next Monday for the Memorial Day holiday. Well, we’re taking Monday off for the holiday. We’re taking Friday off because there’s a wedding in Jim’s family this weekend. There are preparations to make, and celebrations to partake in. So we’re bringing you the permit data today, on Thursday. Speaking of which, there were 24 new permits issued last week, with 14 of them going to Pennsylvania, seven to Ohio, and three to West Virginia. We break it down below.
The radicals of the Clean Air Council (CAC) are claiming a (very small) victory in their campaign against processing NGLs at the Marcus Hook refinery located near Philadelphia. CAC is CACkling that they have forced Energy Transfer, builder of the mighty Mariner East (ME) pipeline system (a pipeline that CAC couldn’t stop), to back down on how permits are issued for the Marcus Hook facility–the place where NGLs from ME end up for processing and loading for export. The end result is…well…not much. Nothing will really change. The same volume of NGLs will still flow to Marcus Hook, and the same volume of NGLs will be loaded onto ships and exported to other countries. The only thing that changes is that ET spends more time and pays more money to obtain a single large permit instead of two separate, smaller permits. We’ll explain.
In early 2013 the Pittsburgh International Airport and Allegheny County, PA signed a deal with CONSOL Energy (now CNX Resources) to lease 9,000 acres surrounding the airport for natural gas drilling (see 
In March 2021, Eureka Resources announced plans to build a Marcellus Shale wastewater treatment facility in Dimock (Susquehanna County), Pennsylvania (see 
Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) drills in the Greater Pittsburgh region, in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. Last year Olympus filed an application to build a new well pad in a rural part of Allegheny County, in West Deer Township. So-called “concerned citizens” got amped up to oppose the project. They succeeded when the Dionysus well pad was rejected by town supervisors (see 
We’re holding on by a thread folks, with respect to PA’s onerous new carbon tax. Back in April, we told you about a lawsuit filed by Big Coal against the Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf administration to block Wolf’s attempt to force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon tax on coal- and gas-fired power plants (see