COVID Aftermath: CNX, Equitrans Cutting Southpointe Office Space
In our opinion, we have yet to fully understand the long-term, permanent changes in society that have happened because of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are signs that things have permanently changed. For example, a significant number of people now work from home rather than commute to an office in downtown. Many workers like working from home better! In a signal that COVID long-term changes are impacting the Marcellus/Utica industry, two major M-U companies with office space in the Southpointe business park (Pittsburgh suburb in Washington County) are shopping a collective 213,000 square feet of office space they no longer need because their workers have permanently relocated to home offices.
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All three M-U states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania received a big 21 new permits. Ohio received 7 new permits last week, all of them for Encino Energy (two different well pads). West Virginia received just 2 new permits, both for HG Energy on the same pad in the same county.
Eureka Resources currently operates three frack wastewater treatment facilities in the Marcellus Shale, two in Williamsport (Lycoming County), PA (where the company is headquartered), and one in Wysox (Bradford County), PA. In October 2019 the company began extracting lithium from Marcellus wastewater at its Wysox facility (see 
Olympus Energy, the renamed Huntley & Huntley Energy Exploration (HHEX), concentrates its drilling in the Pittsburgh suburbs, including Upper Burrell and Allegheny Townships in Westmoreland County, PA. Olympus has just cut a $1.2 million deal with the Municipal Authority of the City of New Kensington to extend three miles of waterlines near three Marcellus well sites in Upper Burrell and Allegheny Townships.
We don’t write much about Alta Resources, a shale drilling company co-founded by the inventor of shale fracking, George Mitchell. But that doesn’t mean Alta doesn’t drill in the Marcellus. In 2020 Alta was in the Top 10 PA drillers list (see 
In May 2020 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case challenging whether or not the state Attorney General’s office has the right to use a consumer protection law to prosecute companies like Chesapeake Energy and Anadarko over royalty payment shenanigans (see 
In a brilliant move aimed at boxing in the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), two northeastern Pennsylvania State Senators–Gene Yaw and Lisa Baker–along with members of the PA Senate Republican Caucus (27 Senators in all), filed a lawsuit in January against the DRBC accusing the quasi-governmental agency of “taking” the property rights of PA residents without just compensation under the law (see 
The Enervus U.S. rig count continues to climb (a very good sign). For the week ending March 24, the U.S. rig count climbed another 11 active rigs to 513. The oil-focused Permian Basin added eight new rigs. The Marcellus stayed even at 33 active rigs while the Ohio Utica picked up one active rig and now has 12 active rigs. The other major shale gas play, the Haynesville, stayed even at 47 active rigs.
At some point in the distant past (during our lifetime) swamps got renamed to “wetlands.” Don’t you just love how the left euphemizes everything? Chesapeake Energy is a bad actor when it comes to shafting landowners out of royalties, we’ll grant you that. However, the company must now pay Pennsylvania and the federal government (DOJ and EPA) a combined $1.9 million for “failure to identify and protect wetlands at 76 oil and gas well sites in Pennsylvania.” In other words, failure to protect swamps.
New Fortress Energy (NFE), which likes to build and own as much of the LNG supply chain as possible, built and operates an LNG import terminal in San Juan, Puerto Rico. After the facility was up and running, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) dinged the company, asking for an explanation as to why they built it without FERC “Mother May I?” permission. New Fortress responded last July saying FERC told them no permission was needed (see 
Yesterday we brought you the news that LOLA Energy continues to transform itself with the purchase of what was EdgeMarc Energy’s shale assets in Butler County, PA (see 
LOLA Energy (LOLA stands for 
In a very gentle and diplomatic way, Pennsylvania State Senator John Yudichak (Independent from Wilkes-Barre) told Department of Community & Economic Development (DCED) Secretary Dennis Davin on Monday he’s not doing his job. Yudichak told Davin “site selectors” (people who work with companies to select sites for big manufacturing and other types of facilities across the U.S.) aren’t aware of the tax credits available as part of Act 66, a law passed last year aimed at building new petrochemical plants in PA.
If you live in Pennsylvania, actually in just about any state, you couldn’t miss the big splash made yesterday when PA’s worst governor in the past 50 years, Tom Wolf, announced a massive taxpayer-funded initiative to build seven new solar energy facilities in six PA counties that will strip away some 2,000 acres of valuable PA farmland to produce enough electricity to power just half of PA’s state government. (Perhaps we can call it the half-baked solar project?) Leftists in mainstream media are falling over themselves to praise Wolf. We (as usual) have a different take.
We’ve written plenty about Shell’s mighty ethane cracker plant project happening in Beaver County, PA. It is one of the biggest construction projects currently underway in the entire country. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit one year ago, the construction site closed down, going from 8,000 workers to a skeleton crew of 300. The way Shell handled the closure, and handled the subsequent reopening, is worth understanding and studying.