Politicians, Others Tour 2 Lithium-from-Wastewater Plants in NEPA
Yesterday, Congressman Dan Meuser (PA-09) joined Pennsylvania State Representative Jonathan Fritz (PA-111), other state legislators, and industry leaders to tour two lithium-from-wastewater facilities in Susquehanna County, PA, followed by a roundtable discussion focused on positioning PA as a national leader in the domestic production of critical minerals like lithium and rare earth elements. Of particular interest for us is that the name/location of one of the two facilities was officially revealed, something MDN did in June. (You stay ahead of the curve when you read MDN!) Read More “Politicians, Others Tour 2 Lithium-from-Wastewater Plants in NEPA”
A group of 26 financial officers (state treasurers) from 21 states sent letters to 18 major financial institutions this week, including BlackRock, warning them to abandon environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices if they wish to continue doing business with their states. Notably, Pennsylvania’s Treasurer, Stacy Garrity, was one of the signatories on the letter. West Virginia’s Treasurer, Larry Pack, signed, too. Unfortunately, Ohio’s Treasurer, Robert Sprague (a Republican), was NOT one of the signatories. Curious. 
NOTE: We owe Pin Oak an apology. We got this one wrong. In our original post, we implied that Pin Oak was guilty (or at least tardy) of not restoring multiple wells it had purchased from Geopetro. In fact, the exact opposite is true, as you will read below. MDN spoke to Pin Oak after publishing this post, and the company was kind enough to send us a clarification.
The Commonwealth Court in Pennsylvania is extremely important. It is one of two intermediate appellate courts (the other being Superior Court). The jurisdiction of the nine-judge Commonwealth Court is limited to appeals from final orders of certain state agencies (including the Department of Environmental Protection) and certain designated cases from the Courts of Common Pleas involving public sector legal questions, government regulation, and certain matters involving not-for-profit organizations. There is an open seat on Commonwealth Court. The Republican running, Matt Wolford, would be a great addition. 
“The haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate…shake it off, shake it off.” – Taylor Swift
Here we go again. We can see the headlines now: Dimock II…Paging Josh Fox!…Shale Drilling Contaminates Water Wells, Again. Coterra Energy is responsible for methane migrating more than a mile away to 13 “water supplies” (wells?) located around a nearby lake, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The offending nine wells sit on the Housel R Well Pad 1 in Susquehanna County’s Lenox Township. Coincidentally, Lenox Township is not all that far from Dimock Township. 
Last week, the Baker Hughes U.S. rig count continued its downward trend, losing two rigs to end at 542 active rigs nationwide. The count has been down 12 of the last 13 weeks, with the only slight increase happening two weeks ago. However, there was good news in our region. The Marcellus/Utica count increased by one to a combined 36 active rigs. The reason for the bump up was that Pennsylvania added a Marcellus rig last week. PA now runs 18 active rigs. OH remains at 11 rigs. And WV remains at 7 rigs. 
For the week of July 14 – 20, the number of permits issued to drill new wells in the Marcellus/Utica decreased from the previous week. There were 17 new permits issued across the three M-U states last week, four fewer than the 21 issued two weeks ago. The Keystone State (PA) issued just four new permits. All were single permits. Range Resources received its permit for a well in Allegheny County. EQT got a permit for a well in Greene County. Infinity Natural Resources’ (INR) permit was in Indiana County. And Expand Energy’s permit was in Wyoming County. 
In late 2022, MDN told you that Canadian-based Enerplus, with sizable non-operated assets in the northeast Pennsylvania Marcellus, had sold certain Canadian assets so it could concentrate most of its activity on drilling in the North Dakota Bakken (see 
Pennsylvania’s Republican Attorney General, Dave Sunday, has turned out to be a MAJOR disappointment. Yesterday, Sunday’s office filed 14 criminal counts against Equitrans Midstream (now owned and part of EQT Corporation) for an accident that happened in 2022. In November 2022, one of the ten natural gas storage wells at the Equitrans Rager Mountain Gas Storage Area in Jackson Township, Cambria County, began to leak. Equitrans is the owner/operator of Rager Mountain. The well leaked roughly 100 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of gas into the atmosphere (see 
We spotted a fascinating Hart Energy article that summarizes information from a recently released Mizuho Securities study. Mizuho researcher Nitin Kumar says that we are roughly halfway through the shale revolution. He posits that approximately 290,000 horizontal wells have been landed in shale rock in the Lower 48 and that under current economic conditions and with current technology, another 270,000 locations remain. It will take another 25 years to drill them, says Kumar. Which is interesting, although we take some issue with those findings. However, embedded in the statistics is something that caught our attention: the value of undeveloped acreage in various shale plays, including the Marcellus. 
As we previously reported, a truly mind-blowing event was held in Pittsburgh last weekâthe Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, organized by PA Senator Dave McCormick (see 
On July 8, PA State Senator Art Haywood (Democrat from Philadelphia) introduced PA Senate Bill (SB) 910, which slaps a 6.5% severance tax on the gross production of all oil and natural gas produced in the state (see