U.S. Gas Rig Count Whacked Again Last Week – PA & WV Each Lose 2
The weekly rig count in the U.S., particularly in gas-focused plays, continues to be of concern. That is, it keeps decreasing and then not recovering the decrease. Last Thursday, Baker Hughes said the U.S. lost another eight rigs total (oil and gas)–the seventh week in a row the rig count has decreased. Two weeks ago, the cumulative Marcellus/Utica rig count was even at 49 rigs (see Baker Hughes Rig Count Down 6th Week in a Row – Indicating a Trend). But that was after the M-U had plunged seven weeks earlier, going from 53 to 49. Last week Pennsylvania and West Virginia each lost two rigs. The Marcellus (by itself) hit 35 active rigs last week, the lowest number since March of this year.
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An article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette tackles the issues of permit reform, environmental justice, and the intersection of the two. The article asks and attempts to answer the question, “How does one shape the other?” Based on quotes and comments in the story coming from the Shapiro administration, particularly from Acting Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), Rich Negrin, it’s obvious that Shapiro intends to redefine “environmental justice” so broadly that it will become meaningless. The aim seems to be to turn environmental justice into a blunt force instrument the left can use to deny any energy permit they don’t want to issue.
Those part of the environmental left were some of the biggest supporters of electing then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro as Pennsylvania’s next governor. But it seems the wacko environmental movement is not happy with their boy Josh. They have buyer’s remorse. It all started when, shortly after last November’s election, Shapiro announced a deal with Coterra Energy (formerly Cabot Oil & Gas) to settle a criminal case against the company for the decade-old matter of methane migration in Dimock, PA (see 
Even as the Bidenistas at the Dept. of Energy are deciding which regional hydrogen hub proposals to fund, and even though Pennsylvania, with its parochial application that competes against a much better application from West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky, the Democrats in the PA House are attempting to force any new hydrogen projects in the Keystone state to NOT use fossil fuels–namely Marcellus Shale gas. Yes, they are insane! PA Dems (led by State Rep. Greg Vitali) are about to screw up PA’s already long shot at grabbing one of the 6 to 8 regional hydrogen hub projects and $1 billion in funding by promoting House Bill (HB) 1215–written by the radicals of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Talk about dumb. Wow!
New shale permits issued for Jun 5-11 in the Marcellus/Utica last week dipped a bit from the previous week. There were 20 new permits issued, down from 25 issued the previous week. Last week’s permit tally included 6 new permits for Pennsylvania, 8 new permits for Ohio, and 6 new permits in West Virginia. Ascent Resources scored the most new permits with 8 issued in the Ohio Utica, spread across three counties. Chesapeake Energy had the second most new permits with 6 permits issued in the PA Marcellus across two counties.
Business leaders in Pennsylvania are keeping the pressure on Gov. Josh “do nothing” Shapiro–hoping to get him to keep an implied promise to remove the state from the odious carbon tax scheme called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). During the gubernatorial campaign, Shapiro expressed doubts about RGGI, implying he would not support PA’s participation, a campaign lie we warned you about at the time (see 
We’re laughing our considerably fat rear-ends off at the Democrat leftists in Pennsylvania who continue to spit and sputter over a proposed name change for the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). PA State Sen. Gene Yaw recently floated a bill (that has since passed a first committee vote) to change the name of the DEP to the Dept. of Environmental Services, as an indicator that the DEP should be less about policing and more about serving the public (see 
Last Thursday around 30-40 environmental activists (anti-fossil fuelers), along with a handful of local residents, rallied in Beaver, PA, before showing up for the Beaver County Commission regular meeting. The protesters, who want the Shell ethane cracker plant shut down, vented their concerns about the plant to county commissioners. The three county commissioners listened while antis vented for more than an hour (they should receive hazard pay). The problem is, the protesters were in the wrong venue.
According to Baker Hughes, which has tracked rig counts since 1944, drillers cut the rig count once again last week (overall by a single rig), the sixth week in a row when the rig count has gone down. This is the first time the U.S. oil & gas rig count has gone down six weeks in a row since July 2020–nearly three years ago. Oil rigs rose by one last week to 556. Gas rigs fell two to 135, the lowest since March 2022. According to oil and gas expert David Blackmon (who writes for Forbes), a rig count slumping for six weeks in a row is a trend and cannot be ignored. What about the Marcellus/Utica?
Last June (one year ago), the story broke that Penn LNG, headed by Franc James, a native of Philadelphia, had “quietly lined up support to build a $6.4 billion liquefied natural gas export terminal near Philly.” Not wanting this golden opportunity to die from opposition by radicalized environmentalists, Pennsylvania State Rep. Marina White (Republican from Philadelphia, a true rarity) sponsored House Bill (HB) 2458, which passed and was subsequently signed into law by then-Gov. Tom Wolf (see 
A radicalized left-wing organization hellbent on forcing the end of fossil energy called Evergreen Action, along with another radical nonprofit called Ceres, partnered and paid a for-profit company called Synapse Energy Economics (that works exclusively for left-wing groups) to produce a completely sham and false “report” that (try not to laugh) claims Pennsylvania residents will pay less for their electricity under the onerous, Marcellus-killing Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax.
Here we go again. The shale-hating Democrats of the Pennsylvania legislature have floated a resolution to “study” how much money the Commonwealth is losing by not imposing an obscene severance tax on top of the existing impact fee (which is a severance tax by another name). Every single year Tom Wolf occupied the governor’s chair (eight loooooong years), his budgets insisted on including a Marcellus-killing severance tax. And every single year, the Republican-controlled legislature wisely refused. With a new Democrat governor, Josh “do nothing” Shapiro, and with the Dems now controlling the House (by a single vote), they are at it again–hoping to enact a Marcellus-killing severance tax. The first step is to “study” it…
In March, environmental radical Pat McDonnell of PennFuture, the former Pennsylvania Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), along with his best friend THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum, sued McDonnell’s former agency over permits the DEP issued to Williams to build the Regional Energy Access Expansion (REAE) project (see