If Pennsylvania Loses GOP State Senate Majority, Marcellus is Done
We don’t think it’s overly melodramatic to say that Pennsylvania is standing on the edge of a cliff with the upcoming election in November. Yes, there’s the issue of which presidential candidate, Trump or The Cackler, will win PA and likely win the election. That is of critical importance. But so, too, is another race (or races): That of the Pennsylvania Senate. Right now, a radical Democrat, Josh Shapiro, is governor in PA. The PA House has a razor-thin Democrat majority in control (102-101). The Senate is a bit better with a 28-22 GOP majority. However, the enviro left has its sights set on retaining the House and flipping at least three Senate seats in “swing” districts this year. If all three branches are in Democrat hands come next January, you can expect very bad things ahead for the Marcellus shale. Read More “If Pennsylvania Loses GOP State Senate Majority, Marcellus is Done”
Last Thursday, Sept. 19, Pennsylvania State Rep. James Struzzi (R-Indiana) introduced House Bill (HB) 2573, which creates an Independent Energy Office headed by a new Energy Advocate with the authority to veto any regulation, policy or action of any state agency that “may harm energy reliability and affordability.” This bill appears to be completely different from a State Senate bill that passed on May 1 creating an Independent Energy Office (see 
Two weeks ago, the national rig count, which counts all oil and gas rigs, added an astonishing eight rigs to the count after languishing for months — the biggest weekly gain in a year. 
WhiteHawk Energy, headquartered in Philadelphia and owning mineral and royalty interests for over 1 million gross unit acres with over 3,400 producing horizontal shale wells between the Marcellus and the Haynesville, announced yesterday the acquisition of additional Marcellus Shale natural gas mineral and royalty assets for an undisclosed amount. The deal added 435,000 gross unit acres across southwestern Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia. 
Yesterday, Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2) leadership team members presented an update on the ARCH2 initiative and its current status. Among the big news from the event was that ARCH2 is looking “for up to three” new projects that would be built in southwestern Pennsylvania, West Virginia, or eastern Ohio as part of the ARCH2 initiative. The new projects would replace several that are no longer part of ARCH2. 
Here’s a new concept for some (including us): Have you ever heard about the “heat content” of energy like natural gas? Heat content is the amount of heat energy available to be released by the transformation or use of a specified physical unit of an energy form, like how much heat a cubic foot of natural gas produces when burned. Depending on where you go, the heat content of natural gas varies. A recent analysis by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows that Texas has some of the lowest heat content, and West Virginia has some of the highest. 
Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Senate approved Senate Bill (SB) 1058 that would repeal the state’s participation in the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an illegal carbon tax enacted via executive order by then Gov. Tom Wolf in 2019 (see 
In yet another attempt to deflect attention away from Kamala Harris’ extreme position on fracking (she wanted to ban it completely everywhere in 2019), mainstream news continues to publish stories on other Pennsylvania energy topics. For example, yesterday, the New York Times published a story with this headline: “Big Energy Issue in Pennsylvania Is Low Natural Gas Prices. Not Fracking.” We forced ourselves to read it all the way through. We “took one for the team,” so you won’t have to. The story started out fine and made some legitimate points. The NYT article is (more or less) right as far as it goes. The problem is that the article doesn’t go far enough. It stops with only half of the story told. Here at MDN, we tell you the whole story—all of the facts, not just some of the facts. 
Hidden in last Friday’s weekly Baker Hughes official rig count is a big story happening in the Marcellus/Utica. From the 30,000-foot level, Friday’s latest rig count report appeared just fine. The national rig count, which counts all oil and gas rigs, added an astonishing eight rigs to the count after languishing for months — the biggest weekly gain in a year. Very nice. The M-U count maintained at 33, down from a few weeks ago, but still not completely terrible. But then you open the hood and look at the engine, and something startling happens. Pennsylvania is losing rigs, bleeding rigs, like crazy—four rigs gone in the last two weeks. And West Virginia is gaining those lost rigs. Typically, there’s no one answer as to why these things happen. Our best guess is that Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), coming online from the northern panhandle of WV to southern Virginia, carrying natgas to markets outside the immediate region for higher prices, has much to do with this realignment.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) wants to spend some of the $214+ million it’s receiving from the federal government’s Phase 1 & 2 program to plug orphaned conventional oil and gas wells on a research project to determine the potential health impacts of living near such wells. You may recall the flawed (totally fake) “research” conducted by the University of Pittsburgh in 2023 that purported to show a connection between shale drilling and childhood cancer clusters (see 
It’s really fascinating to watch this presidential election. Yes, we’ve promised to try and keep the politics to a minimum, but we must report on things we notice that have the potential to affect the shale drilling industry in general, and the Marcellus/Utica in particular. Here’s an issue we cannot keep silent about. As we’ve pointed out repeatedly, Kamala Harris hates fossil fuel energy and wants to eliminate it. She told a CNN moderator in 2019 that she favors “a ban on fracking.” Period. For the entire country. Yet now, because she must win Pennsylvania in order to win the race, she professes she is against a ban on fracking (see 
Once a month, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) analysts issue the agency’s 
A very big story is unfolding in the Marcellus/Utica, and nobody else is talking about it. There is a major reshuffling of rigs in the M-U, with Pennsylvania losing active rigs and West Virginia picking them up. Two weeks ago, PA dropped from 21 to 18 active rigs, the lowest count it has had in 2 1/2 years (see 
In 2019, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) began formulating new regulations for intrastate pipelines transporting gasoline, petroleum, crude oil, and natural gas liquids like ethane. In July 2021, the PUC finally published a draft of new regulations (see