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New Permits to Drill in M-U, Other Gas Plays, Saw Big Drop in April
According to analysts at Evercore ISI, natural gas (and oil) permits to drill new shale wells dropped dramatically in April from previous months in both the Marcellus/Utica and other shale plays. Evercore tracks new drilling permits and says Marcellus permits fell by 25%. The M-U’s main competitor, the Haynesville, saw an even bigger 40% drop. We did a bit of analysis ourselves, and while new permits did drop quite a bit in April, that doesn’t tell the whole story.
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The news lit up Friday afternoon with the latest rig count by Baker Hughes Co. (BKR). We always caution that weekly rig counts are not a reliable way to gauge drilling activity as the count floats up and down each week. However, on Friday, the bottom kind of dropped out of the natural gas rig count. BKR said the gas-focused rig count dropped by 16 to 141 for the week, which amounts to a 10% drop in a single week. That *does* get your attention. The general consensus seems to be that low, low prices (bumping around near $2/MMBtu) have finally taken their toll, and drillers are pulling back on drilling new wells. How many rigs were lost in the Marcellus and Utica last week?
Spotlight PA, a partisan Democrat “newsroom” (propaganda outfit) powered by the Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with Harrisburg Patriot-News, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF PBS Public Media, is taking aim at the conventional drilling industry. In an article about the “crisis” of unplugged orphaned and abandoned conventional oil and gas wells, Spotlight PA, via interviewees, says the $400 million coming from the federal government is not nearly enough money to plug some 200,000+ old wells in the state.
A laughably fake “report” just published by the University of Pennsylania (UPenn) and the far-left group Resources for the Future (RFF) makes this wild claim about the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a Marcellus-killing carbon tax scheme that will shut down most coal- and natural gas-fired power plants in the state: “Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative would lower Pennsylvania emissions, add to state revenues, and have little to no impact on electricity rates.” Yeah, right. UPenn/RFF are trying to sell a bridge in Brooklyn too, just in case you’re in the market to buy one.
Earlier this week, the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, along with 67 other business associations and local chambers of commerce, sent a letter to Gov. Josh Shapiro and the PA legislature urging them to take “decisive action” in reforming the state’s “dysfunctional and unpredictable permitting system.” Among the signatories of the letter were shale groups, including the American Petroleum Institute (API) of Pennsylvania, the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC), and the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA).
Yesterday, the management of NextEra Energy announced it has officially lost its collective mind. The company is selling its two natural gas pipeline investments–one in Texas and the other right here in the heart of the Marcellus Shale–because it wants to concentrate 100% on unreliable (and government-funded) “renewable” energy projects instead. You may recall that NextEra bought Meade Pipeline Co LLC for $1.37 billion in 2019 (see 
Yesterday MDN told you about a new assault on the oil and gas industry in Pennsylvania coming from the Chairman of the House Environmental Resources & Energy Committee, anti-fossil fuel zealot Greg Vitali, who (along with 13 other leftists) introduced House Bill (HB) 962, aimed at raising the bonding rates for drilling new conventional wells in the state (see 
The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), which treats the 17 counties in Pennsylvania under its jurisdiction as a fiefdom, has colluded with the leftists of the Big Green group Damascus Citizens for Sustainability to “settle” a lawsuit brought by the group against DRBC “forcing” the DRBC to further restrict and ban wastewater from conventional wells from being spread on roadways (dirt roads) in the 17 PA counties located behind the Iron Curtain of the DRBC.
Last summer Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 2644 was passed into law, becoming Act 96 of 2022 (see 
You’ve gotta give Pennsylvania State Senator Gene Yaw credit–he sure knows how to get under the skin of the wackadoodle left! Yaw is the Majority Chairman of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee. His committee oversees (among other things) the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), which is the state agency that oversees energy industries, including shale drilling. Yesterday Yaw tweaked the left by announcing he will soon introduce a bill to remove the word “Protection” from the DEP’s name, and replace it with…
Yesterday Range Resources Corporation issued its first quarter 2023 update and held a conference call with analysts. On the call, retiring (as of May 10th) CEO Jeff Ventura proclaimed Range sits at the best spot it’s been in history. Ventura said, “For the Marcellus, the future is very bright.” Incoming CEO (currently COO) Dennis Degner echoed Ventura’s remarks and pledged to “stay the course” and continue to “block and tackle” in the months and years ahead.
S&P Global Commodity Insights reports that natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica has fallen this month, in April, by some 400 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) from the average production seen during the first quarter. The most notable declines are in eastern Ohio and southwestern Pennsylvania. Why is production down? Falling demand (from mild weather) and high rates of storage (extra supply) are crashing the spot price for natural gas traded at the region’s defacto benchmark trading hub–Eastern Gas South.
We appear to finally be at the end of an eight-year road with respect to new shale drilling regulations in Pennsylvania adopted back in 2016. Two days ago, the PA Supreme Court overturned a Commonwealth Court decision that blocked the Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) ability to control shale drilling near schools and public playgrounds. In October 2016, after five years in the making, PA adopted new shale drilling regulations called Chapter 78 (see 
We sometimes ponder (and despair) over this question: Does the truth matter anymore? Do people actually care whether or not they are being lied to–by the government, by the media, by so-called experts? The trigger for our dark reflection on metaphysics comes from the news that the Pennsylvania Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) yesterday approved, by a vote of 3 to 2, a new regulation controlling volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions and by extension, methane emissions, for Pennsylvania’s conventional oil and gas drillers. How is that news event related to truth and lies? We will explain.