PA’s UGI Still Trying to Buy WV’s Mountaineer Gas Company
Back in January MDN told you that UGI Corporation, one of Pennsylvania’s largest natural gas utility companies, wants to buy Mountaineer Gas Company, one of West Virginia’s largest natural gas utility companies, for $540 million (see PA’s UGI Corp. Deal to Buy WV’s Mountaineer Gas Company). UGI serves 700,000 customers across PA (and one county in Maryland). Mountaineer serves 215,000 customers across WV. Both companies are big buyers of Marcellus/Utica shale gas.
Read More “PA’s UGI Still Trying to Buy WV’s Mountaineer Gas Company”
Last week MDN told you about an unplanned outage at two MarkWest natural gas processing plants located in West Virginia (see 
All three Marcellus/Utica states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania issued 12 new permits, 7 of them in the northeast PA dry gas region and 5 in the southwest wet gas region. Ohio issued 3 new permits, all of them for the same driller in Carroll County. (The Ohio driller is brand new!) And West Virginia issued 6 new permits with 5 of the 6 going to Antero Resources.
On June 3 we published a post posing the question of whether or not the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would delay the already-years-delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) for yet another year (see 
The West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection (WV DEP) is moving forward with its constitutional duty to evaluate whether or not the state should issue a federal Clean Water Act permit allowing Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to finish crossing water bodies it hasn’t already crossed under a previous permit (which was overturned by the lefties of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit). WV DEP will hold an online, virtual hearing tonight at 6 pm to accept comments from the public.
A federal court in Pennsylvania upheld the findings of a U.S. Dept. of Labor investigation that oil and gas contract worker Henkels & McCoy Inc. owes big money in back wages and overtime to 362 workers at 11 worksites in five states, including Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Connecticut, Georgia, and (yes) even in New York too. The company must now pay $1,085,830 in back wages and damages.
It would be laughable if it were not so tragic…Democrats like Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm (worst Sec Energy in a generation) think throwing $5 million to West Virginia University for “research” to develop “low-carbon power plant technology” is some big deal. It’s generous. Magnanimous. Beneficent. Granholm visited WV last week to bestow $5 million in largesse from Uncle Joe on the good people of the Mountain State. A $5 million research grant is NOTHING. It’s a rounding error of a rounding error in the Dept. of Energy’s budget. By comparison, a single natural gas-fired power plant in WV would attract $500-$800 million of investment! And that’s all private money, not taxpayer’s hard-earned money.
The state treasurers from all three actively producing Marcellus/Utica states, including Stacy Garrity (PA), Robert Sprague (OH), and Riley Moore (WV), along with the state treasurers from 11 other oil and gas producing states, sent a letter to John Kerry, Biden’s so-called Climate Envoy, telling Kerry and other Biden officials to stop pressuring banks and other financial institutions to divest from fossil fuel companies. The treasurers also issued a warning to those banks and financial institutions letting them know their states (all 14 of them) will collectively pull their money out of those banks and financial institutions–BILLIONS of dollars–if the banks and financial institutions persist in divesting from fossil fuel companies. Fossil fuel haters: BACK OFF!
As we reported a month ago, a group of West Virginia landowners/rights owners filed a claim against EQT alleging the company had allowed leases to lapse, then at a later date reentered their property and drilled new wells (see 
Over the years we’ve covered a number of stories about companies buying future royalty payments from landowners (and rights owners) for an upfront, one lump sum payment now. Normally the deals don’t disclose how much money changed hands for those upfront payments. We have some recent transactions from a newcomer to the Marcellus/Utica, a company willing to announce how much they paid to buy those rights, which caught our attention. We have financial details for a deal in the Marcellus, and details for a deal in the Utica to share with you. We have hard numbers for how much they paid to buy those royalty rights.