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MVP Filing New/Revised Request to Finish Almost-Done Pipe
Equitrans Midstream’s Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), which stretches 303 miles from Wetzel County, WV to Pittsylvania County, VA, is backed into a corner by anti-fossil fuelers. The project is 92% complete and in the ground, yet somehow antis have successfully blocked an Army Corps of Engineers Nationwide Permit 12 (NWP12) that allows the project to cross creeks and rivers and mud puddles. Antis have convinced three leftist judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the NWP12 permit–twice. But, MVP has just outmaneuvered the antis.
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For the second week in a row, two of three M-U drilling states received permits to drill new shale wells. Pennsylvania scored 10 permits to drill new shale wells last week. Ohio received no new permits for Utica wells (second dry week in row). West Virginia received 4 new permits to drill new shale wells last week.
Last week MDN told you the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) had given final approval to Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to install pipeline through 3.5 miles of woodlands, and under the Appalachian Trail, in the Jefferson National Forest in Monroe County in West Virginia, in and Giles and Montgomery counties in Virginia (see 
EQT Corporation, the largest natural gas producer in the United States, is asking West Virginia officials to remove two judges from hearing cases brought by landowners against the EQT relating to royalty disputes for alleged improper deductions. EQT wants Judges Timothy Sweeney and David W. Hummel Jr. to be disqualified from at least three cases (that we know of).
The Enverus U.S. oil and gas rig count slipped by one to 406 over the past week. The Marcellus play stayed even with 32 active rigs. However, in a good sign, the Ohio Utica picked up 2 new rigs to close the week with 8 active rigs (total of 40 active rigs in the M-U).
Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) had laid 30 miles of pipeline and had cut trees for 222 miles along the 600-mile route before Dominion decided last summer it no longer wanted to be in the interstate pipeline business, canceling ACP (see 
Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a 303-mile, 2 Bcf/d pipeline to move Marcellus/Utica gas from West Virginia to southern Virginia, has been hounded by radicals from Big Green groups including the Sierra Club for years. Big Green apparently has the clown judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in its back pocket because the clowns keep overturning legal and legitimately issued permits by government agencies including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (see 
UGI Corporation, one of Pennsylvania’s largest natural gas utility companies, is buying Mountaineer Gas Company, one of West Virginia’s largest natural gas utility companies, for $540 million. 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.
By now it’s a cliche to say that 2020 has been an exceptional year–and not in a good way. For the first time in our memory of writing MDN, we witnessed widespread curtailments or “shut-ins” of wells in the Marcellus/Utica during 2020. That is, drillers voluntarily turned the values off and flowed less gas in a bid to (a) not sell the gas at prices that don’t return a profit, and (b) drive up the price of gas (see