Weekly Shale Drilling Permits for PA, OH, WV: Dec 14-18
Last week Pennsylvania issued 25 new shale well drilling permits in both northeast and southwest PA, although most of the permits for SWPA. Ohio issued 4 new shale well permits, all of them to the same company (Encino Energy) and the same well pad (in Harrison County). West Virginia issued 6 new shale well permits, one in Lewis County and the rest in Tyler County.
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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
The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) issued an environmental impact statement (EIS) on Friday that supports plans for Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to run 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. This is one of the few items remaining on the MVP checklist before completing the project which is already 92% built and in the ground.
It seems pretty certain at this point that Joe Biden will seize control of the White House come Jan. 20 (although we still hold out hope for a Supreme Court intervention against the
Last week MDN told you that the judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit signaled they will overturn, for a second time, a permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that allows the 92% completed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) from finishing its work by installing pipe under or through creeks and rivers (see
Tomorrow the Harrison County Commission will consider (and most likely approve) an extension for an option to purchase property at the site of a proposed natural gas-fired power plant in Harrison County. Energy Solutions Consortium (ESC) currently has an option to buy the site of a proposed 550-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant, but the option expires on Dec. 31 of this year.
The Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia (IOGAWV) and the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association (WVONGA), West Virginia’s two oil and gas trade associations, announced yesterday their members have voted to merge the two into one new organization called the Gas and Oil Association of WV (GO-WV).
After selling Rice Energy to EQT in 2017, the four Rice brothers, all of whom worked at Rice Energy (and left after the merger), launched a new venture (see
West Virginia has two main oil and gas industry groups: Independent Oil & Gas Association of West Virginia (IOGAWV) and West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association (WVONGA). Both groups recently commented on how the incoming Biden administration will affect the oil and gas industry in WV and beyond. You might think both groups would have similar views. They do not.
Northeast Natural Energy (NNE) is a small-to-midsized driller headquartered in Morgantown, WV. The company drilled its first shale well in 2013. NNE currently owns 49,000 acres of leases “in the heart of the Marcellus Fairway,” operating 27 Marcellus wells and over 100 conventional oil and gas wells, mainly in West Virginia (with some located in southwestern Pennsylvania). In April 2017 MDN reported that NNE had obtained $300 million of investment from two investment firms (see
Antero Resources, one of the largest drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, working primarily in West Virginia, has just won a major sales tax case in the WV Supreme Court that affects the entire oil and gas industry, including M-U drillers.