WV to OH Short Line Railroad Growing Thx to Marcellus/Utica
We’re always suckers for railroad story. Not sure why, but we love reading about short line railroads that do well because of the shale industry. We spotted such a story about the 48-mile short line Belpre Industrial Parkersburg (BIP) Railroad between Parkersburg, West Virginia, and Relief, Ohio (via Marietta). BIP expects to double its traffic over the next year to 18 months thanks to the Marcellus/Utica Shale industry and the business it’s generating.
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Waaaiiit just a minute. Did we just slip through the looking glass? Ten Democrat State Senators from West Virginia sent a letter earlier this week to Warren Buffett asking the billionaire to consider investing in natural gas projects in the Mountain State. The letter states their sadness that Atlantic Coast Pipeline was canceled, but expresses hope that Buffett’s purchase of Dominion’s other pipeline assets augurs a bright future. We could have sworn this letter was sent by conservative Republicans!
Whew. We can now breathe a sigh of relief. On July 7 TC Energy’s Columbia Gas Transmission subsidiary announced an unplanned outage (for maintenance work) for the Mountaineer XPress (MXP) pipeline in West Virginia–near Leach, Kentucky (see 
West Virginia University (WVU) has created a new “
A group of leftwing radical professors (all of the Democrats) from seven universities in Ohio and Pennsylvania have colluded to write a letter to the governors of Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The letter trash talks the billions of dollars in economic impact and tens of thousands of jobs ethane cracker plants and the petrochemical industry will have in the region. The leftist gang of seven poo-poos those estimates and says the proposed PTT cracker is too “risky” to approve. How do they figure?
Enverus (formerly known as Drillinginfo) recently released its latest FundamentalEdge report that explores the ongoing supply response to demand destruction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the report, Enverus estimates how much dry gas production each major shale play produced, month by month, from January through May of this year. The numbers show that production from the Marcellus/Utica, which produces the most natural gas of any play, decreased the most of any play–by some 1.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) from January to May.
SECUR O&G, LLC is headquartered in Sewickley, PA, but its main operation, a Marcellus/Utica waste processing center, is located in the Bens Run Industrial Park in Friendly (Tyler County), WV. SECUR processes both liquid and solid drilling waste and handles TENORM (technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material) at its Bens Run facility. Last Friday SECUR filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of WV.
Peregrine Energy Partners, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, continues a program to buy royalty rights in the Marcellus/Utica. In January 2019 we told you about Peregrine’s purchase of rights from undisclosed sellers in southwest PA (see 
EQT announced yesterday it has closed on a deal to sell “certain non-strategic assets” to Diversified Gas & Oil (DGO) for $125 million, plus another potential $20 million later on. MDN first told you about this deal on May 13 (see 
This has to be a first in the modern shale era. There are now more active fracking crews working in the Marcellus Shale than in any other shale play, including the oily Permian. There are 450 fracking fleets available in the U.S., but only 70 of them are active right now. The Marcellus is using 31% of those active fleets, while the Permian is using 30%. We never thought we’d live to see the day!
Diversified Gas & Oil (DGO) continues its program of buying up mostly older conventional oil and gas wells in Appalachia. In April DGO cut a deal to buy 6,500 conventional wells spread across West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, along with a 4,700-mile gathering pipeline system located in WV, for $110 million (see 
Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a 303-mile Marcellus/Utica gas pipeline from West Virginia to southern Virginia, is 90% built and in the ground. The final 10% is waiting on various lawsuits and regulatory agencies to resolve outstanding issues brought on by radicalized green groups. One of the places the pipeline has long been done and in the ground is Lewis County, WV. It’s a mountainous area. Inspectors recently discovered there have been “slips” of the land resulting in “at least three locations” where MVP has shifted.
Not unsurprisingly, the U.S. rig count (for both oil and gas, although mainly oil) continues to plummet week after week. The latest numbers show rigs taken out of active duty (laid down) decreased another 59 over the past week. That’s better than the 76 laid down the week before (see 
