WV Employs Just 11 Inspectors for 75K Active & Abandoned O&G Wells
The West Virginia Office of Oil and Gas (part of the Dept. of Environmental Protection) reports there are some 60,000 active and 15,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in the state. Staffers at Oil and Gas respond to complaints and do the inspection for all those wells. Currently, there are just 14 field staffers with three moving to other positions leaving just 11 staffers who are in the field to monitor all those wells.
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On Joe Biden’s first day in occupying the White House, he signed an Executive Order (EO) suspending new oil and gas leasing while the Interior Department reviews existing leases and permitting practices for 60 days. The aim is to make the federal lease ban permanent. However, some permits on existing leases will continue to be issued during the 60-day review period. You may think Biden’s federal lease ban does not affect the Marcellus/Utica region. You would be wrong.
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.
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 
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 
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.