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Southwestern, Equinor Win Post-Production Deduction Lawsuit in WV
Just coming to light (for us) is a decision issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on Dec. 1, a ruling on post-production deductions by drillers when calculating gas royalties “at the wellhead” in West Virginia. The drillers, in this case, were Southwestern Energy and Equinor (formerly known as Statoil). The drillers won the right to claim certain post-production deductions.
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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.
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.
Enough! How many times do we have to put up with Obama/Clinton liberal Democrat judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit blocking the legal and legitimate construction of Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP)–a project which is 92% in the ground and done! Last Friday the clowns did it again for the umpteenth time–slapping a “temporary” order blocking construction because the anti-America, Russia-backed Sierra Club filed yet another frivolous lawsuit against the project.
Donald Trump is NOT lying about Joe Biden and the words Biden has used about his desire to ban fracking *and* eliminate the use of fossil fuels. We have the video (below) showing clips from various Biden events where he unequivocally states he will ban fracking, and (in time) eliminate the use of all fossil fuels. This is Biden in his own words. So was Biden lying then? Or is he lying now?