WVU Engineers Get $3M Grant to Microwave Flared M-U NatGas
Two researchers at West Virginia University (WVU) have received a $3 million grant to aid in their research to figure out how to use microwaves on flared natural gas to convert the flared gas into carbon nanomaterials and hydrogen–and do it all cheaply. Coincidentally, we spotted a second announcement from a company already using microwaves to convert flared gas into hydrogen and acetylene.
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Some fantastic news to share. Last Friday the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reissued the second of three necessary permits required to finally finish the 92% complete Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project in Virginia and West Virginia. The Army Corps reissued a permit they previously issued (but got overturned by Big Green groups in court), a Nationwide Permit (NWP) 12, allowing the project to cross over or under some 1,000 or so creeks, rivers, and wetlands.
Two days ago MDN brought you news that natural gas prices in the Marcellus/Utica region are about to get really ugly, at least for the next couple of months (see 
Justice (with a small “j”) has prevailed in West Virginia. We’ve covered the issue of a proposed new shale gas-fired power plant planned for Brooke County, WV for years. We are down to the wire on some of the final bits needed for this project to advance. One of those bits, the last major hurdle, is a loan guarantee for $5.5 million, covering a tiny part of the financing required to build this nearly $1 billion project. Yesterday the WV Economic Development Authority unanimously approved the loan guarantee.
Another week, another look at the rig count. The onshore rig count continues to bump along near the bottom of historic lows. It’s not AT the bottom (thank God), but it does continue to flirt with low numbers. According to Enverus, which tracks rigs using GPS units, the count bottomed at the beginning of July with 264 active rigs. Since then it’s risen and currently stands around 280 rigs. Week to week it goes up and it goes down, but not down significantly. According to Enverus, the count lost a rig last week.
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.
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 
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 