Baker Hughes Rig Counts Continued to Rocket Higher in December
The Baker Hughes rig count continued to rocket skyward in December–on all levels. The international rig count (worldwide) was 929, up 4 from the 925 counted in November. However, in the U.S., the December rig count was 634, up a whopping 54 rigs from the 580 counted in November. And the Marcellus/Utica had equally good news. The combined rig counts for PA-OH-WV was 58, up by 5 rigs from November’s 53. Cool! The biggest gainer was PA, with a count of 31 (up 4 from 27 in November). OH gained 2 and now stands at 18 active rigs. WV, on the other hand, lost a single rig and the count stood at an average of 9 rigs. Something else to note, December’s M-U rig count of 58 is the highest average monthly rig count in 2016. On the chart below you will see we hit our low point in June/July when the count was 36. Since that time we have gained rigs every single month…
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As MDN reported last week, on the last business day of 2016, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a favorable final environmental impact statement (EIS) for one of the major pipeline projects in the Marcellus/Utica: the $3 billion Williams Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project (see 
In July 2016 MDN told you about a smallish, but important pipeline project in the Delmarva Peninsula area, which includes most of Delaware and portions of Maryland and Virginia. Eastern Shore Natural Gas’ 2017 System Expansion project will bring new sources of natgas from an interconnection Eastern Shore has with the mighty TETCo (Texas Eastern Company) pipeline near Philadelphia (see 
Two radical Pennsylvania-based “environmental” groups are not exactly merging–but almost. One group is the radical PennFuture, which gave rise to such luminaries as John Quigley (fired as Sec. of the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection), John Hanger (left the state, former DEP Secretary, ran for governor last time, lost, supports legalizing pot), and Cindy Dunn (currently Secretary of Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources). PennFuture is tax exempt, yet it routinely engages in political activity in violation of its IRS 501(c)(3) status. The other group is Conservation Voters of PA, a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization affiliated with a political action committee (PAC). The two groups are combining certain portions of their operations–“policy, advocacy, and legal resources”–in an attempt to “hold legislators accountable, mobilize voters, and shine a spotlight on candidates’ records on clean air, water and energy issues.” Our view is that their organizations’ membership and donations are dwindling and this is two failing organizations clinging to each other so they don’t slip beneath the waves into oblivion…
Can you actually use a mathematical formula to figure out better ways to plan how to drill shale gas wells? It turns out the answer to that question is a resounding, “Yes!” A chemical engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, along with several Ph.D. students have, working with EQT, pioneered research that figured out how to turn 14,000 water truck trips to a well site into 1,400 trips–an “order of magnitude” difference. That is a big deal in the drilling industry. Using mathematical formulas–something called “mixed-integer optimization”–Professor Ignacio Grossmann and the other researchers tackled how to make processes in the shale gas industry more efficient. They published a paper in the AIChE Journal in 2016 titled, “Strategic Planning, Design and Development of the Shale Gas Supply Chain Network” (full copy below). The paper “presents a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model to optimally determine the number of wells to drill at every location, the size of gas processing plants, the section and length of pipelines for gathering raw gas and delivering processed gas and by-products, the power of gas compressors, and the amount of freshwater required from reservoirs for drilling and hydraulic fracturing so as to maximize the economics of the project.” Er, right. As you can tell, it’s complex. But it’s also very interesting and relevant for drillers and others in the industry, which is why we bring it to you. Below is a quick summary/overview of the paper, a video of Prof. Grossmann describing the research, and a copy of the paper itself…
EXCO Resources was once a sizable player in the Marcellus. They still have 145,000 net acres in the Marcellus, with 124 horizontal Marcellus wells drilled and in production. However, EXCO, as we pointed out last March, has pretty much abandoned the Marcellus at this point (see 
Some 200 leftist/radical bought-and-paid-for “protesters” (paid by Big Green groups) “rallied” in downtown Philadelphia yesterday in front of both of PA’s U.S. Senate office (Bob Casey, total jerk and Democrat hack, and Pat Toomey, marginal Republican). They were protesting President-elect Trump’s picks to run the EPA, Dept. of Energy and Dept. of Interior–calling them “climate deniers.” This is part of a national campaign paid for by radical environmental groups, like 350.org and the Sierra Club, groups totally invested in the theory that mankind is causing the earth to catastrophically heat up–even though the temperature record doesn’t back up the theory. Holding silly banners like “NO CLIMATE DENIAL CABINET” they paraded around, collected their paychecks, 
In October 2014 Dominion announced they had officially broken ground on the Cove Point LNG export plant, a project that will inject between $3.4 and $3.8 billion in Calvert County, Maryland and pump upward of 1.8 billion cubic feet per day of cheap, abundant Marcellus and Utica Shale gas (see 
Science, as in the storied journal, is supposed to be about, well, science. Instead, they’ve opened up their pages to politics. Not that Science hasn’t long been bastardized by and riddled with politics. But just like mainstream media was unmasked during this last election as being TOTALLY biased and willing to “shade” the truth (i.e. lie), Science is now unmasked. Barack Hussein Obama submitted an article to the journal about global warming, as an exercise in mass propaganda, to try and create the meme that he actually achieved great things related to energy while in office–i.e., his “legacy.” The opposite is true. In the Science article (below) Obama alludes to the rise of fracking as lowering carbon emissions, but he can’t even bring himself to actually refer to fracking or hydraulic fracturing in the article itself. That would tick off his radical base. The entire article is about global warming and how mankind is causing it–pure rubbish and non-science. But there you go. Our point is that it is now only too obvious that Science is to the scientific world what the National Enquirer is to the “news” world…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Citizens Financial a gem in the heart of the Marcellus; Energy Services of America, firesale prices; NY closing nuke plant, will burn more oil instead; why hasn’t natgas shopping caught on in PA; will U.S. shale soon get a $50B infusion; EPA asks employees if they are gay, straight, or “other”; and more!
January 20th, when Donald Trump is inaugurated and decomposing swamps like the EPA get drained, can’t happen soon enough. However, before that date, the Obamadroids are doing everything they can to get their last digs in. One of them is the rogue, out-of-control Environmental Protection Agency, which will soon be swept clean by Scott Pruitt (delicious justice if ever there were some). We’ve written about the sleazy practice of “sue and settle” in the past–a practice whereby government agencies like the EPA get their friends in the radical environmental movement to sue them, then they quickly settle the case and say “See, we HAVE to do this because the court is making us do it.” Scott Pruitt knows all about that practice and it will stop on Jan. 20. But until then, the EPA continues to engage in it. The latest case they’ve just settled was brought by the odious National Resources Defense Council, Earthworks and a mishmash of other radical groups in May 2016 regarding an attempt to ban injection wells and stop landfills from accepting drill cuttings (see 
In January 2015 a gang of nine far-left anti-drilling “environmental” organizations sued the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claiming the agency doesn’t require the oil and gas industry to spend big bucks to fill out reams of paperwork to prove it’s not polluting Precious Mother Earth with nasty chemicals (see 
As MDN reported last week, area residents packed a small meeting hall in Buckingham County, VA for a five-hour marathon session to express their concerns about building a new compressor station in the county for the upcoming Atlantic Coast Pipeline (see