ECA Marcellus Trust I Gives Investors 2 Cents Dividend for 2Q25
ECA Marcellus Trust I, the royalty interest holder in some of the wells drilled and maintained by Greylock Energy in Greene County, PA, announced on Friday that it will issue a 2-cent dividend to unitholders for the second quarter of 2025. The company continues to hold back some profits ($90,000 in 2Q25) to build a cash reserve for “future known, anticipated or contingent expenses or liabilities.” Read More “ECA Marcellus Trust I Gives Investors 2 Cents Dividend for 2Q25”

The nation’s largest LNG exporter, Cheniere Energy, is sounding the alarm that massive investments in and quick construction of natural gas infrastructure (namely, new pipelines) are needed to feed the LNG beast. LNG exports are due to double, to roughly 30 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) by 2030—just five years away. The pipelines we have now are pretty much maxed out. We need new pipelines, and we need to start building them NOW.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: New Yorkers fighting against massive battery storage plants find new ally in EPA chief; Insane energy policies are set to burn Democrats in New Jersey, New York; NATIONAL: The climate industrial complex shifts to Plan B with climate lawfare; Celebrating a big beautiful victory with America First energy policies; AI means farewell to ‘net-zero’ fantasy; Treasury tightens tax credit eligibility for wind, solar projects; Summers are hot, obviously, but winters are the killers; INTERNATIONAL: Oil market awaits Trump-Putin summit as prices drift lower; BlackRock’s GIP leads $11B deal for Saudi gas assets; EU GHG emissions up 3.4 percent YoY in 1Q.
For the week of August 4 – 10, the number of permits issued to drill new wells in the Marcellus/Utica dropped like a rock from the previous week. It was lousy. There were 10 new permits issued across the three M-U states last week, 24 fewer than the 34 issued two weeks ago. Pennsylvania was the only state to issue new permits. Both Ohio and West Virginia got skunked with ZERO new permits. The story in PA is the story of a single well pad. Nine of the 10 permits issued in PA were for a series of wells on a single pad in Greene County for EQT (under the name of Rice Drilling). The other permit was issued to Campbell Oil & Gas for a well in Clearfield County. 

Morgantown, WV-based Hope Utilities announced yesterday that its subsidiary, Northeast Ohio Natural Gas Corporation (NEO), will build, operate, and maintain a pipeline (and associated natural gas facilities) to supply a fuel cell project being developed by American Electric Power (AEP) to power a data center in central Ohio. The details are (so far) thin. We don’t know how much the project will cost or which data center it will power. This isn’t the first such pipeline project announced to feed an AEP-powered data center.
According to a leftist Democrat publication, Signal Ohio, what was “supposed to be a sleepy, county-level Republican meeting where political allies get on the same page” turned into a shouting match between Marietta City Council President Susan Vessels (a Republican) and State Senator Brian Chavez (a Republican and Chairman of the Senate Energy Committee). The heated discussion revolved around wastewater injection wells and their proximity to city water supplies. Chavez is the former CEO of DeepRock Disposal Solutions, which currently operates four injection wells near Marietta and has applied to build a fifth. 
We spotted a Financial Times article with an intriguing title: Opec oil ‘price war’ will halt shale boom, say US producers. The FT is the UK equivalent of our Wall Street Journal. Although it tilts a bit left, the reporting is usually pretty reliable, so we trust it (for the most part). We learned a few important things from this article. First is that the break-even price for U.S. shale drillers to make a profit is $65 per barrel. If oil remains below that point, new drilling stops. Second, one producer claimed his company would not “put any more rigs out” until prices get back to, and stabilize at, $75 per barrel.
Rover Pipeline, a 713-mile natural gas pipeline, was designed to carry up to 3.25 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of Marcellus and Utica gas from Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio to destinations in Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, and Canada. The project was completed and came online in late 2018 (see
In 2018, Equitrans Midstream, the builder of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), proposed to extend MVP by an extra 75 miles from the current terminus in Pittsylvania County, VA, to Alamance County, NC, to provide natural gas for heating and electric generation. The 75-mile extension is called MVP Southgate. In December 2023, MVP changed the Southgate plan by cutting the distance by more than half and bumping up the size (diameter) of the pipeline (see
In April, MDN told you about a new greenfield expansion of the Elba Express pipeline into South Carolina to serve growing demand for natural gas in the state (see