WV Newspaper Says State Should Avoid NGL Severance Tax Hike
Just last week MDN told you about the bone-headed proposal from a partisan group in West Virginia calling for a doubling or tripling of the severance tax on natural gas liquids–unless those NGLs stay in the state (see Partisan Group Wants to Double or Triple WV’s NGL Severance Tax). There’s at least one group of editors at a mainstream newspaper in the state who disagree. The editors at The Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register point out the danger that such a tax will reduce drilling in the Mountain State, and rather than contribute more tax revenue to WV’s coffers, it will end up contributing less. Finally! Somebody who writes news who can grasp economics 101! Perhaps there is hope after all…
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Investment research service Morningstar is out with their latest “Quarter-End Insights” on energy. The highly regarded service says (a) the price of crude oil won’t rebound anytime soon, and their long-term price projection is for oil to be priced around $64/barrel here in the U.S., (b) even though natural gas production is slowing in the U.S., there’s plenty more ready to go online and therefore prices will remain low for a while–they project a “midcycle” price for natural gas of $4/Mcf; and (c) one of their top three picks for stocks in the energy space is Marcellus driller Cabot Oil & Gas…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: 10 new Utica permits; enviro benefits of pipelines; PennEast opponents intervene; PA drilling scares OPEC; GE’s digital power plant for gas; lessons from ETE/Williams deal; global warmers want to prosecute climate change skeptics (like MDN); more methane emanating from Philly Clean Air Council; pipelines to Mexico; and more!
In the end, Williams decided that the takeover/merger proposal from Energy Transfer Equities (ETE) wasn’t so indecent after all. In June, ETE’s billionaire CEO Kelsy Warren revealed he had been propositioning Williams for over six months–offering Williams $64 per share to buy the company, totaling $48 billion (see 
Halliburton and Baker Hughes are having a pre-merger garage sale. In order for Halliburton to buy Baker Hughes, a deal worth $34.6 billion (see 
Our intrepid tipster is back with another juicy rumor about Chief Oil & Gas. You may recall that MDN broke the story Chief is closing its main Appalachian office near Pittsburgh, a tip later confirmed by Chief (see 
Low energy Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush (as Donald Trump calls him) has decided to inject some high energy (as in the energy industry) into his campaign. Jeb is today visiting the Pittsburgh headquarters of one of the Marcellus/Utica’s most successful drillers–Rice Energy–to unveil his energy plan that calls for the lifting of the crude oil export ban (something our Dear Leader, President Obama, opposes) and for the approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline (Obama also opposes). However, the thing that makes Jeb’s visit to Rice Energy salient and meaningful for the Marcellus/Utica is that he will call for (a) lifting restrictions on exporting natural gas–making it easier to export natgas to Japan, China and European countries, and (b) fight Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP). There is no doubt Bush will say all of the right words and espouse policies the oil and gas industry can strongly support. The question is, will he actually do any of it if he gets elected?…
On January 9, 2014, a Freedom Industries facility next to the Elk River leaked ~10,000 gallons of crude 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol (MCHM) used in coal mining into the river, which is a tributary to the Kanawha River that runs through Charleston, WV. The results of that leak were dramatic. Some 300,000 residents from nine counties in the Charleston metropolitan area were without access to potable water for five days. Several Freedom Industries officials are now in jail and the company went bankrupt because of that single accident. Contrast coverage of that accident with another accident–caused by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at the Gold King Mine in Colorado. EPA personnel were fiddling around “testing” at a gold mine wastewater storage impoundment and accidentally unplugged it, dumping 3 million gallons of some of the nastiest wastewater you can imagine–with lead, arsenic and other heavy metals–into the Animas River north of Silverton, CO (see 
It takes guts to walk boldly into the liberal lion’s den and tweak the nose of the beast. That’s what Marty Durbin, chief executive of America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA), has done with an editorial appearing in yesterday’s Boston Globe newspaper. Durbin has the audacity to tell readers that their high energy bills and constrained natural gas supplies is “self-imposed.” He also tells them they can believe whatever they want, but they can’t defy the laws of supply and demand and there is no arguing the fact that New Englanders pay high energy prices because they lack necessary natural gas supplies. Just a few hundred miles away natgas prices in the Marcellus are a fraction of what gas sells for in New England. Marty pours it on! He also says a recent study shows without new natgas supplies for New England, by 2020 the average consumer will pay almost $1,000 more per year in energy costs than they do today. Read Marty’s audacious editorial for yourself below, full of cold, hard truth. Let’s hope New Englanders will see the light–which happens to be a blue natural gas flame…
The Washington County (PA) Firemen’s Association recently opened a new $500,000 gas well training center at the fire academy located at 895 Western Ave in Houston, PA. The project, which took more than a year to plan and complete, was completely funded by some of the biggest and best drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, including Range Resources, Rice Energy, CONSOL Energy, EQT, American Well Service and others. It will be used to train first responders not only in Washington County, but also from other parts of Pennsylvania along with West Virginia and Ohio. According to Pennsylvania Fire Commissioner Tim Solobay, “There’s nothing like it outside of Texas”…
In February MDN told you about a deal signed by a hospital in Potter County, PA to lease 742.9 acres of hospital-owned land to JKLM Energy to drill Utica Shale wells (see 
In February 2013 MDN brought you news about plans from Appalachian Resins (AR) to build a polyethelene (PE) manufacturing plant complete with a “baby” ethane cracker. The original plan was to build it in the Wheeling, WV area. However, a year later the location shifted across the border to Monroe County, OH. As late as April of this year AR was still committed to the project (see