Conventional Drilling Still Happens Inside City Limits of Warren, PA
MDN is a blog/news site primarily focused on the Marcellus/Utica shale and related issues. Sometimes, conventional (non-shale) drilling is a related issue. Today, we have an article that discusses the fact that new conventional drilling still happens in some places in Pennsylvania—in this case, in the City of Warren (Warren County). The president of Bull Run Resources LLC gave a presentation to and took questions from the Warren City Council yesterday. The information he discussed was interesting, as it compared and contrasted conventional drilling with shale drilling. Do you know the differences? And did you know that conventional wells are sometimes drilled at an angle? Read More “Conventional Drilling Still Happens Inside City Limits of Warren, PA”
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: New York has got to face reality – we need natural gas; NATIONAL: TC Energy is bolstering America’s energy dominance through critical investments; Geothermal energy may be poised for growth thanks to shale drilling advances; Why is every natural disaster being politicized?; How AI and technology are reshaping the oil and gas workforce; Drilling plummets under Trump despite ‘drill, baby, drill’ promise; INTERNATIONAL: Oil teeters as tariffs and output risks unbalance market; Chevron shifts from local to centralized hubs to cut costs; Fossil fuels show staying power as EU clean energy output dips. 
It took eight years and untold legal fees (on both sides) before a tiny 3.4-mile, 8-inch natural gas pipeline under the Potomac River was finally built and went online. In April 2017, MDN brought you the news that Columbia Pipeline (owned by TransCanada) had applied with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build a pipeline under the Potomac to connect natural gas from Pennsylvania to the Mountaineer Gas system in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia (see 
The NYMEX “front month” futures contract for natural gas (August contract) slid lower yesterday for a second day in a row. The price dropped 12.6 cents per million British thermal units (MMBtus), or nearly 4%, to $3.214 yesterday. The price was down 19.8 cents (nearly 6%) over the past two days. According to one analyst (whom we trust), this “decisive breakdown” in natural gas puts the $3.10 support level at risk, opening the path to deeper downside targets, including $2.97 and $2.79. Yuck. 
In May of 2024, CNX Resources Corp., KeyState Energy, and Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) announced they were working together on a $1.5 billion project that, if completed, would make sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) at PIT from coalbed methane gas (see 
In May, NRG Energy announced a deal to acquire LS Power’s portfolio of natural-gas power plants in a deal valued at roughly $12 billion, including debt, that will expand NRG’s footprint in Texas and along the East Coast (see 
No wonder Venture Global continues to love the model of signing up customers to buy its LNG via contract (which reassures investors so they give money to build a plant), then denies those contracted customers their shipments FOR YEARS under the pretense that they are still working the kinks out at the facility (called commissioning) while at the same time selling cargoes of LNG on the open/spot market. VG is receiving 2.6 times more money for spot market cargoes compared to cargoes shipped to contracted customers. The question we can’t answer is, why do any new customers sign up, given the company’s history? 
If you’ve read MDN for any length of time, you know that so-called renewable energy, wind and solar, are unreliable and really, really expensive. Most people believe renewables overcome those problems by being good for the environment. No so! Renewables are actually bad for the environment. We will explain… 
Chesapeake Utilities Corporation, not to be confused with the former Chesapeake Energy Corporation (which is now Expand Energy), announced that its Ohio subsidiary, Aspire Energy Express, LLC, has entered into an agreement with American Electric Power (AEP) to construct and operate an intrastate natural gas pipeline in central Ohio to feed Marcellus/Utica gas to a new fuel-cell facility, which will provide on-site electric power to a data center. The pipeline is expected to cost approximately $10 million to construct. 
Gas-fired power plants, both brand new and existing plants, are hot properties these days. We’ve covered several recent sales of existing gas-fired power plants in the Marcellus/Utica region (and beyond). Here’s another one: investment firm Strategic Value Partners, LLC (SVP) announced yesterday that it’s acquiring Red Oak Power, an 831-megawatt natural gas-fired combined-cycle generation facility located in Sayreville, New Jersey. 
A month ago, MDN published a post predicting that Marcellus/Utica natural gas production is set to grow thanks to new pipeline projects and demand from data centers and LNG exporters (see 
In what appears to be an innocuous, brief press release, DT Midstream (DTM), headquartered in Detroit, which owns significant assets in the Marcellus/Utica region and other regions, including the Haynesville, delivered what we consider big news. DTM has achieved an investment-grade rating with all three major credit rating agencies: Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Ratings, and S&P Global Ratings. While this announcement may seem minor, we can assure you, it’s a big deal. 
Anyone with half a brain in the energy space has seen and predicted (for years) a coming imbalance between electricity generation and electricity demand here in the U.S. When you don’t have enough production (generation) for increasing demand, there is a temporary cushion in the way of “peaker” plants that come online to bridge the gap. However, when huge new demand suddenly emerges, such as for AI data centers, and that demand is ongoing, peakers can’t meet the demand. The result is a power outage. The policies of Lord Obama and President Autopen, in promoting wind and solar while throttling natural gas, have set us up for a disaster, with an inability to meet sudden new demand for electricity. Unreliable renewables are NOT up to the task. That is the conclusion of a new report issued by the Department of Energy (DOE) called “Report on Evaluating U.S. Grid Reliability and Security” (full copy below). 
On Monday, President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) to end market-distorting subsidies for unreliable wind and solar. The EO directs the Secretary of the Treasury (Scott Bessent) to terminate the clean electricity production and investment tax credits for wind and solar facilities and implement the enhanced Foreign Entity of Concern restrictions as identified in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The EO also directs the Secretary of the Interior (Doug Burgum) to revise regulations and policies to eliminate preferential treatment for wind and solar facilities compared to reliable, dispatchable energy sources.