Belmont County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Ohio | Pennsylvania | Susquehanna County
Are U-Turn Wells the Future of Drilling in the Marcellus/Utica?
We never cease to marvel at the genius of the oil and gas industry and those who seek to find better ways to drill. According to an Oil and Gas Investor article examining major shale play trends, drillers across the Lower 48 are drilling U-shaped double-long laterals, finding lower-cost new-well inventory in the acreage they already hold. And they’re doing it “problem-free.” Did you know there are two U-shaped wells in our region? There’s one in the Pennsylvania Marcellus (in Susquehanna County) and one in the Ohio Utica (Belmont County). Who knew?! Read More “Are U-Turn Wells the Future of Drilling in the Marcellus/Utica?”
Last August, MDN told you that the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2) officially received its first $30 million from the Bidenistas (see 
Last Friday, Republican Congressman August Pfluger (from Texas) introduced a new bill that will prevent any future president from banning fracking nationally without the consent of Congress. Pfluger’s “Protecting American Energy Production Act” would explicitly require an act of Congress to impose a fracking moratorium and prevent the president from doing so directly. We must ensure future administrations don’t repeat the catastrophic damage inflicted by the Bidenistas over the past four years. This is a good first step. 
Elections certainly do “have consequences,” as Lord Obama once famously said. Less than two months after Donald J. Trump won the election and Republicans won both houses of Congress, the six largest banks in the U.S. all withdrew their membership in the United Nations Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), with the largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, leaving earlier this week (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Consol Energy and Arch Resources shareholders approve $5 billion merger; Natural gas and agriculture working in tandem for PA; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: How will natural gas factor in to Maine’s cleaner energy future?; NATIONAL: American energy powers AI; US producers look toward more spending, less carbon, and a new administration; Lee sticks with Burgum, Wright hearings despite Dem outcry; INTERNATIONAL: Gas more expensive than oil sets stage for Asian fuel switching. 
The end of the year and the beginning of a new year are times when many publications reflect on what was and what may be. A recent article by Hart Energy’s Oil and Gas Investor magazine tackled the topic of what may lie ahead for the Marcellus/Utica region over the next couple of years. The article looked at two primary issues—the potential for more pipelines getting built within (and out of) our region and the likelihood of more mergers and acquisitions for drillers in our region. 
Last fall, MDN began tracking the issue of who, ultimately, should pay to build out new electricity sources for data centers (and AI) that increasingly use huge amounts of power (see 
The Pittsylvania County Planning Commission voted on Jan. 7 to recommend against granting Virginia-based Balico permission to proceed with a $8.85 billion project to build a data center complex. Last October, Balico applied to rezone more than 2,200 acres for a proposed campus that would include its own massive on-site gas-fired power plant complex using Marcellus/Utica molecules from the Mountain Valley Pipeline (see 
Last October, Shell signed an agreement to buy 100% of RISEC Holdings’ 609-megawatt (MW) two-unit combined-cycle gas turbine power plant located near Providence, Rhode Island (see 
We have two stories about Coterra Energy to share. Coterra was formed in 2021 by the merger of the Marcellus-focused Cabot Oil & Gas and the Permian/Anadarko-focused Cimarex Energy. Unfortunately (for the M-U), the merged company has chosen to concentrate new drilling outside of the northeast Pennsylvania Marcellus until the price of natgas improves (see 
We have a post-mortem for the price of natural gas in 2024, and it ain’t pretty. With respect to the “front month” NYMEX futures price average during 2024, BofA (Bank of America) Global Research said in a report that the Henry Hub natural gas price averaged just $2.41 per MMBtu last year. It was “the lowest level since 2020 and second lowest level in at least 25 years.” Ouch. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) did a review of the Henry Hub spot (physically traded) price for 2024 and found it averaged $2.21 per MMBtu. That’s the lowest average annual price in inflation-adjusted dollars EVER reported. Double ouch. 
In June 2021, MDN told you about CenterPoint Energy, a power generator looking to shutter portions of its coal-fired generation fleet and build two natural gas combustion turbines in Indiana (see 
Liberal New England, one of the bluest (Democrat) areas of the country, continues to do the opposite of what they preach. For years, New England states like Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut have blocked new natural gas pipelines that would carry Marcellus molecules from a few hundred miles away into their states, claiming they seek to phase out fossil energy to be more “green.” Yet, as of this morning, 41% of the electricity flowing through New England’s grid comes from fossil fuels—natural gas (33%), oil (7%), and coal (1%). Another 4% comes from burning garbage and wood, which emits as much or more carbon dioxide as fossil fuels! How much electricity is being produced from solar and wind right now in New England? A piddly 9%. 
Here’s a story in the karma-is-a-boomerang department… In July 2019, the Connecticut Siting Council approved the Killingly Energy Center gas-fired power plant project after initially rejecting it (see