Other Stories of Interest: Mon, Jan 13, 2025
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Shale executives raise bar to boost gas drilling, survey says; Don’t block the will of voters on natural gas; NATIONAL: Zeldin’s EPA confirmation hearing scheduled, radicals get shrill; US oil growth slows as gas takes the lead; Enbridge preps pipeline buildout for Trump-driven drilling boom; Trump unveils ambitious 100-executive order plan focusing on border, energy; INTERNATIONAL: USA ramps up pressure on Russia with fresh energy sanctions; Crude oil market has come alive. Read More “Other Stories of Interest: Mon, Jan 13, 2025”
For the week of Dec 30 – Jan 5, permits issued in the Marcellus/Utica rebounded from holiday lows. There were 30 new permits issued last week, up from just 12 issued the week before. The Keystone State (PA) issued nine new permits, with six going to Range Resources in Allegheny County and three to EQT, split between Lycoming and Washington counties. 
On June 14, 2024, the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) that runs from Wetzel County, WV, to Pittsylvania County, VA, announced the pipeline had, after a decade of planning and building, finally begun to flow Marcellus/Utica molecules (see 
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?! 
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 
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.