Other Stories of Interest: Thu, Sep 12, 2024
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: First-responder training focusing on O&G industry available; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Texas LNG announces additional offtake sufficient for FID; Rising interest in Gulf Coast natural gas storage spurs a slew of projects; NATIONAL: Google locks in carbon removal at $100 a ton; Retail electricity prices closely tracked inflation over the last 10 years; Harris tells a fracking howler; INTERNATIONAL: Growing biomethane on peat emits 3X more CO2 than using natgas; GALACTIC: What’s behind the Martian methane mystery? Read More “Other Stories of Interest: Thu, Sep 12, 2024”
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) released production numbers for the second quarter of 2024 yesterday. The story the numbers tell continues to be about Utica oil, which continues to rise each quarter. Ohio’s total oil production during 2Q24 was 8.01 million barrels, up 23% from 2Q23’s 6.5 million barrels and up 11% from 1Q24’s 7.2 million barrels. The story of oil in the Buckeye State can’t be told apart from Encino Energy (EAP), which produced nearly half of all the state’s oil during 2Q24. As for natural gas production, it’s no surprise it went down slightly in 2Q24, given the current low price for gas. The state produced 526.6 Bcf in 2Q24, down 3.7% from 2Q23’s 547.0 Bcf, and down 1.4% from this year’s first quarter number of 534.0 Bcf. MDN pulled the numbers from the ODNR quarterly report and produced top 25 lists for both gas and oil wells.
In July 2022, MDN brought you news of a possible frac-out, or “inadvertent return” that happens when drilling mud pops out of places where it’s not supposed to — places outside the borehole being drilled (see 
On July 12, Williams asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for permission to bring the final pieces of the Regional Energy Access Expansion (REAE) project online by the end of July (see 
Once a month, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) analysts issue the agency’s 
The RealClear Media Group has a suite of online publications that are just terrific. Among them is 
In January, Joementia announced he would “pause” any approvals for new LNG export plants (currently 17 requests in the pipeline) for at least one year while his people fart around pretending to figure out how to measure global warming as a new consideration for whether or not to approve such projects (see 
We never thought we’d see the day when we would write the headline that Coterra (nee Cabot Oil & Gas) was pulling all of its active rigs in the Marcellus in Susquehanna County, PA. But today is that day. It makes us profoundly sad (and the primary reason we opposed the merger of Cimarex and Cabot, see 
The Board of Supervisors for Cecil Township in Washington County, PA, caved to pressure from radical leftists and, by a vote of 3-2, instructed the town’s solicitor to prepare a new zoning ordinance that increases setbacks from “protected structures” from 500 feet to 2,500 feet (a half a mile!), and add a setback of 5,000 feet from schools and hospitals (almost a full mile!). It is a ban on new shale drilling in the township, plain and simple. In May, the supervisors favored a setback of 1,500 feet, which is still too far and onerous, but not an outright ban like 2,500 feet (see 
Dominion Energy plans to build four small “peaker” electric generating plants in Chesterfield County, VA, near Richmond (see 
The federal government is spending BILLIONS of dollars on a huge gamble: hydrogen energy. This raises an important question: Will low-carbon-intensity (LCI) hydrogen make economic sense or not? In November 2021, the Department of Energy (DOE) asked the National Petroleum Council (NPC) to take a deep dive into that very topic. The NPC is appointed by the Secretary of Energy and privately funded, with 200-plus members combining diverse experiences across industries and consumers, including the oil and gas industry. The NPC recently issued its 800+ page final report, Harnessing Hydrogen: A Key Element of the U.S. Energy Future. Today, we look at one aspect of the larger question about hydrogen — how can hydrogen be transported and stored (and does it make economic sense to transport and store it)?
A very big story is unfolding in the Marcellus/Utica, and nobody else is talking about it. There is a major reshuffling of rigs in the M-U, with Pennsylvania losing active rigs and West Virginia picking them up. Two weeks ago, PA dropped from 21 to 18 active rigs, the lowest count it has had in 2 1/2 years (see