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Shell CEO: Monaca Cracker Plant Not Fully Operational Til 2025/26
During last week’s second quarter update conference call by oil and gas giant Shell, the CEO, Wael Sawan, had some interesting comments about the mighty Shell ethane cracker in Monaca (Beaver County), PA. Sawan praised progress at the plant but then said it would be 2025 or 2026 before the plant would be “fully operational.” That was new news for us.
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Writing for Hart Energy’s Oil and Gas Investor magazine, author Nissa Darbonne penned a fabulous overview of the Utica, bringing us the history of oil drilling in Ohio (in the 1800s) all the way up to the present day and Encino Energy’s dominance in oil drilling in the Utica. The article includes details about Encino and other companies, including Infinity Natural Resources and EOG Resources. On Friday, we brought you excerpts from the article about Encino Energy (see 
The “front month” NYMEX natural gas price, based on the Henry Hub in Louisiana, closed below $2/MMBtu on Friday. It was the second day in a row the NYMEX price closed below $2. The cash price was even worse, averaging $1.89 on Friday after bottoming out earlier in the week at $1.80. Geesh. We thought we left that bottom-bumping low-price stuff behind a while ago, but apparently not. What’s going on? Even though temps have been hot hot hot, there are concerns over an uptick in production over the past week. Too much supply with the same demand equals lower prices.
The U.S. national oil and gas rig count lost ground last week it had gained the week before. The national combined Baker Hughes oil and gas rig count now stands at 586 rigs, down three from 589 two weeks ago. The Marcellus/Utica lost one rig last week. Pennsylvania lost a rig and now operates 20 active rigs. Ohio operated 11 active rigs. West Virginia remained the same with five active rigs. The M-U is operating a combined 36 rigs. The M-U’s primary competitor, the Haynesville, was down one rig from two weeks ago and now operates 34 rigs.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: The high price of failing to transition to clean energy; PUC seeks to accelerate removal, replacement of older natgas plastic pipe; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Chevron announces headquarters relocation; NATIONAL: 18 oil companies targeted in price gouging lawsuit; Harris is ‘perfect person’ to prosecute big oil, climate advocates say; What’s the ideal oil price for a U.S. President?; INTERNATIONAL: Russia accounted for a fifth of EU gas imports in Q1; Canada’s crude oil has an increasingly significant role in U.S. refineries.
For the week of July 22 – 28, a total of nine permits were issued to drill new shale wells in Marcellus/Utica. Pennsylvania had the fewest with just two new permits, one each for Seneca Resources and Rice Drilling (i.e., EQT). Ohio had the most with four new permits, all of them for EOG Resources for a single pad in Noble County. West Virginia came in between with three new permits, all three for Antero Resources in Tyler County.
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 
An important milestone was reached on Wednesday regarding the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2). You may recall that ARCH2 was one of seven projects to win the Bidenista Hunger Games competition to receive a chunk of $7 billion to build a regional hydrogen hub (see 
On Friday, June 14, 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’ve written a number of times about the Ohio Utica Shale and its beginnings with gas legend Aubrey McClendon, who, as CEO of Chesapeake Energy, was one of (if not THE) first to recognize the Utica as an oil play. However, it was a successor company, Encino Energy, that figured out how to coax large quantities of oil out of the Utica shale. Encino is one of the big success stories of drilling for oil in the Ohio Utica Shale. Roughly six years ago, Encino, in partnership with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), closed on buying Chesapeake Energy’s Ohio Utica assets for $2 billion (see 
One thing we admire about the left is that they never give up. Yes, they cheat. Yes, they lie. Yes, they use foreign money. But the environmental left never, ever, gives up. An example: The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) has filed an amicus (“friend of the court”) brief asking the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to reverse a Commonwealth Court decision that led to its voiding the state’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). RGGI is an obscene carbon tax that will (a) raise the price of electricity for residents in PA and neighboring states that use PA’s electricity and (b) stop any new natural gas-fired power plants from being built in the state. In time, RGGI will also kill off existing PA gas-fired power plants. That’s precisely what the left wants to see happen, and it is using its resources (money and lawyers) to try and make it happen.
This is so frustrating. A panel of three extremely liberal (wildly left) Democrat judges sitting on the U.S. Court of Appeals — two appointed by Joementia and the other appointed by Lord Obama — have overturned a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval of the $1 billion Transco Regional Energy Access Expansion (REAE) project that is already up and running and delivering extra natural gas supplies to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland. The three-judge panel ruled that FERC didn’t seriously consider man-made global warming when approving the project. The frustrating thing is that FERC is NOT an environmental agency; it’s an economic agency. Look it up — it’s in the FERC charter. Yet the libs are now demanding FERC become something it is not, an environmental agency that considers mythical global warming before it can approve new pipeline projects. Mission accomplished for the Bidenistas and Obamadroids. No doubt the Cackleistas would also approve of this bastardization of FERC.
Chesapeake Energy issued its second quarter 2024 update yesterday. Due to the low price of natural gas, Chesapeake promised (in 1Q) that it would curtail roughly 25% of its production. The company kept its word. Chessy’s 2Q production was 24.9% lower than the same period in 2023. Production was 2.745 Bcfe/d in 2Q24 versus 3.653 Bcfe/d in 2Q23. Interestingly, the company’s production was ALL (100%) natural gas — no oil and no NGLs were produced last quarter. Chessy lost $227 million last quarter versus making $391 million in profit in 2Q23. The company used an average of eight rigs to drill 30 wells and place four wells on production. It built an inventory of five drilled but uncompleted wells (DUCs) and 24 deferred turn-in-lines (TILs). Chesapeake is currently operating seven rigs and two completion crews, having dropped a rig in the Marcellus in July.
DT Midstream (DTM), headquartered in Detroit, owns major assets in the Marcellus/Utica region and other regions like the Haynesville. DTM issued its second quarter 2024 update yesterday. Of keen interest to us was any talk of the company’s Phase III expansion to the Appalachian Gathering System and an expansion in the Tioga County gathering system. To understand the comments coming from yesterday’s update, we need to go back to the first quarter 2024 update…