NATIONAL: Researchers think old O&G reservoirs could be used to store hydrogen; RFK Jr. would do even more green damage than Joe Biden; Americans are rejecting climate alarmism.
Read More “Other Stories of Interest: Mon, May 13, 2024”
Two weeks ago, during the week of April 22 – 28, there were 26 new permits issued to drill in the Marcellus/Utica. Last week, for April 29 – May 5, there were just 16 new permits issued. Encino Energy was the top receiver of permits with 7 permits between two counties: Carroll and Harrison, both in Ohio. EQT (mainly under its Rice Drilling name) received 5 permits between Fayette and Greene counties in Pennsylvania. INR picked up 2 new permits in Guernsey County, OH. Both LOLA Energy and Chesapeake Energy picked up 1 new permit for Butler and Sullivan counties in Pennsylvania.
Read More “16 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Apr 29 – May 5”
Ascent Resources, founded as American Energy Partners by gas legend Aubrey McClendon, is a privately held company focusing 100% on the Ohio Utica Shale. Ascent, headquartered in Oklahoma City, OK, is Ohio’s largest natural gas producer and the 8th largest natural gas producer in the U.S. The company issued its first quarter 2024 update yesterday. The company boasts that 70% of the Ohio Utica’s top 40 wells (by production, converted to equivalents) were drilled by Ascent. A statement by CEO Jeff Fisher in the update says the company remains focused on “costs, efficiencies and margins” in 2024 in order to drive free cash flow.
Read More “Ascent Resources 1Q: Production Up 2%, Net Income Down 92%”
Epsilon Energy issued its first quarter 2024 update yesterday. Epsilon, a relatively small company, used to concentrate most of its effort on developing Marcellus Shale wells. However, over the past few years, the company has expanded into other plays and now owns assets in the Anadarko (Oklahoma and Texas) and the Permian (Texas and New Mexico). Epsilon typically does not do its own drilling. The company joint venture partners with (gives money to) other companies, like Chesapeake Energy (in the Marcellus), and the other company does the drilling. Epsilon’s capital expenditures were $21.4 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2024, primarily related to work in Texas and the completion of 7 gross (0.7 net) Marcellus wells in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania.
Read More “Epsilon Energy 1Q: Production Down Due to Chesapeake Curtailments”
In March, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro traveled to Scranton, PA, to announce a proposal to “immediately pull Pennsylvania out of a multi-state carbon cap-and-trade program” (the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI) and instead enroll PA in its very own RGGI-like carbon tax program (see PA Gov. Shapiro Proposes Own Version of Marcellus-Killing Carbon Tax). Same end result: It would kill Marcellus-fired power plants in the state, forcing them to close and relocate to West Virginia and Ohio, states that don’t engage in the lunacy of taxing carbon emissions from power plants. The Shapiro plan also includes a provision to FORCE the state to get 35% of its electricity from unreliable renewables, and FORCE it to get 50% of its electricity “from a diverse range of energy resources” by 2035, just over 10 years from now. It’s a true disaster of a plan with big government dictating energy sources.
Read More “Extremist Democrats Intro Gov. Shapiro’s Energy Plan with 4 Bills”
The environmental left is now attempting to co-opt the term “Evangelical Christian,” defined as protestants who tend to be pro-life and conservative in their political views. We’re here to expose them for who they really are. We’re talking about the so-called Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN) that keeps trying to pressure Pennsylvania to adopt unreliable renewable energy (by government fiat) and to force residents to dump their use of fossil energy. The EEN claims to be “pro-life” and “conservative” in their press releases. We question those statements. Our observation over the years is that EEN supports extreme leftwing Democrat policies ONLY, and they NEVER support any Republican energy policies in Harrisburg. NEVER. We don’t know about their use of the word “Christian” (that’s between them and God), but we can assure you they aren’t conservative. They certainly aren’t Evangelical in the traditional sense of that word.
Read More “Pretend Evangelical Christians Want PA to Dump Fossil Energy”
Canadian-based Enbridge operates, among many other assets, the Dawn Hub in the Canadian province of Ontario. Located in southwestern Ontario, Dawn, with 288 Bcf (billion cubic feet) of gas storage, provides shippers with direct access to North America’s major supply basins — including the Utica and the Marcellus. The Dawn Hub is connected to a myriad of pipelines, including Rover and NEXUS from the M-U region. The new news is that Enbridge has just launched an open season for “peak storage services” at the Dawn Hub storage facility for service beginning as early as April 1, 2025.
Read More “Enbridge Pre-Selling Peak Storage at Dawn Hub for 2025”
U.S. natural gas demand will remain at record high levels this summer, driven by power market consumption and exports, but prices will decline from last year due to a production increase and higher storage levels, according to the annual Summer Outlook report published yesterday by the Natural Gas Supply Association (NGSA). According to NGSA, “summer” is defined as April through October, the industry’s traditional cooling season.
Read More “NGSA Summer Outlook: Low Natural Gas Prices This Summer”
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: New polling shows 3 in 4 voters believe natgas is essential; Natgas company owner sentenced in federal conspiracy case; NATIONAL: JP Morgan analysts talk Trump 2.0 and commodity impact; Propane prices were slightly lower this winter compared with last; Build it, and the wind won’t come; INTERNATIONAL: UK shelves hydrogen town trial; Panama Canal in talks with US LNG producers to increase transit; As Europe deindustrializes, can economic suicide be avoided?; Canada’s oil and gas industry soars to new heights.
Read More “Other Stories of Interest: Fri, May 10, 2024”
In October 2020, a law firm filed a lawsuit on behalf of several Cabot Oil & Gas shareholders against Cabot (now Coterra Energy), claiming the company “had inadequate environmental controls and procedures and/or failed to properly mitigate known issues related to those controls and procedures,” and that the company “failed to fix faulty gas wells which polluted Pennsylvania’s water supplies through stray gas migration” (see Second Lawsuit Filed Against Cabot Claiming Securities Fraud). The lawsuit alleged that the company, in general and via its CEO (Dan Dinges), CFO (Scott Schroeder), and VP/Regional Manager (Phil Stalnaker), hid all of this from the public — namely from investors. Court documents filed this week show that following court-ordered mediation earlier this year, the two sides settled the case three-and-a-half years later.
Read More “Cabot O&G (Now Coterra Energy) Settles Lawsuit for Securities Fraud”
About 150 people packed a hearing of the Cecil Township (Washington County), PA, Board of Supervisors meeting yesterday to express their concerns about Range Resources’ fracking activities near their homes. Some attendees were paid activists (holding signs), but judging from media reports, many were just local residents. The Board held a hearing to consider modifications to existing ordinances that control how close drilling can happen to homes and other structures in the town.
Read More “Cecil Twp Board Considers Revising Drilling Setbacks to 1,500 Feet”
The odious and disgusting Food & Water Watch (FWW) organization (anti-fossil fuel fanatics) has taken point on the left’s effort to block Iroquois Gas Transmission’s plan to upgrade compressor stations in the Empire State. Iroquois’ Enhancement by Compression (ExC) project increases horsepower at three compression stations — two in New York and one in Connecticut — by an extra 125 MMcf/d, flowing more Marcellus/Utica gas into New York City and New England. Less than two weeks ago, FWW announced it had recruited 5,000 drones (no doubt paying some of them) to write comments against ExC in an effort to give New York’s weak Governor, Kathy Hochul, political cover to reject ExC (see Radicals Pressure NY Gov. Hochul to Block Iroquois Pipe Expansion). Here it is nine days later, and FWW has issued yet another press release updating the number of form letters from 5,000 to 8,000.
Read More “Radicals Keep Pressure on NY Gov. Hochul to Block Iroquois Upgrade”
Two days ago, MDN brought you an extensive article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that delves into the thorny issue of who should pay to plug some of the 200,000+ orphaned and abandoned wells in Pennsylvania (see The Thorny Issue of PA’s Old Conv. Wells & Who Pays to Plug Them). In some cases, the owners of the wells are known, but the current owner is not the original owner who drilled the well. New owners didn’t intend to take on the liability of paying to plug the wells and want the government (state or federal) to pay to have them plugged. The editors of the Post-Gazette published a follow-up editorial proposing a compromise on how to pay to have them plugged.
Read More “Post-Gazette Proposes Compromise on Who Pays to Plug Old Wells”
The Bidenistas at the EPA attacked coal and gas-fired power plants in April, threatening to destabilize the existing electric power grid with new regulations (see EPA Rolls Out Final Regs Attacking Coal & Gas-Fired Power). Using 1,020 pages of new regulations, which will go into effect this year, all coal-fired plants that are slated to remain operational in the long term and all new gas-fired power plants will be required to control (capture) 90% of their carbon emissions using expensive and unproven technology. Translation: New gas-fired plants won’t get built, and most, if not all, coal plants will shutter, with the result that electricity will, by necessity, be rationed (see WSJ Calls Biden EPA Power Plant Regs a Plan to “Ration Electricity”). PJM Interconnection, the largest U.S. power grid operator, published a statement yesterday complimenting the EPA for making some changes but expressing deep concerns over key items the EPA refused to change.
Read More “PJM Electric Grid Warns Biden EPA re Final Reg on Gas-Fired Plants”
In April, the Bidenistas at the EPA attacked coal and gas-fired power plants, threatening to destabilize the existing electric power grid (see EPA Rolls Out Final Regs Attacking Coal & Gas-Fired Power). This isn’t the first time the left has tried to do this. During the reign of Lord Obama, it was called the Clean Power Plan, which was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 and eventually overturned by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2019 (see Obama’s “Signature” Climate Reg, Clean Power Plan, Finally Dead).
Read More “EPA’s Reg Attacking Coal- and Gas-Fired Power Won’t Survive”
There is no mystery about why we are experiencing the highest inflation rates since 1981 (see historical inflation data below). One of the highest costs associated with any good or service is the cost of energy. Joe Biden and his gang of lefties have driven the cost of energy into the stratosphere since taking office, using a regulatory bludgeon to block the expansion of fossil energy. The Bidenistas use the false premise of man-made catastrophic global warming as their raison d’être — their justification — for blocking fossil energy. And yet China and India together produce 40% of the world’s CO2 emissions, while the U.S. produces just 12.6% of the world’s CO2 emissions. So please, don’t lecture us that removing a few more molecules of CO2 here in the U.S. makes one bit of difference when other countries like China and India constantly expand their output of CO2. The only result of the Bidenista’s quest to regulate fossil energy into oblivion is to skyrocket the cost of energy.
Read More “Want to Tame Inflation? Make Fossil Energy Easier to Produce”