Marcellus Drillers Use < 4% of Water Sold by Westmoreland County
According to recently released data, water sales for fracking activities throughout Westmoreland and its neighboring counties represent only a tiny portion of what is distributed daily to local residential, commercial, and industrial customers. Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County (MAWC) said water purchased by local energy companies, which includes shale and conventional drillers, accounts for just 4% of the more than 11.5 billion gallons that were sold over the preceding 12 months. Whoops! Another lie of the environmental left — that fracking is soaking up all of our precious water supplies — is now exposed.
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Every four years, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) must approve plans by PECO, Pennsylvania’s largest electric and natural gas utility, delivering power to nearly 1.7 million electric customers and more than 545,000 natural gas customers in southeastern Pennsylvania. The plans under review are for how PECO, a fully regulated utility, will procure (buy) electricity for the next four years. In February, PECO filed its 1,235-page purchase plan with the regulators. The company plans to do what it has been doing (i.e., what’s been working), which is to obtain the least expensive electric supply and purchase 8% of its power from renewable sources, including 0.5% of solar energy generated within the state. Anti-fossil fuel nutters are having a cow, demanding (they always demand) that PECO buy far more unreliable renewable electricity, skyrocketing the cost to consumers.
Last week, the Baker Hughes U.S. rig count lost another two rigs, down to 603, the lowest the count has been since January of 2022. Since last October, the national count had gone as low as 616 and as high as 629, and that was it — a fairly narrow band. That is, until three weeks when it crashed through the floor and went lower, down to 613. Then, two weeks ago, it was down to 605. And now, it has gone even lower, down to 603. Will we see it go lower than 600?
The NYMEX futures price for natural gas has been trending higher lately. It closed down a nickel on Friday, but overall, the trend has been up, up, and away. Since price is so important, we cover the topic frequently. Lately, we’ve made the following points (in various posts): (1) Natural gas production is declining, thanks to drillers like EQT, Chesapeake, and Antero curtailments. (2) LNG export demand is increasing with Freeport back online and a couple of new plants coming online soon. Both of those factors combine to drive the price higher. However, there’s another factor at work to keep prices lower.
Former President Donald J. Trump met with members of the oil and gas industry last month at his Mar-a-Lago estate. According to snitches at the event, after one of the O&G big whigs complained about Biden’s attack on the fossil fuel industry, DJT made them all a deal: Raise $1 billion for his reelection campaign and on “Day One” of a new term, DJT will set about fixing the damage done by Biden to the industry. Sounds like a good deal to us!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 
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.
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.
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 