Plain Dealer Alleges Political Strings at ODNR re Injection Wells
The Cleveland Plain Dealer has the long knives out for Ohio State Senator Brian Chavez (Republican) and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (also a Republican). The Plain Dealer is accusing DeWine’s Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) of corruption in not charging an injection well company owned by Chavez called DeepRock Disposal $1.3 million for cleaning up wastewater that migrated from a DeepRock injection well to a nearby conventional production well in Noble County. Instead, says the Plain Dealer, the ODNR sent the bill to the conventional well operator!
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We’re sad but not surprised. The last time we reported on Williams’ Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) Project slated for New York was last June when Williams asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a time extension to build it (see 
Last week, the Baker Hughes U.S. rig count lost another eight rigs, down to 605, 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. No higher and no lower. That is, until two weeks when it crashed through the floor and went lower, down to 613. And now, it has gone even lower, down to 605. The Marcellus/Utica remained even at 40 rigs after losing one rig two weeks ago. Pennsylvania operates 21 rigs; Ohio operates 11 active rigs; and West Virginia operates 8 rigs.
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Two weeks ago, during the week of April 15 – 21, there were 16 new permits issued to drill in the Marcellus/Utica. Last week, for the week of April 22 – 28, there were 26 new permits issued. Finally! A little good news on the permit front. Snyder Brothers took the top prize with eight new permits issued, all of them for a single well pad in Armstrong County, PA. Chesapeake Energy scored five new permits, all of them for a single pad in Bradford County, PA. EQT Corporation (using its Rice Drilling subsidiary) received four permits in Greene County, PA. Encino Energy also received four permits, all for one pad in Harrison County, OH. Antero Resources received three permits in Wetzel County, WV, and Southwestern Energy received two permits in Brooke County, WV.
Gulfport Energy, the third-largest driller in the Ohio Utica Shale (by the number of wells drilled), reported its first quarter 2024 numbers earlier this week. The company drills Utica *and* Marcellus wells in Ohio. It also has an active drilling program in the Oklahoma SCOOP shale play. Gulfport’s net daily production for 1Q24 averaged 1,053.7 MMcfe/d, down just a shade from 1Q23’s average of 1,057.4 MMcfe/d. Production in 1Q consisted of 831.3 MMcfe/d in the Utica/Marcellus (79%) and 222.4 MMcfe/d in the SCOOP (21%). The production mix was comprised of approximately 92% natural gas, 6% natural gas liquids (NGLs), and 2% oil and condensate.
Antero Midstream, a separate company from Antero Resources (at least on paper, although it is managed by the same people), issued a press release yesterday to announce it had purchased a bolt-on acquisition of gathering and compression assets in the Marcellus Shale for $70 million from Summit Midstream Partners. The assets acquired include two compressor stations and 48 miles of high-pressure gas-gathering pipelines located in West Virginia.
Dominion Energy wants to build a liquified natural gas (LNG) storage facility in Person County, North Carolina, to enhance natural gas service reliability for residential and business customers in the growing region (see 
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the country. In 2021, MDN told you that TVA is spending over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines (see 
EPA Administrator Michael Regan used a considerable amount of fossil energy and emitted tons of carbon dioxide to jet over to Dubai last December to participate in the COP28 confab, where he released a final rule that was “two years in the making” to force the U.S. oil and gas industry to cut methane emissions by using budget-busting new technologies and onerous (frequent) inspections (see 
In September 2022, Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) announced that it had selected West Virginia for a 1,800-megawatt (later upgraded to 2,060 MW), combined-cycle natural gas power station that also uses carbon capture and storage (see 
Chesapeake Energy issued its first quarter 2024 update yesterday. The ongoing low price of natural gas and Chesapeake’s previously announced curtailment of ~25% of its production caused the company to miss Wall Street estimates (of $87 million) for first-quarter profit. Chessy made $26 million in net income during 1Q24 versus making $1.4 billion in 1Q23. Ouch. Chesapeake’s net production in the first quarter was approximately 3.20 Bcfe/d (100% natural gas), utilizing an average of nine rigs to drill 28 wells and place 29 wells on production while building an inventory of 24 drilled but uncompleted (DUCs) wells and 22 deferred turn in lines (TILs).
The great state of Pennsylvania has an Independent Fiscal Office (IFO), created by Act 120 of 2010 and Act 100 of 2016. The IFO analyzes fiscal proposals made by state agencies and is nonpartisan in its analyses. PA State Senator Gene Yaw, from Lycoming County (and Chairman of the Senate Environmental Resources & Energy Committee), introduced a bill last June to create an Independent Energy Office (IEO) modeled along the same lines as the IFO (see