OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Unions push back on Chicago mayor’s plan to end natgas connections; NATIONAL: Climate alarmists’ bad science; LNG permitting pause – an essential tool, or bargaining chip?; Biden administration cancels SPR purchases; INTERNATIONAL: Iraq fails to meet OPEC+ oil target.
Read More “Other Stories of Interest: Thu, Apr 4, 2024”
Mountain V Oil & Gas, headquartered in Buckhannon, WV, is a privately owned independent energy company with both conventional and shale assets in the Appalachian Basin. The company acquires and drills wells on over 300,000 leased acres, mainly focused on gas wells. Mountain V is now expanding its focus to include oil. Last fall, the company signed an agreement to buy the oil and gas assets of AXP Energy — assets located in Tennessee, Eastern Kentucky, Virginia, and the Illinois Basins — for $4 million. The AXP purchase with its oil-heavy assets closed earlier today.
Read More “Mountain V Expands Focus to Appalachian Oil with Purchase of AXP”
A royalty case that took nearly four years and hundreds of filings by both sides was finally decided by an Ohio jury in March (see OH Drillers Win Case Against Landowners re Drilling Deeper). The jury found in favor of several drillers (Ascent Resources, Gulfport Energy, Rice Energy) and against the rights owner (TERA II, LLC) in a case where the words “Point Pleasant” were not included in a lease agreement. The drillers drilled into the Point Pleasant, which sits on the border of the Utica, even though, technically, the lease did not allow it. The jury found the landowners did not “reserve their rights” to the Point Pleasant, given its location next to the Utica. The landowners are now appealing the jury decision.
Read More “OH Landowners Appeal Jury Decision Allowing Pt Pleasant Drilling”
SLB (formerly Schlumberger) is the largest oilfield services (drilling and fracking) company in the world. It does a lot of work in the Marcellus/Utica. SLB announced yesterday a deal to buy a smaller rival, ChampionX, in an all-stock deal valued at $7.75 billion. ChampionX specializes in chemistry solutions (fracking fluids), artificial lift systems, and equipment and technologies that help companies drill for and produce oil and gas. Little did we know until we checked, but ChampionX has a major presence in the Marcellus/Utica region via supply chain vendors who sell its products and services. So this combination, which has national and international implications, also has the power to affect drilling and fracking here in the M-U.
Read More “Oilfield Services Giant SLB Buying Smaller Rival ChampionX for $8B”
In January, we told you the State of Maine was actively considering a new law, L.D. 2077, that would prohibit natural gas companies from charging ratepayers for the construction and expansion of gas service mains and gas service lines beginning Feb. 1, 2025 (see Maine Debates Democrat Bill to Limit New Natural Gas Customers). Under the bill, business and residential customers who seek new gas mains and service lines would pay the entire cost to hook up for the service themselves. In other words, nobody would pay to connect (far too expensive), resulting in a de facto ban on connecting new customers for natural gas service. However, the bill’s language was altered to remove that provision and instead require studying the issue of new pipelines (see Maine U-Turn: Bill Banning New Gas Hookups Changed to Study Issue). The “watered-down” bill was approved by the Maine House yesterday with a party-line vote.
Read More “Bill to Study (and Block) Gas Pipes Advances in Maine Legislature”
MDN is not a stock-picking service, but we spotted an interesting article appearing on the Seeking Alpha investor’s website about where to invest now so that when the price of natural gas eventually rebounds (and with it, lifts the stock price of gas producers), investors can make money. The investor/writer, who is a nuclear power engineer by training, proposes the theory that investing in the Marcellus/Utica is a better choice than investing in other gas plays because (a) our drillers have lower breakeven costs and (b) some of our drillers also produce NGLs, which fetch more money than methane.
Read More “With Ongoing Crash in Gas Price, the Best Place to Invest is M-U”
Natural gas is, as we have often pointed out, one of the purest commodity markets in existence. The classic supply/demand curve is at work. If there’s more supply than demand, prices for gas move down. And conversely, if there’s more demand than supply, prices move higher. We have been stuck in a sucky price pattern this year, not helped by a very moderate winter. The phrase on the lips of every landowner and driller is, When will the price move higher? According to analysts from Morgan Stanley, not anytime soon.
Read More “Morgan Stanley Predicts Gas Market Oversupply Next Few Years”
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Gas mogul Charif Souki owes lenders $100 million, judge says; NATIONAL: Federal court strikes down Biden’s climate rule for states; EOG Resources announces president Billy Helms’ retirement; Big Oil is beating Big Tech as eyes turn to crucial OPEC meeting; US to shell out $4B in first round of advanced energy tax credit; U.S. petroleum product exports set another record high in 2023; INTERNATIONAL: Oil climbs to $85 on OPEC cuts and geopolitical risks; New west-east route keeps Europe hooked on Russian gas; Moldova to buy US-origin LNG from Greece for consumers; Greta Thunberg is the poster girl for the ignorance of elites.
Read More “Other Stories of Interest: Wed, Apr 3, 2024”
Going back nearly six years, Big Green tried to block construction of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in Virginia by arguing some of the stream crossings threatened the very existence of the Roanoke logperch, a large “darter” fish that grows to about 6 inches long (see our Roanoke logperch stories here). The Roanoke logperch is on the endangered species list and green leftists claimed MVP would finish it off. They lied. Yesterday, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) said the Roanoke logperch is no longer in danger of extinction and should be removed from the endangered species list.
Read More “Fish Species Antis Tried to Use to Block MVP No Longer Endangered”
You have to hand it to the left. They never give up on their mission to destroy this country. Big Green groups using (abusing) six uppity Virginia landowners who didn’t want the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline to cross their well-groomed horse pastures have appealed a lawsuit recently dismissed by a federal court to the U.S. Supreme Court one last time. That is, if the Supremes decide to consider it again. It’s an open question if the Supremes will accept the case back.
Read More “Va. Landowners Appeal MVP Case to Supreme Court One Final Time”
The Ohio Oil & Gas Association (OOGA) held its annual meeting in March at the Hilton in Columbus, OH. While MDN was not there, an industry friend sent along a copy of the slide deck used by the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Oil & Gas Resources Management. The ODNR’s “regulatory update” addressed a number of interesting issues, including the state’s ongoing application for “primacy” in permitting carbon dioxide injection wells, permitting and unitization (forced pooling), updates on rule changes for drilling and fracking, and several “top 5” lists for natural gas and oil producers in the Utica Shale.
Read More “Ohio ODNR Update: Top 5 Producers, Injection Well Primacy & More”
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro traveled to Scranton, PA, in mid-March 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: Shapiro’s plan would kill Marcellus-fired power plants in the state, driving 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. Unfortunately, Shapiro’s offers of bribes, er, “investments” for Big Labor, were enough to keep Big Labor in the back pocket of the Democrat Party, supporting Shapiro’s terrible carbon tax.
Read More “Big Labor Caves, Supports PA Gov’s Marcellus-Killing Carbon Tax”
We continue to be impressed with Shell’s still relatively new CEO, Wael Sawan, who took over the CEO role last June. At an investor meeting last June, Sawan unveiled a new strategic direction for the company — back to more drilling for oil and gas and less dithering with renewables (see New Shell CEO Reverses Course – More O&G Drilling, Less Renewables). Sawan is also high on LNG and “sees a long-term role for natural gas in the world’s energy mix.”
Read More “Shell Gives “Full-Throated Defense” of Fossil Fuels in Strategy Plan”
Back on Jan. 3, we brought you the news (from Reuters) that the U.S. became the #1 exporter of LNG in the world in 2023 (see U.S. Became #1 LNG Exporter in the World in 2023). It only took the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) another three months, but the agency, which employs an army of number-crunchers, now agrees. U.S. LNG exports in 2023 averaged 11.9 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) — a 12% increase (1.3 Bcf/d) compared with 2022, according to data from EIA’s Natural Gas Monthly report. LNG exports from Australia and Qatar — the world’s two other largest LNG exporters — each ranged from 10.1 Bcf/d to 10.5 Bcf/d annually between 2020 and 2023.
Read More “US Edges Out Australia and Qatar as World’s Biggest LNG Exporter”
It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while, academic researchers do real, actual, in-the-field research, as opposed to running computer simulations. Such an act of real research was just published in the journal Science last Thursday. A research group led by Carbon Mapper, with researchers from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Arizona State University, University of Arizona, Scientific Aviation, and the Environmental Protection Agency used advanced aircraft to conduct the largest direct measurement-based survey of active municipal solid waste landfills to date from 2018 through 2022, looking for fugitive methane emissions. They found that 52% of surveyed landfills had “observable point source emissions” (i.e, they are super-emitters), as compared with a 0.2% to 1% detection rate observed for super-emitters from surveyed oil and gas infrastructure in California and the Permian Basin.
Read More “Study: Landfills Bigger Leakers of Fugitive Methane than O&G Wells”
NATIONAL: Johnson’s natural gas-for-Ukraine gamble might not pay off; US March LNG exports flat as Freeport plant woes continue; INTERNATIONAL: QatarEnergy now has over 100 LNG ships under construction; USA oil suppliers muscling into OPEC+ markets all over the world; Canada gets another black eye on LNG; IEA raises its oil demand forecast for 2024—for the fourth time.
Read More “Other Stories of Interest: Tue, Apr 2, 2024”