Baker Hughes U.S. Rig Count Loses 1 @ 621, M-U Even @ 40
The Baker Hughes rig count lost ground again last week, as it has in three of the last four weeks. The count went from 622 active rigs two weeks ago down to 621 last week. The Marcellus/Utica count was steady at 40 active rigs, broken down as 19 active rigs in Pennsylvania, 12 in Ohio, and 9 in West Virginia. The M-U’s chief rival (for money and resources), the Haynesville, lost one rig last week and now sports 43 active rigs.
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Apart from today’s news that Chesapeake Energy and Southwestern Energy (two huge gas drillers) are close to announcing a merger (see today’s lead story), it is oil companies in U.S. shale that seem to be at the epicenter of a hot M&A market. According to an analyst writing for Argus Media, “meaningful consolidation among US natural gas producers looks unlikely to take place soon owing to historically low, volatile commodity prices and a dearth of large privately-held operators.” The best opportunities lie with companies that have assets in the Haynesville, says the analyst. Perhaps uncoincidentally, both Chesapeake and Southwestern have major assets in the Haynesville (and the Marcellus/Utica).
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Marathon Petroleum gifts $20,000 to Utica Shale Academy; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: USA Energy dept in conditional commitment to support methane monitoring; ExxonMobil posts $2.5B impairment for California assets; NATIONAL: ‘We’re the good guys’ in energy transition, says US exporter of LNG; The US shale magnate trying to sell oil and gas jobs to Generation Z; Natural gas producers’ game plan for LNG – wait out 2024; Pay no mind to the diesel behind your EV charging station; Biden admin fabricated paper trail in pursuit of major chemical plant shutdown.
We are catching up on permits issued…for the last two weeks of December. Normally we cover permits issued for a single week. This report covers permits issued for the two weeks covering Dec. 18 – 31. Perhaps it’s a good thing we’re reporting on two weeks as Ohio’s ODNR seems to have taken the last two weeks of the year off, issuing just a single permit. There were 24 new permits issued for the final two weeks of the year, cumulatively, versus 
Last May, MDN told you about Zefiro Methane Corp., a private “methane offsets originator” headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, acquiring a majority ownership stake in Plants & Goodwin (P&G), an OFS and oil well-plugging company located in Bradford (McKean County), Pennsylvania, for an undisclosed sum (see 
Earlier this week, MDN told you about proposed new IRS rules coming from the White House (the 45V tax credit) that will favor solar and wind use in generating so-called green hydrogen, and disfavor (make more expensive) hydrogen produced using natural gas (see 
Riddle us this: In 2023, the rig count for all oil and gas rigs was 20% fewer active rigs than in 2022 (see 
A new article by Gordon Tomb — a senior fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation, a Pennsylvania-based, free-market think tank, and senior advisor with the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia — has the intriguing title: “Are ‘green’ agendas carrying governors to political cliffs?” While the article focuses on recent actions by PA Gov. Josh Shapiro and Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon in pandering to the radical environmental movement, much of the article reviews the evidence that a majority of people across multiple countries are beginning to reject radical environmentalism by electing conservatives. The radicals swung the pendulum way too far and too fast, and now the pendulum is swinging back to sanity.
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,” and that the company, in general, hid all of this from the public — namely from investors (see 
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is out with official numbers for 2023 concerning the price of natural gas traded at the benchmark Henry Hub in southern Louisiana. The Henry Hub natural gas price averaged $2.57 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in 2023, about a 62% drop from the 2022 average annual price. Bear in mind Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, sending the natural gas market into a steep climb due to worries that Europe would run out of gas if Putin decided to cut them off.
Welcome to Paradise, where natural gas is the fuel of choice to generate electricity! In 2017, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) held a dedication ceremony for the Paradise Combined Cycle Gas Plant in Drakesboro, Kentucky (see 
In September 2022, MDN told you about a relatively modest-sized gas-fired power plant planned for Superior, Wisconsin, called the Nemadji Trail Energy Center (see 
Wow! That was fast! On Dec. 27, pipeline giant Williams issued a press release to announce a deal to buy six underground natural gas storage facilities located in Louisiana and Mississippi with a total capacity of 115 billion cubic feet (Bcf), as well as 230 miles of gas transmission pipeline and 30 pipeline interconnects, for $1.95 billion. Some of the interconnections connect to the Williams Transco pipeline system, a huge system that transports Marcellus/Utica gas to the Gulf Coast area. One of the big reasons for the deal, according to Williams, is to connect more gas supplies to LNG export markets. Yesterday, Williams issued a second press release to say the deal is already done! Williams now owns the assets.
Shell, one of the contracted customers to receive LNG from Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass LNG export facility, added its voice to BP’s request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to release documents from Venture Global related to an ongoing delay in making the plant commercial. The Calcasieu Pass LNG export facility recently received FERC authorization to place the final three liquefaction blocks (7-9) into service (see