DUG Appalachia: Energy Trader Says New England in for Nasty Surprise
Yet another top-notch speaker at Hart Energy’s DUG Appalachia event in Pittsburgh was leading energy trader Dennis Kissler from BOK Financial. During his talk, Kissler said, “New England has dodged a bullet because they’ve actually seen mild winter followed by mild summer and a mild winter to the start of this year.” And, says Kissler, if we get a cold snap, New England is in for a nasty surprise: brownouts. “They’re going to realize they’re going to need another source of power.” And that source of power is natural gas.
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Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line (Transco) is a natural gas pipeline that initially brought gas from the Gulf Coast of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania to deliver gas to the New Jersey and New York City area. It is owned and operated by Williams. With the advent of the shale revolution, Transco was converted to be bidirectional, flowing Marcellus/Utica gas south to as far as Texas. Transco now transports approximately 15% of the nation’s natural gas! It is a massive and vital pipeline. With the imminent start of the Mountain Valley Pipeline and an extra 2 Bcf/d flowing from the Marcellus to Transco’s Station 165 in Pittsylvania County, VA, how will Transco handle the extra volumes?
Blue Racer Midstream is a small natural gas midstream company that provides natural gas gathering and processing, mixed NGL fractionation and condensate stabilization, and NGL marketing and transportation to producers operating in the Marcellus/Utica in southeastern Ohio and the panhandle of West Virginia. We don’t talk about the company much because it’s privately held and not in the news often. Blue Racer is in the news today! Fitch Ratings, one of the big three ratings agencies, announced it will no longer include Blue Racer in its debt ratings system after December 29th because (our words, Fitch’s sentiment) the company is too small to bother spending time to analyze.
NATIONAL: Experts discuss oil, gas recruitment surprises in 2023; Natural gas futures fall as mild weather forecasts persist; INTERNATIONAL: Saudi energy minister says won’t agree to fossil fuel phase down.
Although we should have expected this, the news that Equitrans Midstream, builder of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project, is looking at possibly selling itself comes as a gut punch. We suppose it hits us that way because we feel as though we’ve been in the trenches with Equitrans from the beginning, fighting to get MVP completed. Equitrans was birthed just five years ago. As the company closes in on finishing and launching MVP, and as its CEO (since it was founded) is about to retire at the end of the year (see 
Anti-fossil fuel fanatics in Ohio (and beyond) still can’t accept that they lost a battle to block drilling under (not on) Ohio state-owned land, including some Ohio state parks. Several weeks ago, the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) met in a public forum and voted to allow shale drilling under three state-owned tracts of land: (1) all 20,000 acres of Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County, (2) more than 300 acres of Valley Run Wildlife Area in Carroll County, and (3) 66 acres of the Zepernick Wildlife Area in Columbiana County (see 
In March 2022, MDN brought you news of a bold new plan by EQT CEO Toby Rice to “unleash” American LNG exports to not only help our friends in Europe but also to reduce the amount of coal use across the world, thereby lowering coal-related emissions including carbon dioxide (see 
Columbiana County, OH, located in the northern portion of the Utica Shale play in the Buckeye State, has recently come roaring back to life. In 2022, there were 41 permits issued to drill in the Utica in Columbiana County. So far, in 2023, there have been 35 permits issued to drill in Columbiana County. But here’s the thing: 16 of this year’s 35 permits (half!) were issued in November! It’s like Columbiana had been asleep for most of this year, and then it suddenly came alive.
In November 2021, Northeast Natural Energy (NNE), a West Virginia driller, announced all of its gas produced in West Virginia had achieved Equitable Origin’s EO100™ Standard for Responsible Energy Development (see 
Hope Gas provides natural gas service to approximately 131,000 residential, industrial, and commercial customers in thirty-five West Virginia counties. In October, Hope closed on the acquisition of the West Virginia division of Peoples Gas for an undisclosed amount, giving the company another 13,000 customers (see 
While the rig count remains anemic, it shows signs of life. Last week, the U.S. rig count added rigs for the third week in a row. The rig count hit a new low for 2023 one month ago (see 
In July 2022, MDN brought you news of a possible frac-out, or “inadvertent return” that happens when drilling mud pops out of places where it’s not supposed to — places outside the borehole being drilled (see 
Last week, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced that he will appeal a decision by the Commonwealth Court that blocks PA’s entrance into the obscene Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax scheme (see 
Almost every major (and most minor) drillers in the Marcellus/Utica have, over the past couple of years, signed on to one or more of the responsible gas certification authorities. Just yesterday, we told you that PennEnergy Resources had its full operations certified by MiQ, the second such certification the company has sought and received (see 
Three New York City pension funds — the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, the Teachers’ Retirement System, and the Board of Education Retirement System — were sued in May by four NYC employees for breaching their fiduciary duty and divesting from fossil energy companies (see