Baker Hughes U.S. Rig Count Adds 7 @ 629, M-U Drops 1 @ 43
Last week, the Baker Hughes rig count added the seven rigs it had lost the week before. The count went from 622 active rigs two weeks ago back up to 629 last week. The national count is officially rangebound. Since last October, the national count has gone as low as 616 and as high as 629. And that’s it. No higher and no lower. The Marcellus/Utica cumulatively lost one rig last week and now runs 43 rigs. Pennsylvania lost two rigs and now operates 22 rigs. Ohio stayed the same at 12 rigs. And West Virginia picked up one of PA’s rigs and now operates nine rigs (up from eight the prior week).
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MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Wood Mackenzie looks at EQT-Equitrans deal; EIR examines EQT-Equitrans deal; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Venture Global LNG asks FERC to keep documents confidential; NATIONAL: The energy transition has become a Big Green hot mess; Biden LNG freeze delaying projects and risking USA market share; Methane emissions set to decline despite record growth in US crude production; Winter storms have disrupted U.S. natural gas production; Court halts SEC climate disclosure rule; US economy scores a win from the bear market in natural gas; INTERNATIONAL: Rystad looks at the buzz around white hydrogen.
MDN editor and writer Jim Willis needs to step away from writing duties for a couple of days due to a tragic death in the family.
CNX Resources, headquartered in Pittsburgh, is the latest major Marcellus/Utica driller to announce a pullback in spending and production due to low-low prices that natural gas is fetching. Yesterday, CNX announced the company will “delay completions activities on three upcoming Marcellus Shale pads consisting of 11 wells to avoid bringing incremental volumes into the current oversupplied market.” The delay means CNX will spend $50 million less on drilling in 2024 and produce 30 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) less over the course of this year.
CNX Resources filed a request with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) in April 2023 to build two pipelines — two for natural gas — along a 13.9-mile route in Bell, Loyalhanna and Salem Townships in Westmoreland County. An additional 4-mile pipeline would be built for water. Called the Slickville Trunkline Project, the DEP told CNX last December (yes, it took the agency eight months to reply!) that the application was “incomplete” and that CNX had 60 days to provide the extra info.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) recently (maybe yesterday?) posted a notice on its website announcing that conventional oil and gas well operators will not be eligible for new methane reduction well plugging grants (free money!) if they are not in compliance with state law paperwork requirements. Channeling their inner schoolmarm, the DEP tells drillers if they don’t have the proper “reports” filed about those wells, they (a) won’t see any money from Biden’s bloated giveaway program, and (b) the DEP will, sooner or later, come knocking and will fine them for paperwork transgressions. The old carrot and stick.
The blowhard Democrat Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, took a bow last year to tout that “his” administration (as opposed to the Democrat who preceded him, Tom Wolf) had plugged more than 130 abandoned old oil and gas wells in the state, more than “the previous eight years combined” (see 
Last month, MDN told you that several New York Democrat legislators introduced a new bill to ban the use of carbon dioxide (CO2) in any process to extract natural gas or oil in the Empire State (see 
Venture Global has been defrauding its contracted customers for more than two years by not officially christening its Calcasieu Pass LNG export facility in Louisiana as officially open for business, denying customers cargoes under contracted prices. Yet during that time, Venture Global has exported (on the spot market) more than 250 LNG cargoes! It’s a sham, and everybody knows it. Venture Global got the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to extend the “must officially be open by date” for an extra year last year (expired Feb 21st of this year). Unbelievably, Venture Global wants FERC to extend it for ANOTHER year (see 
HG Energy drills for natural gas and oil in the Marcellus/Utica. The company, headquartered in Parkersburg, WV, is backed with private equity money managed by Quantum Capital Group (formerly Quantum Energy Partners). One of the companies co-investing in HG is Elliott Management, a so-called activist investor. The Wall Street Journal reports Elliott has just ponied up an additional $500 million (half a BILLION dollars!) to a fund managed by Quantum aimed at “retiring previous vehicles” that fund HG. In other words, retire older IOUs with newer IOUs. Elliott wants to grow its share of ownership in HG.
Yesterday, the big news broke that driller EQT Corporation is reuniting with pipeline company Equitrans Midstream (see 
Yesterday, EQT Corporation announced a deal to buy its former midstream division, now called Equitrans Midstream, for roughly $5.46 billion (see 
On February 8, 2024, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued a notice of violation (NOV) to Blackhill Energy for failing to prevent the migration of shale gas into groundwater that contaminated three nearby private water wells in Springfield Township (Bradford County) in June of 2022. Yes, the NOV took nearly two years to get issued. We’re not sure why it takes so long to issue an NOV (perhaps a full investigation takes that long?), but it does. Blackhill self-reported the issue back in 2022 and presumably has already corrected it.