GO-WV “Optimistically Cautious” About Shale Gas Performance in 2023
Last week, MDN told you about the great news coming from the Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia, Inc. (GO-WV) and its newest annual Gas Facts report covering the impact in WV from the shale energy industry in 2022 (see WV Country’s 4th Largest NatGas Producer, Supplies 10% of U.S. Gas). West Virginia natural gas production increased 6% to 2.8 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 2022. WV moved up from fifth to now fourth largest natural gas producer in the country, providing 10% of the entire country’s natural gas supply. But what about 2023? What will the picture look like by Dec. 31 of this year, given the natgas price crash, mothballing of rigs, and other signs of a slowdown in drilling? Charlie Burd, GO-WV executive director, remains “optimistically cautious” about what this year will look like.
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West Virginia University (WVU), the Mountain State’s public research university, is located in Morgantown, WV. Enrollment at all of WVU’s campuses at one point almost touched 30,000 students. Big university–important university. WVU has a major Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering program as part of the school’s Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources. However, WVU has a budget problem. Enrollment has been down some 5,000 students from 2014. That’s 5,000 fewer students paying tuition, resulting in a $45 million budget shortfall. So the school is cutting faculty and staff, and in some cases, eliminating programs like creative writing and foreign language studies.
The left is slowly, begrudgingly, but inevitably coming to the conclusion that so-called peak oil demand–the theory that other forms of energy will replace oil and that oil demand will diminish–is “pure fantasy.” Axios, founded by former POLITICO “journalists” and catering to Gen Z lefties with attention deficit disorder from growing up playing video games 24/7, ran a short article quoting research by “prominent analyst Arjun Murti,” who offers a sobering case for why “a global peak in oil demand may be very far away.” While the article doesn’t use this exact language, the upshot is that using oil for energy leads to human flourishing–lifting people out of poverty. Oil demand may slip in certain Western countries, but the use of oil for energy will continue to grow in third-world countries for decades to come.
A coalition of 1,609 scientists worldwide, including two Nobel Laureates, have signed a declaration stating “there is no climate emergency” and that they “strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy” being pushed across the globe. The declaration does not deny the harmful effect of greenhouse gasses but instead challenges the hysteria brought about by the narrative of imminent doom. Whoops! What happened to the mainstream media narrative that ALL real scientists believe in the hoax of catastrophic global warming? One more lie from the left is now exposed…
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Natural gas hero: Justin Elliott; NATIONAL: CEWD launches Energy Industry Fundamentals 2.0; There’s a vast source of clean energy beneath our feet; Vanguard joins BlackRock, cuts support for ESG; INTERNATIONAL: Chevron LNG workers in Australia plan strike from Sept. 7; Russia’s answer to the U.S. shale boom takes huge step.
The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) released production numbers for the second quarter of 2023 late last week, and nobody noticed…except MDN (thanks to a tip from a good friend). ODNR no longer issues a press release to summarize the results as they once did. We’ve got the full spreadsheet with oil and gas production details for all 3,233 active shale wells in the Buckeye State. We’ve sliced and diced the numbers and have our usual Top 25 lists for natural gas and oil wells. We’ve added a couple of new charts summarizing the data, showing the total production for the quarter by driller (gas and oil) and the total production for the quarter by county. You’re gonna love it!
The rig count carnage continues. For the seventh week in a row and the 16th of the last 17 weeks, the U.S. active rig count lost rigs. A lot of rigs. Last week, the number decreased by 10 rigs after falling by 12 for the prior week. The total is now down to 632 active rigs across both oil and gas. Oil rigs have now fallen for a ninth straight month, while the combined oil and gas count has fallen for four straight months. After losing three rigs two weeks ago, the Marcellus/Utica count added one rig last week–in West Virginia.
An out-of-state, paid protester locked herself to a piece of excavating equipment used to build the Mountain Valley Pipeline early Saturday morning in Montgomery County, Va. She used a sleeping dragon device (arms in a PVC pipe wrapped in duct tape). She was there for seven hours, causing a delay. Virginia State Troopers and Montgomery County Sheriffs finally freed and arrested her. The unnamed protester was charged with a misdemeanor, and bail was set at $2,500. Here’s the thing: She was there protesting the pipeline because it’s fossil energy–yet the device she used, the sleeping dragon, was made from fossil energy! What a dodo bird.
Last summer, Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 2644 was passed into law, becoming Act 96 of 2022 (see 
Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) drills in the Greater Pittsburgh region, in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. Olympus owns a pipeline subsidiary called Hyperion Midstream that builds gathering lines to the company’s wells. Hyperion applied to build a compressor station on a recently approved Olympus well pad in rural West Deer Township (Allegheny County). The PA State Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) will hold a public hearing on Sept. 26 about the proposal. Grab the popcorn.
Columbia Gas of Massachusetts (NiSource) never quite recovered from a series of explosions in September 2018 that occurred with its local delivery pipelines north of Boston (see 
Last November, one of the ten natural gas storage wells at the Equitrans Rager Mountain Gas Storage Area in Jackson Township, Cambria County (in Pennsylvania) began to leak. The well leaked roughly 100 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of gas into the atmosphere (see 
East Daley Analytics, based in Colorado, is a consulting firm that specializes in identifying, understanding, and monitoring operational risk throughout the oil and gas value chain. A “Daley Note” published yesterday by the company focused on the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), providing a status update and a couple of intriguing (some might say controversial) comments. East Daley says while Equitrans, the builder of MVP, says it will finish the project by the end of this year, East Daley’s analysts don’t think so. East Daley also says when (not if) the pipeline gets done and comes online, the newly available capacity won’t translate into new/more shale drilling in the Marcellus/Utica–at least not initially.