MPLX Says Market “Underappreciates” Growth Potential in Marcellus
In late 2015, MPLX (i.e., Marathon Petroleum) bought out and merged in the Utica Shale’s premier midstream company, MarkWest Energy, for $15 billion (see MarkWest Energy Investors/Unitholders Approve Merger with Marathon). The “new” MarkWest, aka MPLX, plays on a much larger stage now, including ownership and operation of major assets in the Permian Basin and in the Bakken Shale, in addition to the Marcellus/Utica. Last week, MPLX issued its fourth quarter 2023 update. MPLX Chairman and CEO Michael Hennigan had an interesting comment during a conference call: “I think the market is underappreciating the growth potential up in the Marcellus.”
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In January, MDN told you about a long-closed landfill that seeks to reopen in Liberty and Pine Townships, in Mercer County, PA (see 
On Friday, MDN told you that several New York Democrat legislators were introducing 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 
Last Thursday, members of the Pennsylvania Senate, including PA State Sen. Gene Yaw, and members of the Ohio General Assembly met in Columbus for a hearing on energy reliability, sustainability, and affordability. The hearing consisted of two panels, one focused on state and national energy impacts and another on consumer and generational impacts. PJM, the organization that manages the mid-Atlantic power grid consisting of 13 states and the District of Columbia, testified. Indeed, the main thrust of the meeting seemed to be how to keep the growing PJM grid from crashing into blackouts because of an overreliance on unreliable renewables like solar and wind.
Natural gas-fired power plants in the Garden State of New Jersey provide roughly half of the electricity used by NJ residents. Yet NJ’s Democrat politicians are proposing to put a measure on the fall ballot to amend the state’s constitution to make it illegal to build any new gas-fired power plants in the state. Can you believe it? Are they stark…raving…mad? They might as well say they’re going to ban electricity!
Last week, MDN told you about a “clerical error” by a third-party vendor in calculating the new formula for natural gas property tax valuations in West Virginia that caused newly producing natural gas wells to be undervalued, leading to the loss of millions of dollars for the counties that see the most shale drilling (see 
In line with our theory that we have hit the bottom of the rig count and now bounce up a few and down a few, last week, the Baker Hughes rig count lost rigs. The count went from 621 active rigs two weeks ago to 619 last week — down two rigs. It went up a single rig the week prior. We’re just sitting and bouncing, staying roughly even at around 620 active rigs. The Marcellus/Utica remained constant last week with 42 active rigs. However, our rival, the Haynesville, lost two rigs and now sits at 40 active rigs. Yes! We have two more rigs than our competition!
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Biden’s big worries in one small state; Williams acquires gas storage near the heart of LNG export demand; NATIONAL: Exxon, Chevron surpass forecasts as shale drilling lifts output; What White House Isn’t Saying about LNG export pause; Joe Biden’s war on fossil fuels is hurting America; INTERNATIONAL: Oil market sees temporary fragmentation amid Red Sea dangers.
There were 27 new permits issued to drill in the Marcellus/Utica during the week of Jan. 22 – 28, versus 20 permits issued during the prior week. Pennsylvania issued 19 new permits last week. Ohio issued 5 new permits. West Virginia issued 3 new permits last week. Olympus Energy scored the most new permits with 7, all of them in Westmoreland County, PA. Apex Energy came in second with 6 new permits, also in Westmoreland. In fact, Westmoreland County, in southwestern PA, received 15 new permits last week, by far the most of any county.
Yesterday, Shell’s new CEO, Wael Sawan, spilled some major beans about the company’s ethane cracker in Monaca (Beaver County), Pennsylvania. Sawan’s comments about the cracker came during a quarterly conference call with analysts to discuss the company’s performance during the fourth quarter of 2023. Until yesterday, Shell had steadfastly declined to disclose how much money it spent to build the Monaca ethane cracker facility. Sawan said yesterday the number was a massive $14 billion, far more than the estimated $6-$10 billion that had been bandied about for years.
Hopefully, we’re near the end of an effort to overturn a bill passed in early 2022 by the West Virginia legislature, Senate Bill (SB) 694, which finally brought forced pooling for shale wells to the Mountain State after eight years of trying (see 
On Monday, we told you the mayor of Chester, PA (a suburb of Philadelphia), Stefan Roots, boldly proclaimed that an LNG export project planned for his community called Penn LNG is “dead in the water” (see 
We’ve talked plenty in recent months about the problems in the Red Sea with Iran’s puppets, the Houthis, trying to hijack ships, and (lately) lobbing bombs at ships sailing through the region. Those ships include LNG (liquefied natural gas) and LPG (liquefied petroleum gas, or propane) carriers. The result is predictable: Ships have stopped using the Red Sea and the Suez Canal that connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.