The Truth About Pennsylvania’s “Abandoned” Oil & Gas Wells
From time to time, the issue of wells that need plugging appears in the news. We highlighted one such story earlier this week (see XTO Begins to Plug 4 Shale Wells in Butler County Starting Today). There is some confusion over the terms inactive, abandoned, and orphaned wells. What’s the difference? And how does this issue impact the Marcellus/Utica? The sharp folks at the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) recently published a blog post to clear up the confusion.
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In March 2023, the West Virginia legislature passed House Bill 3110, giving the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) extra funds to hire more oil and gas well inspectors. At that time, the state had just ten inspectors to oversee not only all of the state’s 75,000 documented/known wells but also the state’s estimated 15,000 abandoned wells. Frankly, it’s an impossible task for so few inspectors. HB 3110 provided funding for another 10 positions (20 inspectors total). In the past year, the DEP has hired another five, with two more in the pipeline, for a total of 17. It would be better if they had 40 or more!
In May 2023, MDN brought readers the sad news that New York State has fallen and is now under a Communist dictatorship, with the freedom to choose energy sources now gone (see 
One week ago, the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA) Foundation published a report called “Impact of Electrifying Natural Gas Transmission Compression” (full copy below). The Foundation commissioned global consulting and technology services provider ICF to assess and write a report on the potential impacts of electrifying natural gas transmission compression as one tool to address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions along the natural gas supply chain. What did the researchers find?
Analysts for S&P Global Commodity Insights have been pouring over the forward prices for natural gas contracts in 2024 and the news is not good. Traders actively bidding on forward contracts in 2024 have priced natural gas below $4/MMBtu. In the forwards market, the summer 2024 strip was $2.45/MMBtu as of Jan. 22, after spending most of 2023 solidly above $4/MMBtu. December 2024 Henry Hub forwards settlements have averaged $3.69 year to date, according to data from S&P. The reason for prices remaining low for all of 2024? A delay in several new LNG export operations from coming online.
NATIONAL: AFVi offers training for firefighters re natgas vehicles; More states seeking primacy over CO2 injection wells; US oil business posts record merger action in 4th quarter; House Republicans claim CEQ misconduct on climate rule; INTERNATIONAL: Ships told to transit red sea with ‘great care’ after strikes; Global coal exports and power generation hit new highs in 2023.
Perhaps our headline is slightly misleading. EOG is not the modern equivalent of Jed Clampett walking along and seeing crude bubbling up out of the ground (as in the fictional 
Whenever the government mandates which energy sources residents can and cannot use, residents lose. The government’s micromanaging of energy is a prescription for high prices and supply chain failures (i.e., blackouts). Yet leftists like Pennsylvania Rep. Danielle Friel Otten (a radical Democrat from the Philadelphia area) never seem to learn. She introduced a bill, House Bill (HB) 1467, that requires 30% of all electricity used in the state to come from unreliable renewables like wind and solar by the year 2030 — six short years from now. It is a prescription for massive failures in the power grid in the Keystone State.
Here’s the reality. People are moving out of states like New York due to high taxes and the stripping away of freedoms. Those of us living in NY now live in virtually a Communist state (and we’re not exaggerating). We can’t choose our energy sources. We can’t even use single-use plastic bags at the grocery store! NY has fallen. But NY’s mass exodus is the gain of states in the Southeastern U.S. Florida is the number one destination. Also high on the list are North Carolina and Georgia. With the increase in population, and the rapid influx of new business, and the push to convert automobiles to use electricity instead of gasoline, utility companies in the Southeast are asking (more like begging) for permission to build new natural gas power plants to meet all of the new demand for electricity. Of course, the extra gas somehow has to get to the plants.
Behind the Dominion Energy building in Hudson, Ohio, sits what’s being dubbed Hydrogen Heights. It’s a mini-village. The sign at the entrance says, “Welcome to Hydrogen Heights.” Dominion is testing the blending of hydrogen and methane on gas appliances there. We have nothing against using hydrogen as an energy source, other than it will never be able to power your home (see 
Dominion Energy wants to build a liquified natural gas (LNG) storage facility in Person County, North Carolina, to enhance natural gas service reliability for residential and business customers in the growing region (see 
The Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) is a group of natural gas exporting countries, including Qatar, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela — terrorist-supporting countries led by thugs and dictators. Whoops! A little too much honesty there? We don’t normally track the actions and statements of the GECF. However, the group holds more than two-thirds of the world’s gas supplies (so they say). So you can’t totally ignore them. The GECF is predicting a “tight” LNG market worldwide until at least 2026.
One of the most important “fathers of fracking” you’ve likely never heard of before, Claude Cooke, passed away on Jan. 17 at the ripe old age of 94. Cooke is best known as the guy who invented ceramic proppant (beads) used in fracking. He invented it while working for Exxon in the seventies. The innovation allowed for drilling wells that are deeper and hotter than previously possible. It helped revolutionize fracking, especially when fracking was later married to horizontal drilling by George Mitchell, who also died at the age of 94 (see 
According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Range Resources, the first driller to sink a Marcellus well back in 2004, has applied for and received a conditional use application to build three well pads in Fawn Township in Allegheny County, PA. The township secretary says a road into the property is now being built. Construction of the well pads is not expected “until the weather breaks.”
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the country. In 2021, MDN told you that TVA is spending over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines (see