Leasing Activity Picks Up in Noble & Guernsey Counties in Ohio
According to an article in Ohio Country Journal, interest and activity in eastern Ohio’s oil and gas leasing has been growing in some new areas. Those areas include, says Clif Little, Ohio State University Extension educator in Guernsey County, portions of Guernsey and Noble counties where there hadn’t been interest in the past. Little specializes in, among other things, oil and gas leases. He’s the author of “Important aspects of an oil and gas lease” (copy below), chock full of good tips for landowners either leasing for the first time or looking to re-lease.
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Yesterday, we brought you the great news that the Marcellus/Utica region scored one of seven major hydrogen hub project grants being dished out by the Bidenistas (see 
Last Friday in Philadelphia, President Joe Biden tried to sell the line that Pennsylvania was a big winner in the Hydrogen Hub Hunger Games (see 
Haters gonna hate (shake it off, shake it off). We learned that from philosophical genius and pop culture guru Taylor Swift. “Hate” perfectly describes the radicalized left in this country that refuses to admit the reality and truth that 95% of all hydrogen today comes from cracking natural gas. In the future, that percentage is likely to remain about the same. Of the seven projects the Bidenistas awarded $7 billion to last Friday in the Hydrogen Hub Hunger Games, four of the seven in whole or in part will use natural gas as their feedstock to create hydrogen (see 
Since work resumed in midsummer, 92 stream crossings had been completed through Oct. 1 for the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project, according to MVP spokeswoman Natalie Cox. About 330 crossings remain. Can the company realistically complete the rest of the work and get the pipeline operational by Dec. 31 (less than three months away)? That’s the multi-billion-dollar question. Some 4,200 construction workers are actively working on getting it done. It doesn’t help that highly organized “protests” are being inflicted on the project by Big Green-backed groups like Appalachians Against Pipeline.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: KC Fed report finds slight optimism in Midwest oil, natural gas markets; NATIONAL: Biden’s kamikaze climate plan for the US economy; Exxon becomes world’s first megamajor; INTERNATIONAL: Investment in climate tech startups down over 40% year on year; Chevron LNG workers in Australia reaffirm strike plans.
As predicted by Reuters, on Friday, the Bidenistas announced the Hydrogen Hub Hunger Games winners. There were seven projects selected from 33 finalists. Among them was the West Virginia-led Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2), which is a project that will use Marcellus/Utica natural gas as the feedstock to produce “blue” hydrogen, which is hydrogen made from natgas where carbon dioxide from the process is captured and either used or stored underground. While there is no doubt the big winner is West Virginia, other neighboring states, including Ohio and (yes) even Pennsylvania, will benefit with several locations that will be part of the larger hub project. We’ll explain below.
Joe Biden traveled to Pennsylvania (campaign rally) on Friday to make the official announcement of the seven lucky winners of the Hydrogen Hub Hunger Games (see today’s lead story). Joe pitched Pennsylvania as the big winner, which is a joke. PA scored small pieces of two approved projects. The one big, main hydrogen hub project pitched by PA to the Bidenistas — the Decarbonization Network of Appalachia (DNA H2Hub) — didn’t make the cut. Joe needs to win PA in the next election, or he’s toast, hence his visit to Philly on Friday (with a complicit media) to try and paint PA as the big winner. It was not.
With all of the good news about WV (and OH, and PA) winning the Biden Hydrogen Hub Hunger Games contest by scoring $925 million for the WV-led Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2) (see today’s lead story), there is a potential black cloud on the horizon. Investments in ARCH2 might not actually come to pass unless the IRS resolves the 45V hydrogen tax credit. Yes, an obscure rule part of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has the potential to scuttle most of the planned investments in ARCH2 and other hydrogen hub projects.
The U.S. rig count actually rose last week, adding a piddly four rigs to 622 active rigs (regaining the four it lost the week before). We remain near the lowest point since February 2022. The count in the Marcellus/Utica, after falling by one three weeks ago and holding steady two weeks ago, gained one rig (in Pennsylvania) and now stands at 39 active rigs. The national rig count is down 147, or 19%, below this time last year. We’d classify it as limping along, but we’re happy to see this slight reversal.
Emily Satterwhite, who teaches Appalachian studies at Virginia Tech and has been engaged in illegal activities against the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) going back more than five years (
Shell’s new CEO, Wael Sawan, is capable of rational thought, unlike his predecessor, Ben van Beurden. Previous CEO van Beurden had set the company on the suicidal path of reducing oil and gas drilling in favor of investing in renewable energy. It turns out that’s not making any money for the company. So at an investor meeting in June, Sawan unveiled a new strategy — back to more drilling for oil and gas and less dithering with renewables (see 
It’s becoming increasingly apparent that there’s a whole bunch of people in our energy-climate discussion who just won’t accept what can only be described as obvious and undeniable facts. What are those facts? Fossil fuels supply 80% of the world’s energy and about 80% of the energy consumed in the U.S. Without fossil fuels, it would be impossible to build and maintain so-called renewable energy and electric vehicles. This is an indisputable fact. Yet the uninformed insist that we can dump the production of fossil fuels now if we only had the will. They are WRONG.