FERC Issues Final EIS for Cumberland Pipeline to TN Power Plant
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the U.S. TVA’s service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. 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 TVA Investing $1B to Build New Natgas-Fired Electric Plants). Late last year, TVA recommended moving forward with replacing one of the six–a coal-fired plant located near Cumberland City–with a natural gas combined-cycle power plant (see TVA Recommends Replacing Cumberland Coal Plant w/Natural Gas). On June 30, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a favorable, final environmental impact statement (EIS) for a pipeline to connect the plant to bountiful M-U molecules.
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Just before heading out the door on vacation last week, MDN editor Jim Willis had the pleasure of being interviewed by Jason Spiess of 
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Tellurian seeking two or three equity partners for Driftwood LNG; NATIONAL: USA has raised CCS development grants to $777M since 2021; Next wave of LNG export projects to face labor challenges; A comprehensive critique of net zero fantasies; American shale spoils OPEC’s party again; INTERNATIONAL: India’s top gas importer says local demand rising.
New shale permits issued for Jun 26 – Jul 2 in the Marcellus/Utica saw a dramatic increase, thanks to a bump in Pennsylvania’s numbers. There were 39 new permits issued last week, way up from 11 issued the previous week. Last week’s permit tally included 30 new permits in Pennsylvania, 8 new permits in Ohio, and just 1 new permit in West Virginia. Coterra Energy scored the most new permits with a whopping 12 issued in Susquehanna County, PA (for two well pads). Range Resources had the second most new permits, with 7 permits issued in Washington County, PA (for one pad).
In early June, shale drillers could, for the first time, begin to apply for permits to drill under (not on top of) Ohio state lands and state parks under newly formulated rules established by the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management (OGLM) Commission (see 
Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) drills in the Greater Pittsburgh region, in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. In 2021, Olympus applied to build a new well pad in a rural part of Allegheny County, in West Deer Township. So-called “concerned citizens” got amped up to oppose the project. They succeeded when town supervisors rejected the Dionysus well pad (see 
West Virginia’s budget year runs from July 1 in one year to June 30 of the next year. The most recent “2023” fiscal budget year ended on June 30. WV is rolling in the dough. The state ended the 2023 fiscal year with more than $1.8 billion in surplus funds, driven mainly by increased personal income tax and severance tax collections. The severance tax (oil, gas, and coal) accounted for only 15% of total tax collections for the 2023 fiscal year but accounted for 38% of the total $1.8 billion in tax revenue surplus.
The political situation in Pennsylvania is quite fascinating to watch. The PA House has a one-seat Democrat majority, which means all of the committees in the House are now (for the first time in years) run by Democrats. One of them, Rep. Greg Vitali from Delaware County (near Philadelphia), chairs the powerful House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee. Immediately upon seizing power, Vitali tried to ram through a number of radical bills that would greatly harm (or even end) the Marcellus industry in the state. We previously told you members of his own party slapped him down, making him pull back and abandon two bills he really really wanted (see 
The weekly rig count for the U.S. finally, after nine straight weeks in a row, turned around–just a bit. With its venerable rig count, Baker Hughes reported last Friday that overall, the U.S. rig count added six rigs, reversing a downward trend. There were 680 active rigs for the week ending July 7. Both the Marcellus and the Utica maintained the same rig levels for the past four weeks in a row with a cumulative 48 rigs. That number is down from an average of 52 it had been running for the first five months this year. The good news is that we haven’t lost any more rigs.
LNG, or liquefied natural gas, is an important market for Marcellus/Utica drillers. It’s also a big deal worldwide. In 2022, global trade in LNG set a record high, averaging 51.7 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), a 5% increase compared with 2021. At one point in 2022, the U.S. became the largest LNG exporter in the world. But then there was an explosion and fire at the Freeport LNG export terminal in June (see 
MDN is taking a few days post-July 4th to rest and relax and recharge. We hope you had a great 4th holiday! We will be back on July 10th to catch you up on all the news related to the Marcellus and Utica shale region. We had hoped to bring you a permit report today for the week of June 26th through July 2nd, but the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) has not yet (as of Wednesday, July 5th) updated its weekly report, so we will bring you that report first thing next week. If there is any earth-shattering news related to our region, we’ll break back in with an update. Otherwise, see you on July 10th!
TransCanada Corporation, which renamed itself TC Energy in 2019, made a play for and bought out/merged in U.S.-based Columbia Pipeline Group in 2016 (see 
Pennsylvania’s Democrat Party is hellbent on driving the Marcellus Shale industry out of the state. They have been for years. That’s just a truthful observation and beyond dispute. The latest evidence is the party’s insistence on adding a severance tax on top of the existing impact fee, PA’s version of a severance tax. The Dems in the PA House passed a resolution on Friday by a single vote that directs the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee to “study” Pennsylvania’s revenue from the oil and gas industry, comparing it with the top five states in natural gas production in the U.S.