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.
Read More “Other Stories of Interest: Tue, Aug 29, 2023”
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!
Read More “Ohio Utica Shale Production 2Q23 – Top Wells, Drillers & Counties”
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.
Read More “Carnage: U.S. Rig Count Drops Another 10 Rigs, M-U Picks Up 1 Rig”
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.
Read More “Out-of-State MVP Protester Delays Drilling 7 Hrs – Arrested, Removed”
Last summer, Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 2644 was passed into law, becoming Act 96 of 2022 (see New PA Act 96 Helps Boost Plugging Orphan Wells – Left Goes Nuts). Part of the new law keeps the power to raise bonding amounts for conventional wells with the legislature rather than allowing PA’s unelected Democrat bureaucrats in the bowels of the DEP’s Environmental Quality Board (EQB) to raise rates to punish drillers. Having their power taken away has pushed the extremists in some of PA’s most radical green groups, including PennFuture, Sierra Club, and Clean Air Council, to file a lawsuit challenging the law.
Read More “Radical Green Groups Sue PA to Overturn Well Plugging Law”
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.
Read More “Olympus Applies to Build Compressor Stn at West Deer Well Pad Site”
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 Local NatGas Pipes Explode Near Boston Killing 1, Injuring 25). The explosions and resulting fires tragically killed one teenager and injured 25 others. It left some 8,600 households and businesses in the Merrimack Valley without natural gas for months. Several class action lawsuits were filed against the company, which got settled for $143 million (see Columbia Gas Pays $143M to Settle Lawsuit from Mass. Explosions). The company reached a plea deal to (a) sell the company and (b) pay the largest criminal fine ever imposed under the Pipeline Safety Act (see Columbia Gas of Mass. Sentenced to $53M Fine, Probation, Sell Co.). The Biden Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) is using the Merrimack Valley episode to float a raft of proposed new regulations that will supposedly ensure the safety of millions of miles of local natgas delivery pipelines.
Read More “PHMSA Issues New Gas Utility Pipeline Regs to “Improve Safety””
Over the past 12 months, the NYMEX Henry Hub price for natural gas (front month contract) has traded as high as $9.68/MMBtu (August 22, 2022) and as low as $2.01/MMbtu (April 13, 2023). Lately, we’ve been hovering around the $2.50 mark. One of the energy industry’s favorite parlor games is guessing where the price will go over the next year or so. Once a month, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) hauls out its dart board and makes a prediction. Various analysts and consulting/analytics firms chime in from time to time. Today, we have a price prediction through the end of 2024 from a highly respected source: RBN Energy.
Read More “Predicting NatGas Price Thru Dec 2024 – High, Low & Likely”
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Now the time to expand Utica Shale usage; Hydrogen brings opportunities, challenges for West Virginia; NATIONAL: Biden admin blocks off millions of acres from oil, gas leasing.
Read More “Other Stories of Interest: Mon, Aug 28, 2023”
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 Equitrans Gas Storage Well in Cambria County, PA is Leaking). The leak took nearly two weeks to get fixed (see Storage Well Leak Fix in Cambria County Failed, Leaked 1.4 Bcf). Both the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) investigated (see Feds Investigate Equitrans Storage Well Leak in Cambria County, PA). Equitrans hired an independent, third-party company with expertise in reservoir management and well and corrosion engineering to do a “root cause analysis” to determine what happened. The report was just filed with the PHMSA.
Read More “Report: Rager Mountain Gas Storage Well Casing Failed from Corrosion”
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.
Read More “Analyst Says MVP Not Ready Until Mid-2024; Won’t Spur New Drilling”
We’re naming names. Pennsylvania State Rep. Charity Grimm Krupa (Republican from Fayette County) has turned against the Marcellus industry. She is introducing legislation that would ban drilling new wastewater injection wells in the state, making it much harder to drill new shale wells. Companies end up drilling fewer wells without a place to dispose of the naturally occurring water that comes from shale (and conventional) wells for years after an oil or gas well comes online. Was Krupa always anti-drilling? Or has she recently lost her way? Either way, she needs to be vigorously opposed in this effort–and someone needs to primary her in the next election. She needs to go.
Read More “SWPA Republican Rep. Sells Out, Turns Against Marcellus Industry”
The U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) is giving utility giant Duke Energy (mega profitable) and one of its natural gas suppliers, Williams (i.e., the Transco Pipeline, also mega profitable) $1 million of taxpayer money to do their jobs of monitoring for methane leaks. Dontcha love corporate welfare? Of course, if the government is going to blow taxpayers’ money on energy projects like uncompetitive and unreliable renewables, why not give a little love to fossil energy too, right? Still, it bugs us.
Read More “DOE Gives Duke Energy & Williams $1M to Monitor for Methane Leaks”
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) is the public utility commission in Pennsylvania. The PUC has five commissioners appointed by the Governor with the consent of the state Senate. The PUC oversees public utility and services operations in the Commonwealth, in sectors including water, energy, telecommunications, and transportation. The decisions made by the PUC impact the Marcellus/Utica–particularly pipelines, including the Mariner East pipelines. Consequently, any changes at the agency are of concern. The PUC has just hired a liberal Democrat from the failed Tom Wolf administration to be its new Executive Director.
Read More “PA PUC Hires Lib Dem Retread from Wolf Admin as Executive Director”
Carbon offsets are the same thing as carbon taxes. A carbon offset refers to reducing so-called greenhouse gas emissions by buying a credit from someone who plants trees or agrees not to cut down trees. A company gets to keep on polluting as long as it pays a tax to do it–pretending they are helping the precious environment by paying to plant or not chop down trees. It is the darnedest feat of mental gymnastics we’ve ever seen. Who thinks up this stuff? (Hey, wanna buy a bridge in Brooklyn? We have one to sell!) A new study by the leftists at the University of Cambridge published yesterday in the journal Science exposes the sale of carbon credits as a scam.
Read More “Cambridge Study Finds Carbon Offsets Using Trees is a Scam”
Bonus post today! Something we came across after completing our list of stories to write and share–but just too good to pass up. This story perfectly illustrates what has happened inside the Democrat Party from its fearmongering about climate change and demonization of fossil energy. A group of kids in their early 20s (thoroughly brainwashed from K-12 and now in college) showed up at a hoity-toity, very exclusive fundraiser for Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, herself a hardened anti-fossil fuel leftist. The kids crashed her party being held at a private Nantucket Island home. The kids demanded Healey shut down all new fossil-fuel projects in the Bay State, and demanded she answer “yes or no” right then and there to their demands. Healey demurred, and the wacko kids got loud and mouthy and had to be escorted out of the event. It came close to a fistfight between some of the older leftwing libs attending the event and the kids. Civil war in the Democrat Party.
Read More “Climate Crazies Turn on One of Their Own: Mass. Gov. Maura Healey”