Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | MDS Energy | PennEnergy Resources | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA
PA Superior Court Tosses $2.4M Arbitration Award Against PennEnergy
This is a cautionary tale of choosing your joint venture partner carefully. The Pennsylvania Superior Court threw out a $2.4 million arbitration award against Marcellus driller PennEnergy in a business dispute in a precedential ruling last week. The Superior Court judges overruled an award by an arbitrator. PennEnergy maintained the case should never have been in arbitration in the first place. The intended recipient of the award, MDS Energy, says the Superiors weren’t so superior after all and got it wrong. The case is complicated…
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The West Virginia State Legislature passed House Bill (HB) 2581 on the last day of the annual WV legislative session in April 2021. HB 2581 required the State Tax Commissioner to develop a revised methodology to value oil and natural gas properties for the purpose of assessing property taxes. The State Tax Department submitted an emergency rule in the summer of 2021 that was, quite frankly, a mess. In March 2022, the legislature passed, and Gov. Jim Justice signed into law, House Bill (HB) 4336, aimed at fixing the mess created by HB 2581 (see 
A Marcellus gas-fired power plant in Nicetown (a neighborhood in North Philadelphia) received a permit to build in 2017 (see 
Last week, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (liberal Democrat from West Virginia) hopped up on his high horse and held a hearing of the Senate committee he chairs, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, to discuss the next steps for so-called permitting reform. It takes years to build a new pipeline, and sometimes decades to build a new electric power line. Solar and wind and hydro projects are as susceptible to long delays as fossil energy projects. Manchin (many people in the D.C. swamp) want to “fix” that problem.
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In an act of Supreme justice, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, issued an order yesterday overturning the stays imposed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Circuit) that were blocking the completion of the 94% done Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). Let the bulldozers start their engines! We expect work to resume immediately (today) to finish this critical link from the Marcellus/Utica to the Southeastern U.S. The best part is that the decision was announced as the three radicalized leftist judges of the 4th Circuit were hearing arguments that a portion of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) of 2023 forcing the completion of MVP is unconstitutional. Roberts’ order effectively shut down any further shenanigans by these three clowns.
TC Energy, formerly TransCanada Corporation, has been in the news all week. Tuesday morning, a portion of the Columbia Gas Transmission pipeline (owned by TC Energy) in rural western Virginia exploded and caught fire (see 
Yesterday MDN brought you jammed-packed news about EQT Corporation, the country’s largest natural gas driller and producer, from the company’s second quarter update (see 
Yesterday Antero Resources, which is 100% focused on the Marcellus/Utica with over 500,000 net acres under lease (and the largest M-U driller in West Virginia), issued its second quarter 2023 update. The company reports net production averaged 3.4 billion cubic feet equivalent per day (Bcfe/d) during 2Q23, an increase of 5% year-over-year. Of that production, liquids (NGLs) averaged 192 thousand barrels per day (MBbl/d), an increase of 16% from the year-ago period. Natural gas production averaged 2.2 Bcf/d, the same as the year-ago period. The company lost $84 million in 2Q23 versus making a profit of $563 million in 2Q22–a swing of $647 million into the red.
Increasingly ours is a world run by computers. Even in-the-ground pipelines are monitored and controlled by computers. The ransomware attack against Colonial Pipeline in 2021, a pipeline that flows a significant amount of refined products (gasoline and diesel fuel) from the Gulf Coast, where it’s refined, as far north as New Jersey, was a wake-up call for all pipelines. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) heard the call and responded. In July 2021, the TSA issued an initial “security directive” requiring pipelines, including natural gas pipelines, to do certain things to protect themselves and the public they serve (see 
The Bidenistas on Wednesday held a summit at The White House aimed at addressing the “planet-warming gas methane” and launched a new Cabinet-level task force (that we have dubbed the Climate Gestapo) dedicated to the issue. The bash-fossil energy confab curiously did not include ANY representatives from the sector that supposedly is causing all the trouble–oil and gas–which points out this wasn’t an actual effort to address the fugitive methane issue but instead was a political ploy aimed at fundraising for the Democrat Party.
New shale permits issued for Jul 17-23 in the Marcellus/Utica saw a nice increase. There were 31 new permits issued last week, up from the 23 issued the previous week. Last week’s permit tally included 13 new permits in Pennsylvania, 8 new permits in Ohio, and 10 new permits in West Virginia. The top permittee for the week was Coterra Energy, receiving 8 permits in Susquehanna County, PA. Coming in at a close second was Antero Resources, with 6 permits in Ritchie County, WV.
EQT Corporation, the largest natural gas producer in the United States, issued its second quarter 2023 update yesterday. There was loads of news. The company reported a new world record of drilling 18,200 feet in 48 hours for a single well in Green County, PA. Also of note, CEO Toby Rice and newly appointed CFO Jeremy Knop said a long-delayed purchase of Tug Hill Operating (major new acreage for EQT in West Virginia) would be concluded within the next 30 days. Very exciting news! But it wasn’t all peaches and cream. Reading through the reports, you will discover that EQT produced 471 Bcfe in 2Q23 (an average of 5.18 Bcfe/d) versus producing 502 Bcfe in 2Q22 (an average of 5.52 Bcfe/d)–down 6% year over year. The company lost $67 million in 2Q23 versus making a profit of $891 million in 2Q22, a swing of $958 million (nearly one billion dollars). Why?