New Study Claims Utica Shale Fracking in Ohio Causes Earthquakes
If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a thousand times–the claim that fracking causes earthquakes. We’ve talked about this issue almost from the beginning of writing the MDN blog site in 2009. A quick summary of our own observations is that frack wastewater disposed of via injection wells (not fracking itself) is the culprit in causing low-grade earthquakes in some areas. However, the wastewater doesn’t cause an earthquake unless the injection well is located on or near a natural underground fault in the rock layer. Rarely (we can count it on one hand) have we read of fracking itself causing an earthquake. Yet a researcher from Ohio’s University of Miami claims research shows fracking itself can cause an increase in earthquakes.
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Disappointing news has been a constant this week–and it’s only Tuesday! Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court proved that sometimes it’s not so supreme. The high court breathed new life into a long-running lawsuit funded by Big Green groups using (abusing) a small group of uppity Virginia landowners who are arguing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had no right to delegate authority to Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to use eminent domain to cross land, including the land owned by the small group of uppity landowners in Virginia.
Last December, Rice Acquisition Corp II, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) started by the Rice brothers (Danny, Toby, and Derek), announced a deal to acquire NET Power–an electric power developer with revolutionary new technology to capture every last molecule of carbon dioxide from natural gas-fired power plants (see 
Free cash flow (FCF) refers to a company’s available cash repaid to creditors and as dividends and interest to investors. Companies typically use FCF to buy back shares of stock, pay fatter dividends, or pay off creditors. When the price of natural gas went through the roof last year, natural gas drillers were rolling in the FCF. Now with natgas commodity prices in the basement, FCF money has been wiped off the table. How much? For six large natural gas-focused drillers (five of them focused on the Marcellus/Utica, one on the Haynesville), some $8 billion of FCF is “now off the table” according to an article by Bloomberg.
Energy Transfer’s (ET) Lake Charles LNG project, in Louisiana, has been plagued with trouble from the beginning. The project began life as a 50/50 joint venture with Shell. However, Shell pulled out in 2020 (see 
There is no question of a huge world appetite for U.S. LNG exports. Even so, the effort to bring new LNG projects online in the U.S. is problematic for several reasons. An extensive article in the Financial Times says “intense competition between developers” and “escalating costs” are making it hard to bring new projects online. Where do things stand? Over the next four years, six projects currently under construction will come online, delivering an extra 64.82 million tonnes per year (mn t/y) of LNG. However, there are another 11 projects that have not yet made a final investment decision (FID). Some may end up getting built, some won’t. If (by a small miracle) all of the 11 were to get built as planned, it would deliver another 110.37 mn t/y of LNG for the world to purchase and use.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a true extremist, is trying to ban natural gas hookups in every single new home and business across the “Empire” State (see 
Last August, Columbia Gas Transmission (a subsidiary of TC Energy) filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build the Virginia Reliability Project (VRP), which includes two new compressor units and the replacement of 49 miles of existing pipeline (see 
S&P Global Commodity Insights reports that natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica has fallen this month, in April, by some 400 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) from the average production seen during the first quarter. The most notable declines are in eastern Ohio and southwestern Pennsylvania. Why is production down? Falling demand (from mild weather) and high rates of storage (extra supply) are crashing the spot price for natural gas traded at the region’s defacto benchmark trading hub–Eastern Gas South.
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 