WV NatGas Property Tax Rule Still a Mess, Landowners Confused
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 (see Bill to Fix WV NatGas Property Tax Rule Close – Will Gov Sign?). The problem is, HB 4336 didn’t really fix the mess. Not according to nearly 200 Ohio County residents who got two increase letters in December and January, both with different totals.
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In April 2019, President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) instructing the Environmental Protection Agency to review Section 401 of the Clean Water Act–the section that grants states (and tribes) the right to have a say in pipeline projects (see 
New shale permits issued for Feb. 13-19 in the Marcellus/Utica remained elevated last week. There were 35 new permits issued in total last week (down slightly from 40 the week before), including 27 new permits for Pennsylvania, three new permits for Ohio, and five permits issued in West Virginia. Last week the top receiver of new permits was Coterra Energy, with 13 new permits for Susquehanna County, PA. The number two permittee was Apex Energy with five permits in Westmoreland County, PA.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Gas & Oil Day at West Virginia state Capitol; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Cheniere aims to solidify LNG dominance with Sabine Pass expansion; NATIONAL: Wild Well Control, Endeavor Technologies partner on drilling simulators; Henry Hub gas prices should remain depressed in 1H 2023; US oil, gas rigs drop by 11 on week to 857.
Chesapeake Energy issued its quarterly and 2022 annual update yesterday. The company drills primarily for natural gas in both the Marcellus and Haynesville shale plays. Chesapeake’s net production in 4Q22 was approximately 4.05 Bcfe/d (90% natural gas and 10% total liquids), utilizing an average of 14 rigs to drill 58 wells and place 66 wells on production. That was for drilling across all of its shale plays, including the oily Eagle Ford. However, given the crash in prices for natural gas, CEO Nick Dell’Osso said the company is cutting rigs this year–axing two rigs in the Haynesville and one in the Marcellus.
Yesterday morning Harrison County, OH, commissioners got a face-to-face update from Encino Energy’s director of external affairs, Jackie Stewart. You may recall that Encino bought out and took over all of Chesapeake Energy’s existing Ohio assets–both shale and non-shale–in November 2018 for $2 billion (see 
Big Green is Big Business–especially in Pennsylvania, where leftist groups routinely file a blizzard of lawsuits against the shale industry. Some Big Green groups receive funding from foreign sources, including Russia and China. They seem to have endless pools of money to litigate every square inch of new pipeline and every proposed new well pad. As if being repeatedly sued isn’t enough, these disgusting groups want the fossil fuel industry to pay them for their lawyers! When the groups are the ones filing the lawsuits!! The Democrat judges of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in a poorly reasoned decision issued yesterday, have granted Big Green the power to sue, and then get paid for suing.
Since 2015 we’ve reported on the case of Grant Township (Indiana County, PA), a town that passed an ordinance cooked up by the radical Big Green group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to try and block a state-approved injection well proposed by Pennsylvania General Energy (
Last summer then-Gov. Tom Wolf instructed the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to conduct a comprehensive review of conventional oil and gas driller compliance with an eye on locating enough dirt to justify creating onerous new regulations for the industry (see 
Yes, you can “phone it in” for your job if you work in the oil and gas industry. According to search firm Piper-Morgan Search, remote work, at least for some jobs in oil and gas, “is an established reality now and it’s not going away.” Some workers are 100% remote and don’t (or won’t) go into an office to do their job. How cool is that? Of course, like many industries, not every job can be done remotely. Which type of O&G jobs can be done remotely?
Finally! The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has granted permission to the Freeport LNG facility, located in Quintana, Texas, to restart two of three liquefaction “trains,” two of three LNG storage tanks, and one of two LNG births for ships to tie up and load. While the third train and third storage tank will need further FERC permission, Freeport predicts the entire facility–all three trains and the infrastructure that supports them–will be online and producing the maximum 2 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) within “the next several weeks.”