Antero Resources | Apex Energy | Ascent Resources | Belmont County | Coterra Energy (Cabot O&G) | Energy Companies | Gulfport Energy | Inflection Energy | Jefferson County (OH) | Lycoming County | Monroe County | Ohio | Pennsylvania | Southwestern Energy | Susquehanna County | Weekly Permits | West Virginia | Westmoreland County | Wetzel County
23 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Jan 2-8
New shale permits issued for Jan. 2-8 in the Marcellus/Utica included 14 new permits in Pennsylvania, 8 new permits in Ohio, and just 1 new permit in West Virginia. The top recipient of permits for last week was Apex Energy, grabbing 6 permits to drill on a single pad in Westmoreland County, PA. Right behind Apex was Coterra Energy with 5 permits to drill on a single pad in Susquehanna County, PA. Opposite sides of the state.
Read More “23 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Jan 2-8”
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Utica Shale Academy seeking $2.4M to expand footprint; Observers hopeful about common ground between PA governor, legislature; Biden used Univ. of Pennsylvania to launder Chinese money, Shapiro ignored it; NATIONAL: It’s basically spring for the natural-gas market; Banning gas stoves gets Americans’ blood boiling; INTERNATIONAL: What will OPEC do in 2023?; Will oil hit $100 per barrel in 2023?
Yesterday, Chesapeake Energy, EQT, and Equitrans Midstream launched what the three companies call the Appalachian Methane Initiative (AMI), a coalition committed to further enhancing methane monitoring throughout the Appalachia Basin with an aim to reduce methane emissions throughout the region. Is this yet another certification scheme to prove methane leakage is low?
In May 2021, MDN told you that Louisville Gas and Electric Company (LG&E) had won Kentucky state approval to build a new 12-inch, 12-mile pipeline near Louisville to supply gas to homes and businesses that can’t connect to LG&E’s local natgas utility system because it is currently maxed out (see 
U.S. natural gas demand is on track to hit record lows in January if unseasonably warm weather sticks around, according to Rystad Energy. It’s just too darned warm! The warm weather reduces demand for natgas used in heating. Also, as you will read today, a Freeport LNG restart that uses 2 Bcf/d is also likely delayed further–maybe until the end of February. Given the warm weather and Freeport, demand is down, and because of lower demand, prices are crumbling.
The Upper Delaware Council (UDC) hosted a public presentation titled “Water Resource and Environmental Considerations with Shale Gas Development in the Appalachian Basin” last week at the Upper Delaware Council office in Narrowsburg, NY. The program was delivered virtually by Dr. David Yoxtheimer, Ph.D., P.G., assistant research professor and Extension associate with the Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research at Penn State University. Yoxtheimer did a great job of laying out the facts of Marcellus drilling–both the good and the not-so-good, with an eye on how to mitigate the risks.
Three different highly-placed sources have whispered to a Reuters reporter that the Freeport LNG export facility, which has been offline since last June, will continue to be offline until at least sometime in February. Are you surprised? We aren’t.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is proposing to make New York the first state in the U.S. to ban natural gas heating and appliances in new buildings as a way to fight mythical man-made global warming. During her state-of-the-state address on Tuesday, Hochul proposed to ban the use of fossil fuels for heating and appliances (stoves) in homes by 2025, and a ban for businesses and larger structures (like apartment buildings) by 2028. New York would also prohibit the sale of any new fossil-fuel heating systems starting in 2030. Yes, she has certifiably lost her mind.
West Virginia’s annual 60-day legislative session begins today. Yesterday, in preparation for the new session, the state’s Revenue Secretary, Dave Hardy, and Deputy Secretary, Mark Muchow, gave a report on the state’s finances to the Joint Committee on Finance. Hardy said state surpluses from taxes (particularly the severance tax) are “eye-popping and they’re historic numbers.” The high price of natural gas has led to record severance tax collections in the Mountain State. Halfway through the fiscal year, severance tax collections are up 113%. State revenue is up 21% year-to-date because of high severance tax collections. But, will the severance tax gravy train continue?
In a modern twist on an old story, the little town of Bethlehem (this one in Pennsylvania) provided a savior this past Christmas–in the form of a natural gas-fired power plant. The Bethlehem Energy Center, owned by Calpine, received permission (indeed, strong encouragement) from the U.S. Dept of Energy (at the request of the PJM grid operator) to “ramp up production” of electricity while other gas-fired power plants that are part of the PJM system began to fail due to the super-cold weather. Bethlehem powered up, keeping the lights (and heat) on Christmas Eve. Otherwise, Pennsylvanians living in the Lehigh Valley would have frozen their derrieres off. Marcellus gas as savior. Has a ring to it, eh?
Once a month, the analysts at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) issue the agency’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), their best guess about where energy prices and production will go in the next 12 months or so. We sometimes poke some good-natured fun at the EIA because one month, their predictions go up, the next month, down, etc. What about the latest STEO dart board, published yesterday? EIA predicts average natural gas production will be 100.34 Bcf/d in 2023 and will go even higher to 102.29 Bcf/d in 2024. The current all-time high was 98.02 Bcf/d, and that was last year. As for the commodity price of gas, EIA says the Henry Hub spot price will average $4.90/MMBtu in 2023, down from $6.42/MMBtu in 2022.