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EQT Close to Buying Tug Hill’s THQ Appalachia for $4+ Billion
In June, MDN brought you the news that Tug Hill was shopping its THQ Appalachia division (Tug Hill’s West Virginia assets) for $5 billion (see Tug Hill’s THQ Appalachia Shops Itself for $5 Billion). Yesterday both Reuters and Bloomberg reported a deal is close and may even be announced today (Tuesday). However, the price of the deal reported by the two news services differs by quite a bit. Reuters reports a deal price for the THQ Appalachia assets of roughly $4 billion, while Bloomberg pegs it at $5.2 billion.
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Last week MDN told you that three radical environmental groups challenging an air permit issued by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) for the Renovo Energy Center, a Marcellus-fired power plant in Clinton County, PA, won a partial summary judgment lowering the amount of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) the new plant can emit (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) recently held two public hearings about a plan by the Westmoreland Sanitary Landfill in Westmoreland County, PA (southwestern corner of the state, near Pittsburgh) to build a gas-fired leachate evaporator. Leftist anti-drillers showed up to bash the proposal citing the landfill accepts shale waste, claiming the leachate is radioactive because of the shale waste and will contaminate everything if it’s burned. DEP plans to approve the temporary operation of an evaporator for 180 days to process 45,000 gallons of leachate per day.
The left finds the most devious ways to sink their claws into the fabric of American society and force it to conform to their twisted worldview–like using an obscure regulation promulgated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In February 2022, the EPA announced a “minor” change to a regulation governing gas-fired turbines under the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP), a framework in place since 2004. At first glance, the EPA’s announcement seems to be a minor update to a highly technical rule. However, a careful examination of the list of impacted units reveals that the change in enforcement framework could have significant impacts on both supply and demand dynamics in natural gas markets in the U.S. and beyond, affecting LNG exports, gas-fired power plants, and gas transmission and processing infrastructure (pipelines) in particular.
It’s already that time of year again! 
Every now and again, we come across someone who is willing to risk their career by openly admitting the truth. This time that brave soul is Russell Johns, the George E. Trimble Chair in Energy and Mineral Sciences at the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Penn State University. In a letter to the editor published in the student-run Penn State Daily Collegian, Johns points out that when considering the intense mining operations needed to harvest materials used in solar and wind technology, and the shipping associated with those materials, etc., solar and wind actually have a *bigger* carbon dioxide footprint than does using natural gas. In other words, natural gas is greener than wind and solar!
While this is technically not a Marcellus/Utica story, it does affect our region (as well as all regions) due to the enormity of how it impacts the overall natural gas market. Russia, using the flimsy excuse that they found some trouble with a turbine during maintenance, has decided to keep the Nord Stream 1 pipeline closed down indefinitely after what was supposed to be a three-day outage to do routine maintenance. The outage denies Europe natural gas a critical time during which they are attempting to fill up storage ahead of the winter months. This is a transparent play by Vladimir Putin, who pulls all the strings in Russia, to squeeze Europe and get it to cave to his will and accept his invasion of Ukraine (i.e. remove all sanctions).
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Pa. natural gas and labor, forging a reliable, sustainable energy future; NATIONAL: Biden hits new low for offshore, federal land drilling permits; Electric car mandates the latest frontier in war on the middle class; INTERNATIONAL: OPEC+ agrees to make token supply cut; Fitch Solutions offers latest oil price prediction.
In a small but important victory against Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s effort to force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax scheme, the PA Supreme Court on Wednesday opted not to overturn a Commonwealth Court decision that blocks the state from participating in RGGI until several lawsuits play out. The state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), under Wolf’s thumb, argued the state should be allowed to enforce the new tax in advance of a resolution to the lawsuits. Nope. Not gonna happen. It now appears it will be early next year before RGGI can go into effect–if ever.
The mighty Shell ethane cracker complex in Monaca (Beaver County), PA, is due to come online any day now. In fact, with such a large and complex facility, it is already “coming online” gradually and has been since August (see 
Epsilon Energy, one of the smaller Marcellus drillers that we track, issued an update this week to say the company has issued a dividend and has repurchased shares of the company’s stock in an effort to reward and increase value to investors. Epsilon also reports a new well in which they own a share recently came online to sales in Susquehanna County, PA.
It does our heart good to see people pushing back against the woke leftism that is called ESG (environmental, social, and governance) investing. We always feel a bit conflicted when discussing ESG. We are NOT talking about companies, many of them in the Marcellus/Utica, that have programs and efforts underway to become ever better corporate citizens. What we are talking about is leftists forcing investors to abandon investments in fossil energy companies by using arbitrary ESG standards (that they make up and enforce). Companies that force ESG investing include the largest investment firm on the planet–BlackRock. We spotted an excellent story in the Wall Street Journal that says it’s time to bust up big woke ESG companies like BlackRock by using existing anti-trust laws. Amen to that!
In a new report published this week by the Manhattan Institute, “The “Energy Transition” Delusion: A Reality Reset” (full copy below), Mark Mills takes on the dangerous delusion of a global energy transition that eliminates the use of fossil fuels. Looking at energy markets and public policy around the world, Mills asks readers of the report to “consider that years of hypertrophied rhetoric and trillions of dollars of spending and subsidies on a transition have not significantly changed the energy landscape.” Here are the facts: The world still depends on hydrocarbons (fossil fuels) for 84% of all energy, just two percentage points lower than 20 years ago. Solar and wind technologies today supply barely 5% of global energy. Indeed it is a dangerous self-delusion to say we can dump fossil energy anytime soon–within the next 50-100 years. At least, not without a mass extinction (execution) of the human race.
Last week the three states with active Marcellus/Utica drilling, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, issued a collective 19 new drilling permits, down from 30 the week before. The top receiver of permits in PA was EQT (i.e. Rice Drilling), with five permits issued for the same well pad in Greene County. Range Resources and Inflection Energy each received two new permits.