Private Cos. Now Operate 55% of M-U Rigs, Drill 25% of New Wells
There are advantages and disadvantages to being publicly or privately owned. In the oil and gas sector, most large companies are publicly owned–meaning they have a board of directors, and the “owners” hold shares of stock in the company, shares traded on public exchanges. In the Marcellus/Utica, most of the top drillers are publicly owned: Range Resources, Coterra Energy, CNX Resources, EQT Corporation, Antero Resources, Southwestern Energy, Repsol, National Fuel Gas Company (i.e. Seneca Resources), and Gulfport Energy. Several others are privately owned, including Ascent Resources (Ohio’s largest natural gas producer and the 8th largest natural gas producer in the U.S.), Greylock Energy (based in West Virginia), and Olympus Energy (which drills in the Pittsburgh suburbs).
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Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that employment in the U.S. oilfield services (OFS) and equipment sector rose by an estimated 2,346 jobs to 645,486 in November. The November increases make OFS employment the highest since numbers started to drop in March 2020. We still haven’t fully recovered to the all-time pre-covid high of 706,528 reached in February 2020–but we’re working in the right direction. This is very good news.
Is Vanguard the next BlackRock–i.e, a pariah due to its extreme anti-fossil energy positions? YES. The Attorneys General from 13 states, including Ohio and West Virginia, have filed a protest with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) seeking to block Vanguard, a MAJOR investor (with $7.2 trillion of assets under management, second largest after BlackRock with $10 trillion) from buying stocks in electric utility companies. Why? Because Vanguard, like BlackRock, is trying to force the companies it invests in to abandon the use of fossil energy. If you own Vanguard investments–it’s time to dump them. Let’s hit them where it counts–in the pocketbook.
We’re encouraged to see the American Petroleum Institute (API) finally find its voice and begin to push back against the lunatics in the Biden administration. Recently, the API refused to support the reappointment of FERC Chairman Richard Glick (see 
We spotted a story about comments from the New England electric grid manager, ISO New England (ISO-NE), that made us do a double-take. Bloomberg reports the grid manager’s comments under this headline: “New England May Ask Residents to Curb Energy in Extreme Cold.” The article keys on comments made by ISO-NE that say if there is a bad cold snap, or an extended cold spell, residents in New England will be asked to reduce their energy use so as to keep natural gas flowing to electric generating power plants. Otherwise, the grid will crash, and there will be blackouts. Is anyone else scratching their head at this one?
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Sempra announces deal with ENGIE for LNG from Port Arthur; NATIONAL: Weather data sends Nymex natgas futures tumbling below $5.50; Why did the frac spread collapse, and what’s next?; Energy groups sue Biden admin for failing to hold oil, gas lease sales again; INTERNATIONAL: US will double amount of natural gas it sends to UK; World will face shortage of LNG through 2026, says Exxon CEO.
Yesterday MDN brought you the news that as of Friday, a new regulation controlling volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions, and by extension methane emissions, for Pennsylvania’s conventional oil and gas drillers went into effect (see 
The front-month NYMEX futures contract (based on the price of gas trading at the Henry Hub) dropped like a rock yesterday–down 70 cents (-12.6%) to $5.58/MMBtu. The price has dropped for the past four trading days in a row. Some say it’s free fallin’. In total, the price has lost $1.66 (-22.9%) over the last four sessions. NYMEX trading during the day yesterday hit its lowest point since March of this year. Why? Mainly a warm short-term weather forecast, coupled with the continuing outage at the Freeport LNG export facility.
And just like that, the horse everyone thought was dead has come back to life and is leading the race. We’re talking about U.S. Senator Joe Manchin’s so-called permitting reform bill to help save the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). The bill proposed by Manchin would bypass the clown judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals who are blocking it. Manchin got a pledge from his buddy Chuck Schumer to allow a vote on permitting reform in return for Manchin selling out the country by voting to pass the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (see 
We’re sure this post will not make some of our industry readers/friends happy. But we think it’s time to rip the scab off the festering ESG/Next Generation/Responsible Gas wound and expose it. As Joan Rivers used to say, Can we talk? What got us thinking about responsible gas certification was an announcement from Virginia Natural Gas that the company has entered into a deal with BP to buy “Next Generation Natural Gas” for resale to its customers. VNG will buy it from wells in the Louisiana Haynesville Shale. We asked ourselves these questions: What’s the likelihood that molecules of so-called responsible gas from Louisiana will actually travel all the way to Virginia? And if they do, what happens to those molecules once there?
We spotted an article about the left’s war on fossil energy, and how that war is causing economic chaos around the world. We disagree 100% with the premise of the article, which begins this way: “Climate change is a real and urgent problem. More than a century of carbon emissions is warming the planet and causing floods, droughts, fires and other cataclysmic events that are killing people, threatening livelihoods and upending economies.” However, the author goes on to say that the war on fossil fuels (which are, according to the author, the source of carbon emissions) is causing its own form of chaos. He makes some great points about the chaos that comes from not having a good transition plan in place to get us from fossil energy to so-called renewables.
In October, MDN brought you the news that the company created and backed by Dan Rice (and his brothers), called Archaea Energy, is selling itself to BP for $4.1 billion (see 
In September, EQT Corporation announced it is buying Tug Hill Operating’s West Virginia shale assets for $5.2 billion (see Confirmed: 
This morning the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) released its latest quarterly Natural Gas Production Report for July through September 2022 (full copy below). There were 158 new horizontal wells spud (drilled) in 3Q22, an increase of 47 wells (+42%) compared to 3Q21. However, natural gas production volume was 1,878 billion cubic feet (Bcf) in 3Q22, a slight decrease (-0.8%) from 3Q21. It is the third quarterly decrease in production in a row (comparing the same quarters year-over-year). However, 3Q22 production was up slightly (+1.4%) from 2Q22.
Three weeks ago, 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 and ended up leaking roughly 100 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of gas into the atmosphere (see