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.
Read More “Other Stories of Interest: Tue, Sep 6, 2022”
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.
Read More “PA Supreme Court Keeps Block in RGGI Carbon Tax in Place, For Now”
In July 2021, Seneca Resources, the drilling arm of utility giant National Fuel Gas Company, conducted its first experiment with electric fracking (see Seneca Resources Uses Electric Fracking for 6-Well Pad in PA). Seneca used U.S. Well Services to provide e-fracking for a six-well pad on Lycoming County, PA. Must be Seneca liked it–at least the e-fracking part. Yesterday Seneca announced it will deploy and use NexTier Oilfield Solutions brand new e-fracking solution beginning in 2023. Seneca will be the first company to deploy NexTier’s electric Emerald™ fracturing system.
Read More “Seneca Resources to Debut NexTier e-Fracking in PA Marcellus/Utica”
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 Shell CEO Says PA Cracker Now Done, Gradually Coming Online). The truly momentous event will be when the first plastic pellets come out of the plant. Shell held a virtual meeting Wednesday evening to field questions from the community as the day draws near when the plant is fully operational. One of the questions came from neighbors observing an orange glow hovering over the plant. Another question was about “white foam” floating near the facility on the Ohio River.
Read More “Shell PA Cracker Neighbors Ask About Orange Glow and White Foam”
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.
Read More “Epsilon Energy Issues Dividend; New PA Well Comes Online”
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!
Read More “It’s Time to Break Up the ESG Investing Giants Like BlackRock”
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.
Read More “Manhattan Institute: “Energy Transition” Delusion – A Reality Reset”
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.
Read More “19 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Aug 22-28”
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Jerry Jones’ natural gas win beats Cowboys growth; NATIONAL: Oil drops further amid growing demand concerns; U.S. LNG exports drop week on week; America could face its own gas crisis, or worsen Europe’s; INTERNATIONAL: Shell’s CEO van Beurden prepares to step down next year.
Read More “Other Stories of Interest: Fri, Sep 2, 2022”
For more than four years, we have been calling attention to the fact that the Boston/New England area imports FOREIGN LNG each year, even though abundant DOMESTIC supplies sit a few hundred miles away in the Pennsylvania Marcellus (see Confirmed: LNG Coming to Boston on Jan 22 is Illegal Russian Gas). New England pays 2-4X as much for their imported natural gas as they would from the Marcellus/Utica. What stops Boston from using domestic supplies? Politicians (the governors) in both New York and Massachusetts block new pipelines. So far this year, Boston has imported ten cargoes of LNG at two facilities near Boston–roughly 16 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of natgas. All of it is from foreign sources.
Read More “Boston Imports 10th Foreign LNG Cargo This Year – It’s Only August!”
In September 2021, the Weirton (WV) Zoning Board of Appeals rejected a request by Southwestern Energy to build a well pad inside city limits (see Weirton, WV Rejects Southwestern’s Plan for Well Pad in City Limits). Southwestern appealed that rejection through the Brooke County Circuit Court last October (see Southwestern Appeals Weirton, WV Zoning Rejection of Well Pad). The judge in the case ruled last week in favor of Weirton and against Southwestern. What happens now?
Read More “Southwestern Loses Court Case to Drill & Frack in Weirton, WV”
A futures contract is a legal agreement to buy or sell a particular commodity asset (like natural gas) at a predetermined price at a specified time in the future. The Henry Hub Natural Gas futures contract (NG) on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) is widely used as the national benchmark price for natural gas. The Henry Hub (HH) is located in southern Louisiana where 16 interstate natural gas pipeline systems converge. But just about any trading hub along natgas pipelines can have a futures contract associated with it. For example, the Eastern Gas South hub in southwestern Pennsylvania (which used to be called Dominion South) has monthly futures contracts extending out for years. Eastern Gas South and other M-U hubs are seeing the price for futures contracts drop like a rock compared to HH. Why? Lack of takeaway pipeline capacity.
Read More “M-U NatGas Futures Prices See Big Drop Compared to Henry Hub”
In June, seemingly out of nowhere, a plan to build an LNG export facility on the banks of the Delaware River south of Philadelphia made big headlines in Philly. Penn LNG, headed by Franc James, a native of Philadelphia, has “quietly lined up support to build a $6.4 billion liquefied natural gas export terminal near Philly.” While acknowledging such a project will face stiff opposition, James is planning to pre-file with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) by the end of this year, and reach a final investment decision (FID) by 2024. Full speed ahead!
Read More “Philadelphia LNG Export Project Still Very Much Alive & Advancing”
We experienced déjà vu as we read about a hearing held Tuesday evening in Plum Boro (Allegheny County, PA) about a proposed shale wastewater injection well. Some 20 people made their way to the microphones to voice their objections to plans by Penneco Environmental Solutions to site a second injection well in the boro–right next to an existing injection well. We’ve heard it all before, almost four years ago, when some of the same people objected to Penneco’s plans to install the first injection well (see Plum Injection Well Hearing Draws Solid Opposition). The histrionics didn’t work four years ago. Will they work today?
Read More “Hearing for 2nd Plum Injection Well Draws Solid Opposition”
Drillers (exploration and production companies, or E&Ps) were thrilled with record-high earnings and cash flow in the second quarter of this year. Soaring commodity prices and “strict financial discipline” on the part of oil and gas drillers resulted in pre-tax operating earnings and cash flows surging by 29% and 22%, respectively, from 1Q22. And 1Q22 was up too! So what did drillers, especially drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, do with all that extra cash? Did they pay down debt? Buy back shares of company stock? Issue higher dividends? Something else?
Read More “How Did M-U Drillers Spend All Their Extra Cash in 2Q22?”
Get a Democrat nurse to repeat the talking points from two far-left, lying Democrat groups (the Conservation Voters of PA and the NRDC) bashing the Republican candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano, in a TV commercial, and it’s just another regurgitate-the-lies story from lamestream media. This time the lies are that Doug Mastriano loves to pollute–because he stands up for the Marcellus shale industry in the state. We hope PA residents (and U.S. residents across the country) are beginning to see through the lies spread by the Democrat left. The left can’t argue and debate the facts, so they resort to name-calling and lies. The good news is that the left is spending money on this kind of thing, meaning they don’t believe that hardened anti-driller Josh Shapiro (Democrat, currently Attorney General) has the race for governor locked up–as all the “polls” quoted by lamestream media indicate.
Read More “Antis Launch Ad Campaign with Lies & Smears Against Doug Mastriano”