PA Gov. Wolf Instructs DEP to Draft New Regs Following Act 96
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, controlled by the extreme left in the Democrat Party, allowed PA House Bill (HB) 2644 to become law without his signature (see today’s companion story, New PA Act 96 Helps Boost Plugging Orphan Wells – Left Goes Nuts). Wolf took a big hit from the lunatics in his own party following his inaction on 2644. Now he’s trying to make up for it. Over the weekend, Wolf published a notice in the Pennsylvania Bulletin to justify his action of allowing 2644 to become law (now called Act 96), and to instruct the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to enact new regulations clamping down on how it regulates conventional oil and gas wells to prevent new abandoned wells. In other words, expect the DEP under Wolf (and Shapiro, if he wins in November, God forbid) to generate all sorts of onerous new regulations in the name of preventing new orphaned wells from popping up.
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Once upon a time, there was a “we’re all in this together” spirit with respect to cleaning up the environment and protecting Mom Earth. But then something happened, and common sense and civility went right out the door. The left elevated the climate to become its new religion and now brooks no dissent from its extreme positions. If you do not agree with the left, if you want to debate and call attention to and poke holes in arguments they make about the climate, you are labeled an apostate, a climate heretic, and banished (or worse). You likely don’t know about efforts by oil and gas companies, particularly in the Marcellus/Utica, to clean up the environment and make planet earth a better place to live. You don’t know about those efforts because the left silences Big Media and won’t allow it to report “the rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey used to say.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Pipelines to prosperity; NATIONAL: Texas LNG blast starting to eat into USA LNG exports to Europe; A few lessons from tight-rock producers in fracture diagnostics; Will the propane market be prepared for winter?; Once unimaginable, oil flirts with being top U.S. export.
EQT Corporation, the biggest natural gas producer in the United States (and a pureplay Marcellus/Utica driller), issued its second quarter 2022 update yesterday. The company raked in $550 million in free cash flow during 2Q and produced 5.5 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) of natural gas. But don’t look for EQT to increase production any time soon–not until (says top management) it can get more of its molecules to markets outside of the M-U. The company’s answer to moving more molecules is to try and expand LNG exports from the East Coast.
Antero Resources, one of the largest drillers in the Marcellus/Utica (with major assets in West Virginia), the fifth largest natgas producer in the country and the second largest LNG exporter, issued its second quarter 2022 update yesterday. During 2Q, Antero placed a new compressor station online in West Virginia, boosting Marcellus gas flows by 160 MMcf/d (million cubic feet per day). The new Castle Peak compressor station will be expanded to 240 MMcf/d in 2023. Antero generated $664 million in free cash flow and $765 million in net income during 2Q. Big company. Important company.
Diversified Energy (sadly) continues to expand outside the Marcellus/Utica region. Yesterday the company announced it is paying $240 million to buy some of ConocoPhillips’ upstream assets in Oklahoma and Texas. The assets include roughly 1,500 wells spanning 250,000 acres. Diversified, which now owns approximately 8 million acres of leases with close to 70,000 (mostly) conventional oil and gas wells used to be solely focused on the Appalachian region–until last year.
Yesterday MDN brought you the sad and tragic news that West Virginia U.S. Senator Joe Manchin has sold out. He put his party and whatever secret offer they made him above the good of the country and agreed to a Green New Deal bill Chuck “the schmuck” Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are pushing (see 
In early 2013 the Pittsburgh International Airport and Allegheny County, PA, signed a deal with CONSOL Energy (now CNX Resources) to lease 9,000 acres surrounding the airport for natural gas drilling (see 
For the week of July 18-24, the three Marcellus/Utica states issued just 16 permits to drill new shale wells, down from 43 the prior week. Pennsylvania and West Virginia both issued eight new permits each. Ohio issued a big, fat, goose egg. PA issued three permits each to Greylock Energy (Green County) and Pennsylvania General Energy (Tioga County), and one each to EQT and Seneca Resources. WV issued four permits each to Jay-Bee Oil & Gas (Tyler County) and Tug Hill Operating (Wetzel County).
Diversified Energy is growing again. In February, Diversified bought out and merged in well-plugging company Next LVL Energy, headquartered in the Pittsburgh area (see 
Here’s a story that slipped by us last week. Small amounts of natural gas–roughly 22 MMcf/d (million cubic feet per day)–are once again flowing into the closed Freeport LNG export facility. Freeport is the second-largest LNG export terminal in the U.S., located near Galveston, Texas. The facility experienced an explosion and fire in early June, knocking 2 Bcf/d offline (see