EQT Won’t Increase Production Until it Can Move More Out of Basin
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.
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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).
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: D.C.’s “voluntary” phase out of natural gas is coercive and costly; NATIONAL: Limited frack supply could hamper U.S. crude oil output; U.S. LNG exports go up to 18 LNG carriers; US working natural gas in underground storage increases by 15 Bcf; INTERNATIONAL: New EU taxonomy makes new gas projects unrealistic; German cities limit heating, turn off spotlights to save natural gas.
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 
Range Resources, the very first company to sink a Marcellus Shale well back in 2004, issued its annual 2021-2022 Corporate Sustainability Report yesterday. “Sustainability” is Range’s terminology for ESG, or environmental, social, and governance. A couple of notable observations in this latest report: (1) Range has doubled its methane monitoring inspection system using LDAR from four times a year to eight times a year; and (2) Range has the lowest methane intensity, or percentage of methane emissions, in the entire Appalachian basin–according to a third party evaluator.
Oil and gas giant BP recently released its annual Statistical Review of World Energy–the 71st edition (full copy below). Among the interesting findings in BP’s analysis of global energy last year: Fossil fuels–coal, natural gas and oil–accounted for 82% of primary energy use worldwide last year, down from 83% in 2019 and 85% five years ago. The report doesn’t disclose what percentage of world energy use comes from so-called renewables, wind and solar. We suspect it remains at around 3-4% as in years past. Meaning the legacy media narrative of renewables saving the world is once again exposed as horse manure.