Pegula’s JKLM Heads West: Permit Sought for Westmoreland Shale Well
JKLM Energy, the private drilling company run by Buffalo Bills and Sabres owner Terry Pegula, has applied to drill a shale well in Salem Township, Westmoreland County, PA, next to the Totteridge Golf Course. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s story on the permit says the well would tap a “1,000-acre pool of methane.” Um, no. There is no underground lake of gas sitting beneath Salem and Hempfield townships, waiting for someone to stick a straw in it. What JKLM has put together is a pooled drilling unit. That’s a legal arrangement, not a geological feature. The difference matters a great deal to the 64 landowners who will someday be cashing royalty checks from this well. Read More “Pegula’s JKLM Heads West: Permit Sought for Westmoreland Shale Well”
Ohio’s state-land leasing program has a new target. A driller (whose name is kept secret by state law, for now) has asked the Ohio Oil and Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) to open about 618 acres under the Monroe Lake Wildlife Area in Monroe County to shale drilling. Public comments are open through Nov. 30. The twist this time? Because of the calendar, the final call may land on the desk of whoever wins next month’s race for governor. 
Back on Sept. 1, we told you Dominion Energy’s monster 3,000-megawatt (3 gigawatt) gas-fired power plant in Cumberland County, Virginia, had cleared its first hurdle when the county planning commission voted 5-1 to recommend approval (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: High schoolers hold fundraisers to plug oil and gas wells; Ike Morris, well-known West Virginia businessman and philanthropist, dies; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures extend decline on weather outlook; The AI policy debate suffers from a dangerous plague of vagueness; Greenhushing – climate loses its message; The permitting reform deal’s quiet endorsement; INTERNATIONAL: Oil slips as Iran talks fuel volatility; HSBC sees Hormuz becoming redundant in five years; UK government approves a natural gas project off Scotland despite environmental concerns. 
The Trump administration just put real money where its mouth is on the Constitution Pipeline. Yesterday the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced it will spend up to $42 million in Defense Production Act (DPA) money to nudge Williams’ long-dead, now-revived 125-mile pipeline from Susquehanna County, PA to Schoharie County, NY closer to reality. The money won’t buy a single length of pipe—it pays for permitting and pre-construction work. And it doesn’t change the fact that New York and its Big Green allies are still fighting the project tooth and nail. But it sends a loud message: Washington now officially considers Constitution a national security asset. 
It’s official, or at least as official as these things get. America’s LNG export plants are drinking more natural gas than ever before. Two separate data trackers now say feedgas, the gas piped into LNG plants to be supercooled into a liquid and loaded onto ships, has set a new all-time high above 20 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day). NGI clocked 20.7 Bcf/d on Monday, the third straight day above its prior record. RBN Energy says feedgas has topped 20 Bcf/d for the first time ever. The milestone comes almost exactly a decade after the first LNG cargo left Cheniere’s Sabine Pass terminal in 2016. It also arrived just as a big chunk of Marcellus gas came back online after a leak on TC Energy’s Mountaineer XPress (MXP) pipeline in West Virginia. 
On Monday, gas buyers in Europe paid $28.91 per MMBtu for natural gas. Buyers in Japan and South Korea paid $30.01. Here at home, the November contract at Louisiana’s Henry Hub (the U.S. benchmark) closed at about $3.06. And last Thursday, gas sold at Texas Eastern M-2, the main price point for southwestern Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, fetched just $1.055. Same molecule of methane. Europe and Asia are paying nearly 10 times what the rest of America gets, and about 27 times what our Appalachian gas sold for last week. Why the giant gap? And what does it mean for your royalty check? 
A new study from the Boston-based Fiscal Alliance Foundation puts a price tag on what New England’s pipeline shortage costs Massachusetts families. The study, done by Always On Energy Research, finds that Enbridge’s proposed Project Beacon, a 300 MMcf/d (million cubic feet per day) expansion of the Algonquin Gas Transmission pipeline, would have saved Massachusetts ratepayers an average of $367 million per winter over the past seven winters. Even after paying their share of the pipeline’s cost, the average gas-heated household comes out ahead by $76 each winter, and small businesses by $622. 
Back on Sept. 2, we told you about Invenergy’s plan to build two big gas-fired power plants in Brillion, Wisconsin (see 
North Carolina’s Oil and Gas Commission is doing something it is required to do once every 10 years: review its entire rulebook for oil and gas drilling, including fracking. The Commission’s verdict so far is that every last rule is “necessary.” Case closed, right? Not if you’re an anti. Clean Water for North Carolina (CWFNC) is in full alarm mode, urging supporters to flood the Commission with “not one step back” comments before the November 9 deadline. Why the panic over rules that have never been used (not once) in 11 years? Follow the gas. A company wants to reopen an old vertical well in Lee County to power an AI data center. It would be the first commercial gas well in the state’s history. 
Seven weeks. Same number. The Marcellus/Utica held at 33 rigs again for the week ended October 16, while the national count held at 603 for a second straight week, tying the 52-week high set last week. Underneath that flat national number, oil rigs dropped by three and gas rigs added one. Frac spreads slipped by four, snapping a five-week winning streak. On the price board, oil and gas went in opposite directions: WTI blasted past $100 to settle at $101.41 a barrel, while natural gas fell back to $3.116 per MMBtu. Plus: Expand Energy grabs the top spot on the Enverus permit list, and a name we don’t recognize shows up at No. 4. 
On Friday, we told you a leak on Columbia Gas Transmission’s Mountaineer XPress (MXP) pipeline had pushed Appalachian gas down to $1.06 (see 
Ten days ago, after Devon Energy agreed to sell its Eagle Ford assets for $4.2 billion, we asked whether the Marcellus would be next (see 