Enverus Rig Count @ 781 (+11); Marcellus @ 41 (+0), Utica @ 14 (+2)
The Enverus rig count, as of Wednesday, stood at 781, up 11 rigs over the past week after being up 10 rigs the week before (+21 over the past two weeks). We are at the highest number of rigs in operation since March 2020, the dawn of the pandemic. We are only 57 rigs away from the pre-pandemic high of 838 rigs. Last week the Marcellus had 41 rigs running (same as the week before), and the Utica operated 14 rigs (up by two rigs), for a total of 55 active rigs in the M-U. Our chief rival, the Louisiana and Texas Haynesville, operated 71 rigs last week.
Read More “Enverus Rig Count @ 781 (+11); Marcellus @ 41 (+0), Utica @ 14 (+2)”
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Gov. Justice appoints new Public Energy Authority member; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: U.S. Gulf of Mexico brimming with LNG tankers as exports rise; NATIONAL: US weekly LNG exports drop by one from last week; US natural gas storage declines more than forecast as Henry Hub futures surge; Make America energy independent again; Joe Biden’s ‘transition away from the oil industry’ is strangling America’s economy; Putin’s war revives calls for probe of Russia’s support of green groups battling U.S. oil production.
In January a new Senate bill was introduced in the West Virginia Senate requiring the entire state government, all of the various state agencies and governmental departments, to stop doing business with any bank or investment firm that refuses to support coal, oil, and natural gas companies (see 
It’s been fun watching the enviro-left soil themselves over the sudden and dramatic shift in public favorable attitudes toward fossil energy. There is no disputing that if the U.S. was energy independent, as it was under Donald Trump, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine would not be having the impact on oil and gas prices that it has had. Republicans (even a few Democrats) are loudly proclaiming we need to ramp up American oil and natural gas drilling once again. This has the lefties doing all sorts of mental gymnastics to try and explain how increasing oil and gas drilling here would be a bad thing. It’s actually quite funny!
Yesterday the U.S. Dept. of Energy issued two long-term orders authorizing liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from two current operating LNG export projects: Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass facility in Louisiana, and Cheniere’s Corpus Christi facility in Texas. The order allows the two facilities together to ship an extra 0.72 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of LNG over and above the amounts previously authorized. Wait a minute…aren’t all LNG export facilities exporting at their maximum capacity? Yes they are, but…
BofA (Bank of America) Global Research recently issued a research report stating that natural gas production in both the Marcellus/Utica and the Permian Basin faces constraints in 2023 and likely will have to dial back on production. Both regions will hit capacity with existing pipelines in 2023 and there are no new pipes coming online. Also, one of the largest growing customers for our natgas supplies has been LNG exports. No new LNG facilities will come online in 2023, says BofA, which hasn’t happened since we began exporting LNG in 2016.
In his first two days in office, Joe Biden declared war on the oil and gas industry. One of the first things he did was to revive an interagency working group on the “social cost” of greenhouse gas emissions and directed the issuance of an “interim” cost (see 
Exactly three weeks ago MDN brought you the big news that Equitrans Midstream was considering an appeal of two recent rulings by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that overturned a permit and FERC decision to allow Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), now 94% complete, to finish construction (see 
Our advice to landowners who own land in the path of a pipeline has always been to negotiate with the pipeline builder. It may seem as if the builder holds all the cards, especially if they have eminent domain authority (the power to condemn and “take” the land for use in constructing the pipeline). Our observation has been that most pipeline companies are reasonable and willing to accommodate requests to tweak routes. What is not reasonable is to refuse to negotiate in hopes you can block the pipeline from crossing your property. In those cases, the property is taken anyway and you then go through a protracted, years-long process of a court case to determine the value of the taking. Such a case has just begun in Roanoke, Virginia federal court over property taken for Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP).
We’ve heard of “supermajors”–those six to seven integrated oil and gas companies that have a market capitalization of $100 billion or more (including ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Total). We’ve heard of “majors”–integrated oil and gas companies defined as having a market capitalization of $10 billion to $100 billion. And we’ve heard of “independents”–smaller companies that focus just on drilling (not integrated, meaning no downstream and possibly no midstream operations). A Reuters article introduces to a new concept–mini-majors. Among that group is EQT Corporation.
We spotted an article about scarcity for “super-spec rigs” affecting the shale marketplace. Super-spec rigs are high-end rigs with lots of bells and whistles. They drill better and faster than standard rigs. With inventories of super-spec rigs running low, prices to lease them are running high. The “day rate” to lease a rig with lots of bells and whistles is running over $30,000 per day. Base rigs, according to rig company Patterson-UTI, have days rates starting “in the mid-$20,000s.”