NY Gov. Kathy Hochul Chooses Pot Farms Over Shale Energy
In December 2014, then-Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, banned hydraulic fracturing in the state (see After 6+ Years, Andrew Cuomo Bans Fracking in New York). Just to drive the nail all the way into the coffin of fracking, while everyone was distracted by the just-breaking coronavirus pandemic, Cuomo slipped a permanent ban on fracking into the 2020 budget bill, which was passed by the obsequious Democrat state legislature (see Cuomo PERMANENTLY Bans NY Fracking in Now-Adopted Budget). Kathy Hochul, who replaced the disgraced Cuomo as governor last year, is trying to one-up Cuomo by banning new natural gas hookups for residents and businesses (see NY Repubs Fight Back Against Crazy Dem Plan to Phase Out NatGas). It’s bizarre. Instead of allowing fracking in Upstate, Hochul wants to establish a bunch of dope-smoking pot farms.
Read More “NY Gov. Kathy Hochul Chooses Pot Farms Over Shale Energy”
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 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: PA Senate resolution offers hope for developing a rare earth minerals industry; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Driftwood LNG nears FID, backed by 10-year contracts in break from norm; Texas asks 19 finance firms for fossil fuel stance; NATIONAL: ‘C’mon Man’ stop sabotaging American energy; Waive the Jones Act to get the supply chain flowing again.
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.”
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) finally got their reporting system back online after it had gone down for a second time in three weeks. We have collected the permits issued over a two-week period in this report, to catch things up (and because PA didn’t issue any permits for one of the two weeks). This current report shows permits issued from Monday, Feb. 28 through Sunday, Mar. 13. PA issued 15 new permits over the two-week period. The top permitees in PA were EQT and CNX, both with five permits each. In Ohio, 11 new permits were issued, with Encino Energy receiving four and Gulfport three permits. West Virginia also issued 11 new permits for the two-week period. Antero received six of WV’s permits, and both Southwestern Energy and Arsenal Resources scored two each.