Energy Services | Greene County (PA) | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Sand/Proppant | Smart Sand
Smart Sand Opens New Rail Transload Terminal in Greene County, PA
We can’t resist a good railroad story. We’ve always loved them (we know, we’re weird). Here’s a good railroad story for you: Frack sand company Smart Sand, Inc., headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas, has just opened for business and is shipping frack sand to a brand new transloading facility in Waynesburg (Greene County), Pennsylvania.
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Anecdotally in reading articles about electric power production in New England, we know that almost all electricity is produced in the region by natural gas (unless they run low, then they use fuel oil). We also know a majority of the electricity produced in the PJM region, including the M-U area, is also produced by natural gas. What we didn’t know (but do now) is that the vast majority of electricity in the southeastern U.S. is produced by natural gas. Most of the molecules feeding southeast gas plants come from the M-U.
This *really* has our blood boiling. The same Democrat politicians in New England who have blocked new natural gas pipelines from the Marcellus (just 200 miles away) to their region, preferring so-called “renewable energy” instead, have just asked the hapless, incompetent Secretary of the Dept. of Energy, Jennifer Granholm (a fellow Democrat) to restrict LNG exports so their constituents don’t have to suffer the pain of their (the politicians’) decision to block pipelines. We’re talking about Massachusetts’ two U.S. Senators, Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren and Ed “Lackey” Markey, and Sen. Pat “Leaky” Leahy whose home state of Vermont has banned all fracking and blocks pipelines. Talk about chutzpah!
Our apologies that this latest weekly permit update is a day late. Normally we issued these updates on Wednesdays. Yesterday the Pennsylvania database we use to locate information on new permits issued was throwing an error. We alerted the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection, which maintains the database, and they got it fixed sometime last night. So we’re back! Our thanks to the programmers at the DEP.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Jim Cramer sees promise in natural gas firm Coterra Energy; NATIONAL: USA oil production surge goes unnoticed; U.S. propane prices fell from multiyear highs after a mild start to the winter; Energy is the most important issue in the world; INTERNATIONAL: Oil unmoved by OPEC+ decision; Cyberattack hits German fuel distribution system; Europe remains top destination for U.S. LNG for second month running.
A month ago MDN brought you the news that UGI Corporation, one of Pennsylvania’s largest natural gas utility companies, had cut a deal to buy the Stonehenge Appalachia Midstream natural gas gathering system in Butler County, PA, for $190 million (see 
National Grid is desperately trying not to run out of natural gas for its customers in Brooklyn and Queens (on Long Island). For several years the company has fought a battle to run a tiny pipeline to its Greenpoint, Brooklyn facility, to provide extra natural gas. That project is being investigated by the Biden administration on charges of racism (see 
On Monday Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced PA has been awarded its initial allocation of $25 million, and will receive a total of $104 million, from Biden’s so-called Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to plug orphaned and abandoned wells in the state. Which is fine. It’s good to have them plugged, good that companies in our industry will get paid to do it, good that it will create a few jobs. However, we’d like to know where the other $4.596 BILLION allocated for plugging old wells is going…
In recent weeks and months, MDN has beat the drum about the high price of natural gas and electricity (generated by burning natural gas) in New England (
Last year the state of Texas passed a new law that says the state government and its agencies will not do business with banks and investment firms that refuse to fund or do business with fossil fuel companies. A few weeks ago MDN told you the West Virginia State Senate is rapidly advancing a similar bill (see 
This one doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for us. Late last year utility giant Consolidated Edison (ConEd) colluded with and supported the efforts of radicalized leftists in New York City to vote through a ban on new natural gas hookups starting next year (see 
The world’s (and North America’s) largest oilfield services companies, including Schlumberger, Halliburton, and Baker Hughes, are all saying the same thing: Drillers are getting ready to drill more this year. Some sub-sectors of the drilling market, like completions, are already “sold out” according to Halliburton. Good luck to drillers who want to add more completions crews right now. Prices are going up for fracking fleets and other services offered by OFS companies.