3 Old Hippies Block MVP Work in Va. – Arrested & Removed
It’s never too late to relive the glory days of protesting the Vietnam war. For years we’ve made the observation that a number of the people who oppose fracking, and now pipelines, are vintage war protesters who have rediscovered the “joy” they had in the ’60s and 7’0s by protesting against fossil fuels today. Case in point: three senior citizen protesters parked a hippie-mobile across a narrow road where workers travel to work on the 92% complete Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in Roanoke County, Virginia. County police ensured the protesters still had a pulse and were hydrated, then a few hours later (to give them ample time to enjoy themselves), the cops arrested and hauled them away.
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Consumers Energy, Michigan’s second-largest power provider, will quit burning coal to produce electricity by 2025 and instead will purchase four existing natural gas-fired power plants for $1.3 billion. At least if the company can get approval from state regulators. The company says buying existing gas-fired plants (instead of building new plants) will help it transition to carbonless energy over the next 20 years. Buying instead of building means the company won’t have “stranded assets” when (we say if) they eventually foreswear using fossil fuels to generate electricity.
Back in January MDN told you that UGI Corporation, one of Pennsylvania’s largest natural gas utility companies, wants to buy Mountaineer Gas Company, one of West Virginia’s largest natural gas utility companies, for $540 million (see 
Last week MDN told you that Detroit-based utility company DTE Energy was about to spin off its pipeline assets into a new/separate company called DT Midstream (see 
NATIONAL: DOE announces $52.5 million to accelerate progress in clean hydrogen; US EIA lowers Q3 gas demand forecast 1.78 Bcf/d to 72.16 Bcf/d; Propane headed toward uncharted territory; Energy was the top-performing sector in the first half of 2021; Biden vows to raise taxes on fossil fuel companies as gas prices spike; NYMEX Henry Hub gas futures rally reaches its end, but strong fundamentals remain; INTERNATIONAL: Tokyo Gas to start methanation pilot programme by end-March; Oil could jump towards $80 in days.
Last week MDN told you about an unplanned outage at two MarkWest natural gas processing plants located in West Virginia (see 
Diversified Energy (née Diversified Gas & Oil) continues to expand *outside* of the Marcellus/Utica region. In April the company announced it had purchased ~780 net operated wells and leases in the Cotton Valley/Haynesville region of Lousiana for $135 million (see 
Patterson-UTI Energy, which operates 15 active rigs in the Marcellus/Utica (out of 45 active M-U rigs, or fully one-third of all active M-U rigs) announced yesterday it is buying a smaller competitor, Pioneer Energy Services Corp., for approximately $295 million. Patterson will add Pioneer’s fleet of 16 super-spec drilling rigs to Patterson’s own current fleet of 150 super-spec drilling rigs in the U.S. What are super-spec rigs?
The natural gas markets just made a bit of history. Friday, July 2nd, marked the last day in a series of nine days that the NYMEX futures price for natural gas increased from the previous day. Beginning Monday the price has slide down just a bit. Nine straight trading days of higher natgas prices is the longest period of day-over-day price rises in the past 20 years! The weather certainly had a lot to do with the increase in prices, but a key part, perhaps the starring role in why prices have continued to climb, is the role of LNG exports.
All three Marcellus/Utica states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania issued 12 new permits, 7 of them in the northeast PA dry gas region and 5 in the southwest wet gas region. Ohio issued 3 new permits, all of them for the same driller in Carroll County. (The Ohio driller is brand new!) And West Virginia issued 6 new permits with 5 of the 6 going to Antero Resources.
On June 24, the operator of the SOS D-2 injection well in Cambridge, Ohio (Guernsey County) reported a small release from a pipeline that transfers fluid from a storage tank to the injection well. The well’s owner/operator, Silcor Oilfield Services Inc., contained the leak. The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) was alerted and is overseeing remediation of the affected area and repair of the line. End of story. Except…