Americans’ Right to Use NatGas Stripped Away by Infrastructure Bill
No doubt you’ve heard plenty in mainstream media recently about the $1 trillion so-called infrastructure bill currently being debated in Congress. What the mainstream media won’t tell you is the truth–that this bill is incredibly bad for the country in its current form. The bill includes measures allowing more federal control over state and local building codes to force everyone to adopt Biden’s “appliance electrification” plan by discouraging the use of natural gas in homes and businesses. Yes, Biden plans to phase out your right to burn natural gas in your furnace and in your stove. Welcome to the USSR.
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OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Dakota oil pipeline expansion completed; NATIONAL: With climate litigation failing, Rockefellers try a different angle; Now Biden is trying to racialize energy, too; John Kerry questions long-term future of natural gas.
Each quarter the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) issues an update on Utica (and Marcellus) oil and natural gas production. ODNR no longer issues a summary press release as they once did, which means we don’t automatically notice when quarterly updates appear on their website. ODNR publishes a detailed spreadsheet of all active wells showing oil and gas production by well. We make a copy of that spreadsheet, enhance it to make it more usable, and link to it. We also do our own sorting to show you the top 25 shale gas wells and top 25 shale oil wells. An astute MDN reader inquired about the report for 1Q21, which is now available. We’ve created our own version of their report and have some exciting news to share about 1Q21 results. Oil is back, in a big way, in the northern Utica!
Once again the price of natural gas–both the financial futures price (the NYMEX) and even spot physical prices in many locations, like the M-U, increased dramatically. The NYMEX is back above $4/MMBtu once again. Just two months ago we longed for, prayed for, yearned for gas above $3! Why are natural gas prices moving higher and (for now) staying higher? In a nutshell, for three reasons: record exports, hot weather, and self-restrained drillers.
Analysts are predicting natural gas prices in the northeastern U.S. market area “could hit their highest [rate] in four years or more” this coming winter. Why? Producers have not ramped up drilling to the same levels we saw prior to the COVID pandemic. Lack of new drilling is causing a storage deficit–less gas being socked away for the winter months. With “strong demand” coming this winter, futures prices for the coming winter months in the northeast is already on the climb–in some places more than $14/MMBtu!
Pipeline giant Williams delivered its second quarter update yesterday. It was obvious from the chatter by company executives, including CEO Alan Armstrong, that the Marcellus/Utica continues to play a key and important role in the company’s future. However, Williams is also expanding its footprint in the Haynesville Shale in Louisiana. Armstrong announced a second joint venture in the Haynesville, with private producer GeoSouthern Energy Corp.
The CO2 Coalition, a nonprofit established in 2015 for the purpose of educating thought leaders, policymakers, and the general public about the important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy, has just published a detailed analysis of Pennsylvania’s plan to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI (full copy below). In the report, more than 70 top scientists conclude that PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s justifications for the RGGI carbon tax “are invalid and its claims of environmental and economic benefits are fiction.”
Back in June, MDN brought you insights from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) which noticed the decreasing number of 
Privately-owned Penn Production Group, LLC, which concentrates on exploration and production for oil and gas in western Pennsylvania, closed on the purchase of certain assets owned by Greylock Energy in Clearfield County, PA on July 30. The assets include 20 miles of pipeline (called Mid Stream) that feeds the gas-fired Shawville GenOn Generating Station and the Dominion pipeline.
The radicals at the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation (PEDF) are not just content to block any future use of royalties from drilling on state land to fund only Big Green priorities, as they recently won the right to do (see 
America’s natural gas and oil industry announced “a landmark partnership” in late 2017 called The Environmental Partnership, to “accelerate improvements to environmental performance in operations across the country” (see 
We happen to think the oil and gas industry has sort of lost its collective mind. We’ve lost the battle over fossil fuels by conceding that carbon dioxide, the stuff you emit with every breath you take, is somehow polluting the planet. If we concede that point, it’s all downhill from there. Environmentalist wackos will not stop until all fossil fuels are permanently eliminated from the energy mix–which will be devastating to humankind. But they don’t care. Still, you can’t miss the fact that O&G is “doing its part” to reign in carbon and methane emissions, playing along with the demands of the left. ESG has become a more common phrase in the quarterly updates of O&G companies than barrels of oil and thousands of cubic feet of natural gas. What is O&G doing with respect to ESG, hydrogen, and carbon capture sequestration? And where is it all heading? Will O&G companies actually hit net carbon zero?
Last week both Pennsylvania and West Virginia received permits to drill new shale wells. Ohio was left out of the permit game for a second week in a row. PA received 19 new permits, with 9 going to Range Resources, 4 going to Seneca Resources, and a smattering of others. WV received 9 new permits, all of them in Tyler County and all but 2 given to Antero Resources.