Muskingum Watershed Joins Fight Against Ohio Forced Pooling Bill
In May MDN brought you the news that landowner Gateway Royalty was sounding the alarm over a new bill quickly advancing in the Ohio legislature. House Bill (HB) 152 would use forced pooling if 65% of a proposed unit’s landowners are leased (too low a bar) and also would force the landowner to accept a 12.5% royalty and force them to accept post-production deductions with royalties in some cases potentially going down to nothing (see Ohio HB 152 Forced Pooling Bill Disadvantages Unleased Landowners). Another major Ohio landowner with considerable acreage leased to the Utica Shale industry, the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD), is adding its voice of opposition to HB 152.
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As temperatures rise across the U.S. and Americans flip on air conditioning which makes a big draw on the electric grid, stocks of natural gas in storage are decreasing. Natgas is used to generate electricity. When there’s less supply to meet existing or growing demand, economics 101 tells us the price of the good or service (in this case natural gas) goes up. And indeed that’s exactly what’s happening. As the price of natgas increases, so too does the share price for M-U drillers.
Each quarter NGI (Natural Gas Intelligence) runs the numbers and publishes a list of the 25 top natural gas marketers in the U.S. These are not necessarily the top 25 producers of natural gas (although in some cases they are), but the top 25 sellers (vendors, jobbers) of natural gas. NGI’s latest quarterly report shows overall the biggest sellers of natgas “lost ground” once again in 1Q21, which continues a two-year trend of year over year declines in the amount of gas sold.
A small group of extremist left-wing Democrats in Pittsburgh are demanding Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, himself a Democrat and long-time supporter of the Marcellus Shale industry, turn against shale. Last week around 30 fossil fuel haters delivered a petition signed by 300 fellow haters to Fitzgerald’s office. He didn’t cave to the pressure, so the haters became more aggressive, going to Fitzgerald’s house yesterday in their attempts to bully him into submission. The cops told them to clear out or get arrested.
As we told you in April, President Biden launched a new program to be funded with $109.5 million aimed at figuring out how to convince fossil fuel workers to be happy taking a huge pay cut and installing solar panels and windmills instead of making far more money in a far more meaningful job working in fossil fuels (see 
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Altus Midstream finds way to thrive amid energy downturn; Big wind and big solar got $22 billion in subsidies in Texas; Maine becomes first state to order public fossil-fuel divestment; NATIONAL: Oil prices climb for fourth straight week; Hydrogen substitution for natural gas in turbines: Opportunities, issues, and challenges; Natural gas is now a punching bag but can it withstand the pummeling?; Senators press Interior Secretary Haaland on oil lease pause; INTERNATIONAL: Oil boom 2021: OPEC+ thinks U.S. Shale has been tamed for awhile; EIG-led group closes $12.4 billion deal to buy Aramco pipeline stake; OPEC secretary urges member countries to continue oil investments.
Last December Dan Rice IV, former CEO of Rice Energy and member of the EQT board of directors, launched a “blank check” acquisition firm, called Rice Acquisition Corp., to invest in various energy ventures. Dan found that something-to-invest-in just a few months later in the form of acquiring and merging together Archaea Energy and Aria Energy into a single company focused on providing renewable natural gas (RNG) and “green” hydrogen (see 
A preliminary report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine finds the transportation of LNG (liquefied natural gas) by various methods–sea, road, AND by rail–is perfectly safe. Currently, LNG is not widely transported by rail in the U.S., but rail is used in other countries to transport LNG. Last year Congress instructed the government-funded National Academies to study the issue. They’ve issued a preliminary study called “Preparing for LNG by Rail Tank Car: A Review of a U.S. DOT Safety Research, Testing, and Analysis Initiative” (full copy below).
What a major disappointment the Joe Biden administration has been for the country as a whole, and the oil and gas industry in particular. The Biden administration is packed with far-left socialists. The Dept. of Energy is the latest repository. A few days ago DOE announced another round of appointments to important positions within the agency. Most of them have zero experience in the energy industry. Most of them are political operatives (i.e. hacks) who ran the Biden campaign in various states during last year’s election. It’s political patronage–nothing new about that (happens on both sides of the aisle). The problem is the great damage this bunch will do to oil and gas during their hopefully brief tenure.
The Enverus U.S. rig count broke another one-year record. For the week ending June 16, the rig count stood at 567–the highest number it has seen since April 2020, just as the pandemic was starting to really take hold and shut everything down. The Marcellus play stayed even, while the Utica regained a rig it lost the week before. Collectively the M-U is currently running 46 rigs.
Last night the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) held a virtual hearing on a compromise plan between Energy Transfer/Sunoco Logistics and the DEP to allow ET/Sunoco to complete construction of the Mariner East 2 pipeline project in the Marsh Creek State Park area (Chester County) where there have been some “issues” that halted work in the area. Given the buildup by the anti-fossil fuel left to turn out and mouth off at the hearing, we’re struck that (so far) it is radio silence in mainstream media about the hearing. We can’t find a single story about the hearing. We do, however, have a report on more than two dozen pro-pipeline speakers who turned out for the virtual hearing. Perhaps that’s why the media is silent?
Sabal Trail is a $3.2 billion, 515-mile interstate natural gas pipeline in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama built to deliver (in part) Marcellus gas to the southeast. Sabal Trail connects to Williams’ Hillabee Expansion Project, which is a pipeline spur built off the huge Transco pipeline system. On June 15 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued orders extending the time for both projects to complete the final bits of their construction by another two years.
On January 4, 2014, Rice Energy (at that time run by Dan Rice IV) hired Vice President for Completions (head fracker) Babatunde Ajayi. After Ajayi assembled a team and a system that propelled Rice to become one of the leading Marcellus/Utica drillers, Rice fired Ajayi on October 31, 2016. Rice claimed Ajayi was double-dipping–that he had a conflict of interest by owning shares in a company doing business with Rice Energy. Ajayi says he had reported his ownership interest–for years–and that Rice fired him shortly after he was forced to sell all of his shares in the other company. The reason he was fired, according to Ajayi, is so that Rice wouldn’t have to pay him $1.9 million in bonuses via shares of Rice stock. According to Ajayi, Rice used him, used his knowledge, then kicked him to the curb. So he sued.