Enverus Rig Count @ 560 (+8); Marcellus @ 35 (+1), Utica @ 10 (-1)
The Enverus U.S. rig count is once again breaking one-year records. For the week ending June 9, the rig count stood at 560–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 gained one rig over the past week, while the Utica lost a rig. Collectively the M-U is currently running 45 rigs.
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MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Coal plants in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Ohio to shut down; Sen. Yaw visits Shell petrochemical plant in Beaver County; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Aethon Energy announces collaboration with Cheniere Energy on GHG emissions; NATIONAL: Oil prices get boost from inflation data; Why are they celebrating the Keystone XL cancellation?; New technology on display at the Shale Energy Conference and Tradeshow; Biden looks at financial rules to deprive oil of capital, shift country on climate.
Just coming to light for us now is a long-running lawsuit in Tioga County, PA by landowners who claim that UGI has taken their mineral rights as part of operating the Meeker Storage Field, an underground natural gas storage facility. The landowners lost the lawsuit in the Court of Common Pleas of Tioga County (trial court) in March 2019 (although the case began in 2016). The landowners appealed to Commonwealth Court and lost there too, in November 2020. The landowners appealed again, to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The Supremes have just accepted the case.
Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s (TGP) plan to flow more natural gas to Westchester and New York City is called the East 300 Upgrade Project. The project involves upgrades at two existing compressor stations (in Pennsylvania), along with building a brand new compressor station in West Milford (Passaic County), just across the border and not far from Westchester County, NY. Two weeks ago we told you area residents and leftwing environmentalists had convinced the county to officially oppose the project (see 
Ascent Resources, originally founded as American Energy Partners by gas legend Aubrey McClendon, is a privately-held company that focuses 100% on the Ohio Utica Shale. Ascent is Ohio’s largest natural gas producer and the 8th largest natural gas producer in the U.S. The company announced yesterday it is floating new “senior notes” (we call them IOUs) to retire or pay off other notes coming due.
For years those who have supported natural gas have made the argument that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have been decreasing in the U.S. because of the increased use of natural gas. How can that be, given burning natural gas causes the release of CO2? Because natural gas has captured market share and largely replaced the use of coal in electric power generation. As more natgas is used, CO2 emissions go down. The U.S. Energy Information Administration has just released numbers proving, without a doubt, just how much natgas has helped to lower CO2 emissions over the past 17 years.
In an effort to prove natural gas is not Satanic, three Marcellus/Utica drillers–Southwestern Energy, EQT, and Chesapeake Energy–have signed up for a certification program by Project Canary called TrustWell. The program certifies that the natural gas produced by these companies is responsibly sourced natural gas (RSG). For the first time a midstream (pipeline) company, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE), has earned a TrustWell certification for a piece of equipment, the company’s compressor units.
In January 2016, Invenergy announced its intention to build a natgas-powered electric plant in Elizabeth Township, in Allegheny County near Pittsburgh (see 
It would be laughable if it were not so tragic…Democrats like Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm (worst Sec Energy in a generation) think throwing $5 million to West Virginia University for “research” to develop “low-carbon power plant technology” is some big deal. It’s generous. Magnanimous. Beneficent. Granholm visited WV last week to bestow $5 million in largesse from Uncle Joe on the good people of the Mountain State. A $5 million research grant is NOTHING. It’s a rounding error of a rounding error in the Dept. of Energy’s budget. By comparison, a single natural gas-fired power plant in WV would attract $500-$800 million of investment! And that’s all private money, not taxpayer’s hard-earned money.
Each month our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issues a Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) report. The STEO covers all of the major energy sources produced and consumed in the country. The latest edition, issued yesterday, finds the analysts at EIA revising up the expected marketed production and consumption of natural gas in 3Q21. Also up is the expected average price for natural gas at the benchmark Henry Hub–now up to a predicted $3.07/MMBtu for all of 2021. However, EIA says natural gas consumption for all of 2021 will sink by half of one percent from 2020. Why?
It’s getting far more expensive to drill a shale well of any kind according to analysts at Citigroup. Inflation overall is on the increase. You can’t keep throwing trillions of printed, made-up money into the economy (a la “stimulus checks”) without the inevitable inflation happening. Too much money chasing too few goods and services equal higher prices, i.e. inflation. Citigroup says the inflation rate for the shale industry could reach 12% by the end of this year. That’s massive.
Two of three Marcellus/Utica states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania issued 13 new permits, almost all of them in the dry gas northeastern part of the state. Ohio issued 11 new permits, in the center of the Utica play. West Virginia’s shale industry got skunked last week–no new permits. It’s been quite a while since that’s happened in WV.