What Does Cimarex Purchase of Cabot Mean for the Marcellus?
Last week we shared the bombshell news that Cabot Oil & Gas, one of the premier drillers in the Marcellus, is merging with (being acquired by) Permian driller Cimarex Energy (see HUGE NEWS: Permian Driller Cimarex Buying Out Cabot Oil & Gas). We followed that story up with reaction by the markets, which (at the time) was one of bafflement (see Markets “Baffled” by “Unexpected” Cabot Merger with Cimarex). Now that analysts have had a week or so to digest the news, some are speculating on what this news may mean for the larger Marcellus region. The broader implications.
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All three M-U states received permits to drill new shale wells last week, but not a lot. In fact, it was one of the lowest overall number of permits issued in recent memory. Pennsylvania received just five new permits, and some of those were reissued permits. Ohio received four permits. And West Virginia just a single new permit.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Hearing set for Olympus Marcellus shale gas valve site in Upper Burrell; Bucks County opens new Creek Road bridge in Warwick Township; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Tellurian likely to start construction on Driftwood project this summer; Justices won’t review Ill. fracking moratorium; NATIONAL: Hydrogen, RNG ‘not ready for prime time’ in gas grid – state policymakers; Biden’s hypocrisy on Keystone XL vs. Nord Stream 2 pipelines; INTERNATIONAL: Climate activists are setting up oil prices for new boom; Oil price hits two-year high as OPEC sees more demand.
New Jersey Resources’ Adelphia Gateway project is a plan to convert an old oil pipeline stretching from Northampton County, PA through Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester counties, terminating in Delaware County at Marcus Hook, into a natural gas pipeline. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued final approval for the project in December 2019 (see 
Work has restarted on finishing the 92% completed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in locations that don’t involve crossing creeks and rivers. One of the areas where work has restarted is the back side of Bent Mountain, south of Roanoke, Virginia. You would be amazed at the ingenuity and sheer guts it takes to build a pipeline–especially down the side of a mountain.
More negative press that Energy Transfer (and subsidiary Sunoco Logistics) doesn’t need for their Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline project. Last Wednesday construction workers were replacing backfill near the Glen Riddle Station apartment complex in Media (Delaware County, PA) when apparently they broke a water line to the apartment complex. The pipeline break left about 250 people in the complex without drinking water for more than a day.
New Fortress Energy, which likes to build and own as much of the LNG supply chain as possible, built and finished an LNG import terminal in San Juan, Puerto Rico in early 2020. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) then dinged the company, asking for an explanation as to why they built it without FERC permission (see 
MDN will not publish today, Monday, May 31, in observance of the Memorial Day holiday. A shout out to all of our currently serving and former veterans, and remembrance for those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country. They are not forgotten.
Last fall MDN told you that a Marcellus-fired power plant planned for Clinton County, PA called the Renovo Energy Center, had come back to life as an even bigger project that will produce 1,240 megawatts of electricity when it gets built (see 
It’s been ten long years since Windfall Oil and Gas first floated a plan to drill a shale wastewater injection well near Dubois, in Brady Township (Clearfield County), PA. The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a permit for the well in 2015. The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection approved the project in March 2018 (see 
Ohio’s House Bill (HB) 6 law granted billions (plural) of dollars to FirstEnergy in an attempt to prop up the company’s economically failing nuclear power plants. FirstEnergy bribed state legislators to pass, and keep passed, HB 6 by paying out $61 million to a small group of insiders, including the now-former Speaker of the House (see 
Here’s a new one for us. An oil and gas consultant says maybe we should just forget about fracking. Keep drilling oil and gas wells, but don’t use fracking. He says natural micro and macro fractures already exist in the rock and if you drill it right using a technique called “Near Balanced Reservoir Drilling,” you can tap existing deposits of gas and oil at half the price. Is he right?
We never thought we would write these words: The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Joe Biden is even worse than it was under Barack Hussein Obama. Biden’s choice to head the EPA, North Carolina’s Michael Regan, is aggressively targeting natural gas, attempting to harm the industry in any way he can. This week he’s targeted natgas in two specific ways: (1) by encouraging FERC to reclassify new pipeline projects as “stranded assets” meaning they shouldn’t get approved, and (2) by repealing Trump’s rightsizing of Clean Water Act 401 permits, once again allowing states to block pipelines using the 401 permit, thereby harming their neighbors by blocking interstate commerce (in contravention to the U.S. Constitution). Regan is a vicious radical, totally out of control. He’s corrupting not only his own agency, but another agency (FERC) as well.