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Weekly Shale Drilling Permits for PA, OH, WV: Sep 13-19
A nice bump up (finally) in the number of permits to drill new shale wells in the M-U, although it’s a lot of wells for a relatively few well pads. Pennsylvania issued 19 new permits across five pads in both the northeast and southwest portion of the play, including 8 permits for a single Cabot Oil & Gas pad in Susquehanna County. Ohio issued just 3 new permits, all to Encino Energy for a single pad in Carroll County. And West Virginia issued a surprisingly high 18 permits to two drillers on three pads in two counties: Marshall and Monongalia.
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MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Utica Green Conference postponed until spring 2022; Gulfport Energy stock hits new 1-year high at $80.75; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Foreign and naturally occurring sources are the main contributors of ozone in Utah; NATIONAL: Chevron looks to hydrogen and natural gas; Natural gas price prediction – prices fall as momentum turns negative; Biden pledges to double U.S. climate change aid; INTERNATIONAL: Another headwind – global gas price spike worries energy execs; Enabled by Biden, Putin declares energy war on Europe; Europe could turn to more coal if gas crunch persists.
For years landowners who have been organized and hoodwinked by Big Green groups have attacked the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project on its legally and federally delegated right to use eminent domain to condemn property for landowners who have refused to negotiate in good faith. One such case remains, holding on…just barely.
American Energy Partners, Inc. (AEPT), based in Allentown, PA, is a small but diversified company. They have their fingers in a number of different oil and gas pies, including subsidiaries in drilling, remediation, water, valuation services, and education. Last Friday the company announced yet another acquisition as it continues to grow. AEPT is buying a second “privately held energy services company” (unnamed) that operates in the Marcellus/Utica region. The unnamed company focuses on providing facility maintenance, transportation, logistics, and environmental services to the energy and industrial sectors.
Sometimes it seems like a full-time job running around and setting the record straight, correcting the outright lies and half-truths spun by the wacko environmental left. For example, shoveling up the messes made by the Ohio River Valley Institute (ORVI), a far-left, hyper-partisan, nonprofit organization. Last month ORVI peddled falsehoods at a hearing convened by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management which is conducting a study on the prospects for a petrochemical industry in the Marcellus/Utica (see 
Robert Rapier, a chemical engineer in the energy industry, often writes for both the Forbes.com and OilPrice.com websites. Excellent writer. Rapier recently concluded a four-article series examining Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) programs in the oil industry, with an emphasis on how some companies are using hydrogen to improve their metrics. The last article in the series (below) tackles the issue of how hydrogen could/might/maybe become a “game-changer” for midstreamers in the oil and gas space. Our takeaway from reading his article is this…
Can you actually make a battery by using just rocks and water? As it turns out, the answer is yes! And you can do it thanks to the technology discovered and innovated by hydraulic fracturing. A clever company called Quidnet (based in Houston, TX) has figured out how to use the water pressure (and water) from fracked wells to spin a turbine and create electricity. Drill a hole, pump water down into it, cap it and wait, and then uncork the hole and the pressure pushes the water back out, spinning the turbine. Genius!
A new report from the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) shows Pennsylvania sent more than 79 million megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity to other states in 2020–by far the biggest electricity exporter in the country. And it’s mostly thanks to cheap, abundant, clean-burning natural gas. PA’s position as the number one electric exporter is now threatened by its recalcitrant Governor, Tom Wolf, who insists on forcing the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a $2.36 billion carbon tax over the next 10 years aimed at shutting down coal and gas-fired power plants. Is Wolf certifiably insane?
Nearly 20 years ago Indeck Energy floated a plan to build an electric generating plant (powered by natural gas) in Niles, Michigan, not far from Chicago. In 2016 those plans got serious (see 
A recently published book that attempts to show fracking in Lycoming County, PA area in the worst possible light, along with a section excerpted from the book running in the New York Times, once again reopens an old case that accuses Range Resources of ruining the water supply for several homes near a fracked well drilled by Range. In 2011 Range drilled and fracked the Harman Lewis Unit 1H well along Green Valley Road in Hughesville, PA. Following an investigation, the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) slapped Range with a record $8.9 million fine in June 2015, accusing the company of faulty casing in its well, leading to methane migration that had contaminated several area water wells (see 
We don’t often use material from the known fake news source called the New York Times, but here we are using a second article from the NYT in one day! The article (below) does its best to shred the reputation and credibility of Joe Manchin, senior U.S. Senator from West Virginia. We have to confess we’re a bit wary of Manchin given his tendency to cave under pressure and vote with the Democrat Party line. But Manchin is all that currently stands in the way of Joe Biden and the Democrat Party’s plan to eliminate natural gas (and coal), phasing both out as energy sources to produce electricity, part of the $3.5 trillion so-called budget reconciliation bill.
Natural gas pipeline operators have some work to do to protect their pipelines (and consequently the public) from nefarious hackers who seek to shut them down. That was the upshot from a panel discussion at last week’s LDC Gas Forums Midcontinent conference in Chicago. One simple way pipelines and the customers who use them leave themselves open to attack: They don’t encrypt gas nominations.
Here we go again. Although we understand self-interest and wanting to protect one’s profit margin, we continue to be distressed that some of the biggest chemical companies in the world (meaning in the U.S.) are actively trying to block LNG exports. Why? They want the natural gas they buy (in very large quantities) to be as cheap as possible. In April 2017, Big Chemical–companies like Dow Corning, BASF, Eastman Chemical and others–via their trade association Industrial Energy Consumers of America (IECA), launched an effort to try and persuade Energy Secretary Rick Perry and the Trump Administration to create barriers to exports of natural gas (see