Diversified Drops ‘Gas & Oil’ from Name, Looks to Expand
Diversified Gas & Oil Company, which owns close to 8 million acres of leases with some 60,000 (mostly) conventional oil and gas wells (with over 400 Marcellus/Utica shale wells) in the Appalachian Basin, is no longer calling itself Diversified Gas & Oil Company. Instead, the company has changed its name to Diversified Energy Company. The company also changed its website URL from the old dgoc.com to div.energy. However, the mission remains the same: grow by buying older/existing gas and oil wells.
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Two weeks ago we brought you the sad news that completion and startup for Equitrans’ 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) and the company’s 75-mile extension to it called MVP Southgate will now be delayed until 2022 and 2023 respectively (see 
This Wednesday the radicals of “Protect PT” (Penn Township)–a group funded with shadowy Big Green money–will try to convince the Democrats sitting on Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court to overturn legal and safe shale drilling at well pads in Penn Township (Westmoreland County, PA). Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) previously submitted plans to drill multiple wells on two new well pads in the township. The Zoning Hearing Board approved the plans.
Did you know that Mom Earth is polluting…herself? Did you know that Mom Earth is responsible for her own global warming? Yeah. You see, a full 25% of all so-called fugitive methane emissions (methane that goes unfiltered up into the atmosphere) come from swamps. Or what you may call “wetlands.” And there isn’t a darned thing we mankind can do about it because, well, they’re wetlands and pristine and if you drain them, that’s an environmental crime against Mom Earth. Yet swamps are causing a big, fat global warming issue. What’s an environmentalist wacko to do?
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Utica Shale Academy continues to grow; U.S. oil, gas drilling permitting jumps by double digits in April; Marathon Petroleum completes sale of Speedway convenience stores to 7-Eleven; NATIONAL: Can U.S. LNG compete in an increasingly crowded market?; Where does U.S. natural gas production go from here?; Natural gas, America’s no. 1 power source, already has a new challenger; INTERNATIONAL: Role of natural gas will become more and more important over the coming years.
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 issued its first-quarter 2021 update earlier this week. The big announcement coming from CEO Jeff Fisher is that Ascent is pursuing (like three other M-U drillers) “certification” of its shale gas.
Pieridae Energy’s Goldboro LNG project, located in Nova Scotia (with the potential to export Marcellus/Utica molecules) has been on our radar for years. Nine years to be exact. In August 2020 Pieridae hired a senior VP to run the project, an indicator the company is serious about building it (see 
MiQ is an independent, not-for-profit partnership between RMI and SYSTEMIQ aimed at reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. The way they do it is with a certification. The MiQ Standard evaluates factors in methane intensity, company practices, and methane detection, giving the methane produced an A-F grade. Several M-U drillers, including EQT and Northeast Natural Energy, are adopting MiQ as part of their effort to prove they aren’t scumbags polluting Mom Earth. Now MiQ is expanding to certify entire cargoes of LNG that get exported.
The Jones Act prevents LNG from being transported from one U.S. port (like Cove Point, Maryland and Elba Island, Georgia) to other U.S. ports (like Boston and New York) because there are no built-in-the-USA LNG carriers, a requirement under the 1920 Jones Act. When New England runs low on natural gas, they must import the gas from Russia (see 
The Enverus rig count added another 10 rigs for the week ending May 13 to hit a new post-pandemic high of 555 active rigs. Both the Marcellus and the Utica lost one rig each, ending the week at 35 for the Marcellus and 12 for the Utica. Cumulatively the M-U has 47 active rigs. The main competitor to the M-U, the Haynesville in Louisiana and Texas, lost 2 rigs and now has 51 active rigs.
Chesapeake Energy issued its first quarterly update since exiting bankruptcy in February. It wasn’t the typical update most public companies issue. It’s a challenge to reconcile numbers before bankruptcy and after exiting bankruptcy. A few highlights: When combining numbers from before and after bankruptcy, we found (in digging through the SEC Form 8-K filing) that Chessy produced 2 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) on natural gas, most of which was produced in the northeast PA Marcellus (1.26 Bcf/d). The company also produced an average of 80,000 barrels of oil and 22,000 barrels of NGLs (in non-Marcellus plays) in 1Q21. We also discovered the company’s strategy on where it plans to expand its shale gas drilling program (the answer may not please you)…
Last Friday National Fuel Gas Company (NFG), the parent company for Seneca Resources and Empire Pipeline, issued its latest quarterly update for the quarter ending Mar. 31 (NFG’s second fiscal quarter, everyone else’s first quarter). The company’s purchase of Shell’s Marcellus assets last year (450,000 acres, 350 producing Marcellus and Utica shale wells in Tioga County) gave Seneca a 43% boost in production in its fiscal 2Q21 over 2Q20. Seneca drilled 14 new wells in fiscal 2Q.