Is the Future of Natural Gas Hydrogen & Carbon Capture?
You can’t miss it if you look at energy headlines. The word “hydrogen” is everywhere, being touted as THE energy fuel of the future. Right behind it is “carbon capture.” The two work together in many cases. Our friend Joe Barone is dedicating an entire conference to these topics. The First Annual Appalachian Hydrogen & Carbon Capture Conference will be held April 8 in Pittsburgh. It’s a timely conference worthy of your consideration. Below we bring you more background on both hydrogen and carbon capture.
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OTHER U.S. REGIONS: New Mexico and Texas officials give dire warnings over federal lands ban impacts; Oil and gas coalition aims to end routine flaring by 2030; Rockland Council to hold meeting on natural gas project; NATIONAL: Shale rig owner touts new price model as drilling speeds up; EIA lifts forecasts for US gas production, trims 2021 price estimates; A look at Chesapeake energy’s exit from bankruptcy; First Keystone XL, now Dakota Access: pipeline politics swirl around Biden; INTERNATIONAL: Poland’s LNG imports again jump as Russian supplies decline; Germany claims emissions success yet becomes more dependent than ever on Russia?
Yesterday the mighty Chesapeake Energy emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy having hosed previous stockholders (making their shares of stock worthless), and making the company’s debtors the new shareholder/owners. The company dumped $7.8 billion worth of debt and emerges with $1.27 billion in debt on the books. As we told you last week, everything old is new again: the company will focus on natural gas drilling and downplay oil drilling (see 
Two weeks ago CNX Resources issued its 4Q and full-year 2020 update, except at the time they didn’t issue the usual press release with a summary overview (see 
As we reported two weeks ago, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (Democrat) has, for the seventh year in a row, introduced a Marcellus-killing severance tax proposal as part of his annual budget proposal (see 
West Virginia is represented by one Republican U.S. Senator, Shelley Moore Capito, and one Democrat, Joe Manchin. Manchin is tolerable (just) because he advocates for coal and oil/gas. Manchin is also the new chairman of the powerful Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Manchin, to his credit, is pushing back against Joe Biden’s ill-advised cancelation of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. In fact, both Biden and Capito are loudly supporting Keystone and (important for us) the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project, which runs through WV.
Two of three M-U states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania received 22 new permits (second week in a row with 22 new permits). Ohio received zero new permits. And West Virginia received 6 new permits (down from 8 new permits the previous week).
Cabot Oil & Gas, the powerhouse dry gas producer operating in one northeastern Pennsylvania county (and producing roughly 2.5% of the natgas for the entire nation from that one county) is not due to release full 4Q and full-year 2020 numbers until Feb. 19. However, the company did provide some high-level numbers for last year and a preview of what it plans to do in 2021.
Last year the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) fined the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project $265,972 for erosion and sediment issues related to constructing the 303-mile pipeline (see 
ECA Marcellus Trust I, traded over-the-counter on the pink sheets, canceled distributions (dividends) to investors for the first three quarters of 2020 due to the pandemic and the crash in oil and gas prices. The company reports it *will* pay investors for 4Q20–a grand total of 9/10ths of one penny per unit.
Life is full of unsung heroes. The West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey (WVGES) is one such hero in the Mountain State. WVGES plays a vital role in the state’s shale gas/oil industry. How WVGES determines where and how much natural gas, oil, and NGLs are located under the crust of WV. They also determine how best to take advantage of those natural resources.
Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), is a sub-unit of the Dept. of Energy. The DOE, as you know, is now part of the Evil Empire (aka the Biden Administration). As you also know, old dementia Joe has been bashing away at fossil fuels since he took office, promising to “transition away” from fossil fuels during his tenure of occupying the White House. Yet the EIA is out with a projection that shows “renewables” (includes not just wind and solar but hydro and “other”) will still make up less than half (42%) of electric power production 30 years from now! Fossil fuels (natural gas and coal) will still have a larger share of electric production than renewables 30 years from now. How’s that for a “transition away” from fossil fuels?
Reuters is reporting natural gas prices across North America have “soared” over the past few days as homes and businesses cranked up their heaters to escape a blast of arctic air and snow moving from Canada to the U.S. Midwest and northeast. The price of natgas trading at the Waha Hub in the Texas Permian Basin is at its highest since December 2018. Here in the northeast prices in Boston and New York City hit fresh one-year highs over the past few days. And it’s the same in Pittsburgh and northeastern PA.