Companies Eye M-U Region to Build New Factories, Leverage Shale
MDN is proud to once again partner with our friend Joe Barone from Shale Directories to help promote an important, upcoming conference. The 2nd Annual Appalachian Basin Real Estate Conference is slated for March 25 at the Oglebay Resort and Conference Center, in Wheeling, WV. This conference will attract businesses from outside the Marcellus/Utica region who may be interested in locating operations here to take advantage of our abundant and cheap natural gas and NGLs.
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MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Corning Natural Gas to be acquired by Argo Infrastructure Partners for $150 million; NATIONAL: EIA expects higher wholesale U.S. natural gas prices in 2021 and 2022; API looking for common ground to preserve U.S. energy dominance as Dems take control; The future of work in oil, gas and chemicals; Third of oil and gas workers faced pay cut in 2020 due to pandemic; INTERNATIONAL: The Biden administration and energy Part II – international relations; NFE to acquire Hygo Energy Transition and Golar LNG Partners in Combined $5 billion transaction; NFE to acquire power purchase agreements and build LNG-to-power project at Suape Port in Brazil.
In mid-December, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) issued an environmental impact statement (EIS) that supports plans for Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to run through 3.5 miles of woodlands, and under the Appalachian Trail, in the Jefferson National Forest in Monroe County in West Virginia, in and Giles and Montgomery counties in Virginia (see 
Dan Billman, a consulting geologist and president of Billman Geologic Consultants, has 32 years of experience in the Appalachian Basin. Billman says there is a “war for porosity” happening in the Marcellus/Utica region, by which he means a critical shortage of underground storage for methane and natural gas liquids.
The very first cargo of LNG to transit the expanded Panama Canal happened in July 2016 (see 
Two of three M-U drilling states received permits last week. Pennsylvania scored 10 permits to drill new shale wells. Ohio received 2 permits for Utica wells. West Virginia received no new permits to drill new shale wells.
In a brilliant move aimed at boxing in the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), two northeastern Pennsylvania State Senators–Gene Yaw and Lisa Baker–along with members of the PA Senate Republican Caucus, filed a lawsuit yesterday against the DRBC, accusing the quasi-governmental agency of “taking” the property rights of PA residents without just compensation under the law.
If you recall, the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic wasn’t really “a thing” (here in the U.S.) until mid-March 2020. That’s when all hell broke loose and the country shut down. Prior to that, natural gas demand was steadily rising and hitting all-time highs (see 
The 
The Community College of Beaver County’s (CCBC) Shell Center for Process Technology, a $5 million state-of-the-art training facility, has just officially opened. While the Center was built to train employees to run the Shell ethane cracker plant, it’s also training people for a myriad of other opportunities too.