Other Stories of Interest: Thu, Apr 8, 2021
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: DCNR, DEP begin plugging 12 abandoned oil & gas wells in Cornplanter State Forest; NATIONAL: Occidental CEO Hollub opposes a carbon tax despite rivals’ support for idea; Wrecking Biodiversity (video); U.S. energy E&P deals jump to $3.4 billion in first-quarter as shale consolidates; INTERNATIONAL: Canadian pipeline companies sees natgas opportunities in shift to green energy; Nord Stream 2 proves to be geo-political disaster; Climate activists smash Barclays HQ windows to protest capitalism’s role in climate change.
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This is not good. The Weymouth compressor, the final piece of the $452 million Atlantic Bridge expansion project experienced a third “unplanned release” of natural gas yesterday. No word yet on how much gas was released or why. The project is already under an intense microscope with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) threatening to shut it down after only went online in January (see 
Last week the State of New Jersey, along with co-conspirator the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, filed their responses to defend their indefensible actions in blocking PennEast Pipeline’s eminent domain taking of land owned or controlled by NJ. It was their last, desperate attempt to avoid having a lower court ruling overturned. They gave it their best shot, but we think they came up short.
Last week we brought you the earthshattering news of a resurrection–the resurrection of the Williams Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project in the New York City area (see 
Last week a group of U.S. Senators, including John Kennedy (R-La.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), and Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), introduced the Natural Gas Export Expansion Act. The bill, if it becomes law, will remove regulatory bottlenecks for LNG (liquefied natural gas) and increase LNG exports to the more than 160 countries in the World Trade Organization.
All three M-U states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania received 6 new permits (4 of them for Chesapeake Energy). Ohio received 4 new permits last week, all of them for Antero Resources (2 different well pads). And West Virginia received 4 new permits (3 of them for Southwestern Energy).
Each quarter the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) issues an update on Utica (and Marcellus) oil and natural gas production. ODNR no longer issues a summary press release as they once did, which means the quarterly updates kind of fell off our radar. An astute MDN subscriber emailed to ask about the 4Q numbers for Ohio. We checked and discovered we had only reported on 2Q numbers for all of 2020! Today we correct that oversight. ODNR publishes a detailed spreadsheet of all active wells showing oil and gas production by well. We make a copy of that spreadsheet, enhance it to make it more usable, and link to it–for each quarter in 2020. We also do our own sorting to show you the top 25 shale gas wells and top 25 shale oil wells for each quarter in 2020.
In February West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announced a plan to eliminate the state’s personal income tax. In order to replace the $2.1 billion received annually from the personal income tax, Justice would raise other taxes, including a tiered system that raises the state’s oil and gas severance tax…potentially by a lot (see 
Nearly two weeks ago MDN reported that the final two “tree sitters” (a man and a woman) who were illegally blocking the path of Mountain Valley Pipeline by living for months/years at the top of several trees, were finally removed from the trees where they were living by law enforcement (see 
The expert number crunchers at our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), now have the lowdown on how the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting partial shutdown of the American economy affected energy use in 2020. Our country saw the largest one-year decline in energy usage–ever. Last year’s energy usage dipped 7% from the previous year. The biggest loser was the transportation sector which decreased energy usage by 15%. Even the residential sector with people staying home saw a slight decrease of 1% last year.
The headline of this post and indeed the post itself (below) is not our view or opinion. It was authored by an oil and gas industry veteran, David Blackmon, writing on the Forbes magazine website. Yes, we previously covered the absolute disaster that Biden is pedaling as an “infrastructure” plan (see 