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Sisters of the Corn Return – Sue Williams re Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline
Like a bad Stephen King horror flick, the Sisters of the Corn (our name for a group of leftist nuns in Lancaster County, PA) have returned to file yet another frivolous lawsuit against Williams over a pipeline that crosses their land–a pipeline (Atlantic Sunrise) that has been up and running for years. The Sisters claim an infringement of their “religious liberties” in the lawsuit. They tried this argument once before and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
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In line with a rise of COVID-19 cases in the general population throughout the state of Pennsylvania (and elsewhere), workers at the Shell ethane cracker site in Monaca, PA (near Pittsburgh) have seen a big jump in active coronavirus cases. As of yesterday, the number of active cases stood at 39. Wednesday the number was 31. Shell says most if not all of the cases are coming from offsite and onsite transmission among the 7,000 active workers is not a factor in the rising number.
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 third-quarter 2020 update yesterday. Ascent reports it shut-in 210 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of production, but still managed to produce 2 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) during 3Q.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) continues to block Energy Transfer’s Revolution Pipeline gathering system in western PA from restarting. In September the DEP finally, after two years, gave ET permission to fix problems that caused the pipeline to explode. Even though ET has fixed the original site of the explosion, the DEP says there are other areas of concern and forbids certain sections of the pipeline from restarting, until…
The Enverus U.S. rig count rose by a whopping 20 to 379 over the past week. Prior to that, the count rose by 11, 11, and 13 for each of the three weeks prior, respectively. That’s up 55 rigs over the past month! The Marcellus and Utica each remained constant last week, not adding and not dropping. The Marcellus stands at 27 rigs, and the Utica at 6.
A cool new initiative called 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Pittsburgh mayor touts ‘Marshall Plan’ for Appalachia, a proposed $600B for transition from fossil fuels to greener energy; Consumers from the Tristate region saved more than $107.5 billion thanks to affordable natural gas; NATIONAL: Making sense of the hydrogen buzz; Biden presidency imperils key oil pipelines; Biden’s oil plan…the good, the bad and the illegal; Biden is targeting U.S. industry; INTERNATIONAL: Saudi Aramco pitches natural gas to China.
Yesterday Pittsburgh Business Times‘ ace reporter Paul Gough got EQT CEO Toby Rice to open up and talk about the company’s recently announced deal to buy Chevron’s considerable Marcellus/Utica assets (see 
EQT CEO Toby Rice has been positively chatty lately. He gave a great interview to the Pittsburgh Business Times revealing his thinking with respect to the recently announced Chevron deal (see today’s lead story). He also spoke to Bloomberg reporters. Rice shared his views on further consolidation in the M-U sector. He indicated EQT is still in the hunt for a deal with CNX and possibly other M-U drillers.
On Tuesday, Talen Energy Corp., under extreme litigation pressure from the odious Sierra Club, announced it will eliminate the use of coal at all of the company’s wholly-owned facilities. Back in 2017 MDN brought you the news that Talen’s coal-fired Brunner Island Power Plant, located in York County, PA, is investing $100 million to retrofit the plant so it can burn 100% Marcellus Shale gas by 2028 (see 
Epsilon Energy concentrates most of its effort on the Marcellus in Susquehanna County, PA. Epsilon doesn’t actually do any of its own drilling. The company partners with (gives money to) other companies, like Chesapeake Energy, and the other company does the drilling. Epsilon, according to its website, owns ~4,000 net acres in the PA Marcellus. They also own assets in Oklahoma’s Anadarko Basin. On Tuesday Epsilon issued its third-quarter 2020 update, showing a bump up in revenue to $5.8 million in 3Q20 (vs. $5.2 million in 3Q19).
Eureka Resources, which operates three frack wastewater treatment facilities in the Marcellus Shale, is doing really cool stuff. In October 2019 the company began extracting lithium from Marcellus wastewater at one of its plants in Bradford County, PA (see 
According to the president and CEO of BP Energy, one of BP’s largest North American subsidiaries, “Demand for gas to be liquefied and exported from the US has recovered beyond pre-pandemic levels to nearly its maximum capacity.” Whoa, who knew? We are far from being over and done with the COVID-19 pandemic, yet LNG demand is already back and has exceeded demand from before the pandemic. This is seriously good news for the Marcellus/Utica and the export of our molecules.
Our worst fears have been realized. The federal EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is about to be overrun with Communists and leftists. On Tuesday the Harris/Biden campaign, even though it hasn’t actually won anything yet, announced various people to head up its “transition” (i.e. power grab). Biden has selected the radicalized Patrice Simms from Earthjustice to head up the EPA transition. A COMPLETE disaster. You don’t get any more radical. Still glad you voted for Biden? We’re praying the courts will honor Trump’s request to count only legal ballots and that he remains in power.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: FirstEnergy’s top lawyer, chief ethics officer are out, acting CEO gets $150,000 pay raise; Pennsylvania has prepared itself to safely and successfully build pipeline infrastructure; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Sue-happy Louisiana sends people, jobs, and investments fleeing; NATIONAL: December natural gas futures rally for second consecutive day as cooler forecasts hold; U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions fell in 2019, mainly in electric generation; US E&Ps to keep cost-cutting, cautious approach in 2021 amid COVID-19 concerns; Oil operators get DUCs in a row, adding fracking crews to boost output; Election 2020 – the energy voter strikes back; Shell to push Biden for carbon pricing, more methane emissions rules; The coming energy shocks under a Biden administration; Pipeline opposition, hurdles sharpen focus on existing assets: Energy Transfer; How one firm drove influence campaigns nationwide for Big Oil; INTERNATIONAL: New blow for US LNG in Europe as Irish court quashes Shannon LNG consents; Cleaning up LNG becomes a target of EU in blow to U.S. exporters; New LNG-fueled ships and LNG bunkering infrastructure coming online; India could be the next breakout natural gas market.
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