Clown Judges from 4th Circuit Put Another Hold on MVP Permit
This has been going on for more than a year. Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303-mile pipeline from West Virginia to southern Virginia, has not been able to finish a project that is now 92% in the ground and complete because of repeated lawsuits by the Sierra Club and colluding leftist Democrat judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The delays are costing MVP $20 million per month! Yesterday the clowns did it yet again. They blocked a Nationwide Permit 12 (NWP12) that was reissued by the Army Corps of Engineers after being reworked because of an earlier rejection by the same court. NWP12 would allow the pipeline to cross creeks and rivers and wetlands.
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We’ve been tracking the daily price of the NYMEX December futures contract at the South Louisiana Henry Hub on and off for the past few months. Yesterday it closed down again, at $2.86/Mcf (or MMBtu). However, the “spot price” for gas–actual physical gas bought and sold at various trading points along pipelines–has all but crashed and burned in the Marcellus/Utica. It’s bad. Like, historic record low bad.
Nuverra Environmental Solutions (formerly Heckmann) is one of the largest companies in the United States that handles transportation and disposal of shale drilling wastewater and leftover rock and dirt from drilling. The company has major operations in the Marcellus/Utica region. In August, the company reported less-than-rosy results for the second quarter, because of the coronavirus and producers slowing down their drilling programs (see 
Last week Pennsylvania issued a paltry 3 new shale well drilling permits (lowest we’ve seen in months), Ohio issued a single new permit, and West Virginia issued 5 new shale well permits. All 3 PA permits were issued in Greene County. The OH permit was issued in Carroll County (bit of a surprise). And all 5 WV permits were issued in Tyler County.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Canfield woman appointed to Ohio’s Advisory Council on Oil and Gas; Learning from Pennsylvania’s election chaos; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Eight steps that could upend Texas Gulf Coast natural gas markets; NATIONAL: OFS sector adds jobs, but resurgent pandemic means an uncertain outlook; Good assets are hedge against any adverse US political impacts: Kosmos; Oil & gas associations welcome Biden/Harris; Biden’s America to rejoin the Paris climate accords – will it help the environment?; Joe Biden’s four big energy transition challenges; INTERNATIONAL: Europe ready to restart transatlantic climate dialogue after Trump ‘parenthesis’; Egypt seeks to almost double cars running on natural gas by 2023; Global LNG supplies seen gradually tightening on FID delays; Prospective Biden administration welcomed by OPEC leaders; China inks first term deal for U.S. LNG since trade war erupted.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been declared the victors of the election (prematurely) by the Democrat mainstream media. President Trump is rightly challenging massive voter fraud and “software glitches” in vote tabulating software used in 28 states (which you won’t read about in Democrat media). So it’s not over yet. However, let’s assume Biden/Harris seize power and occupy the White House, which seems the likely outcome. Their win means the decimation of the shale oil and gas industry in this country. Oil and gas are the biggest losers. This is what you’ve voted for, America. We hope you “enjoy” the result.
That didn’t take long. Following the Democrat media’s declaration Biden won (even though the election has not yet been certified), Biden released a new energy “transition” plan–this morning. In the plan, Biden calls for cutting natural gas usage nationwide by electrifying everything and eliminating all “non-carbon” power production. His minions are gushing about how Biden will transform the EPA and other federal agencies away from “dirty” fossil fuels and to “clean energy.” Let the carnage begin.
Radical anti-fossil fuel groups have not given up hope they can somehow, at the last minute, block the $10 billion Shell ethane cracker plant (about a year from being completed) from ever starting up. Perhaps Biden’s “victory” has given them a little boost of irrational exuberance? In 2015 the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued an air permit for the cracker plant. Shell needs to tweak the permit with new information. Antis are asking PA to deny the new tweaks, claiming Shell wants to pollute the region even more. Shell says the tweaks reflect new realities, including LOWER emissions.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and his Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) continue to push a plan that will raise Pennsylvania residents’ electric rates by 50% or more, a carbon tax plan called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The DEP will conduct 10 three-hour virtual public hearings between Dec. 8 and 14. There will be no in-person hearings due to concerns over COVID-19.
In something of a surprise for us, last week as the election returns continued to roll in and votes were counted (or miscounted, in a number of cases), President Trump demoted or fired several top agency heads. One of them was at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Trump demoted FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee and elevated fellow Republican James Danly to become the new Chairman of FERC. Chatterjee will remain a FERC commissioner.
Summit Midstream Partners, formed in 2009 and headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas, operates natural gas, crude oil, and produced water gathering (pipeline) systems in several unconventional shale plays, including the Marcellus and Utica. Last Friday Summit issued its third-quarter 2020 update. Interestingly, the gas flowing through the company’s Marcellus and Utica operations increased (a lot), while volumes flowing through the company’s other operations decreased (a lot) in 3Q.
Kimbell Royalty Partners, headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, is a leading buyer of oil and natural gas mineral and royalty interests, owning interests in more than 96,000 wells across 28 states, including wells in the Marcellus/Utica region. Yesterday the publicly-traded company issued its third-quarter 2020 update. We discovered some information about their involvement in the M-U, including the Marcellus in northeastern Pennsylvania.