IRRC Recommends PA EQB Delay Adopting Wolf’s Carbon Tax
Pennsylvania’s Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) has just thrown up a huge roadblock to Democrat/autocrat PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s attempt to railroad through a proposal to force PA to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a $2.6 billion carbon tax aimed at killing coal and gas-fired power plants. The IRRC told the rule-adopting Environmental Quality Board (EQB) it should delay adoption of the proposed RGGI regulation by one year, from 2022 to 2023.
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The Enverus U.S. rig count numbers continued to climb over the past week, even during the extreme cold snap and winter weather that shut down wide swaths of the economy in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. The rig count grew by four to 461 for the week ending Feb. 17. The Permian, which has added the most rigs in recent months, fell by 3 active rigs last week, but that was made up by several other plays, including the Marcellus which gained one rig in the dry gas region of northeastern PA.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Tier 1 Rental and Distribution files bankruptcy; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Cold snap causes force majeure at Cameron LNG; Democratic state lawmakers propose fracking ban in California; Sustained arctic weather exposes weaknesses in Texas’s power industry; Texans deserve better than the epic power generation failure they have endured this week; NATIONAL: Annual U.S. liquefied natural gas exports forecast to exceed pipeline exports in 2022; US gas production stabilizes, easing domestic supply crunch and lower prices; INTERNATIONAL: Putin’s corrupt pipeline is on life support.
Yesterday the country’s largest natural gas producer, EQT Corporation, released its 4Q and full-year 2020 update, holding a conference call with analysts to discuss the results. The update shows the company produced an average of 4.45 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of natural gas in 4Q. Although there was plenty of “free cash flow” for the year, on paper the company lost $967 million in 2020, which is an improvement over the year before when it lost $1.2 billion. Perhaps the biggest news (for us) coming from yesterday’s update is that in 4Q EQT turned its drilling attention to the West Virginia Marcellus. EQT plans to do much more drilling in WV this year too.
Pipeline giant Energy Transfer made quite a splash yesterday during its 4Q and full-year 2020 update by announcing the company has cut a deal to buy Enable Midstream for $7.2 billion. That deal, while important, has nothing to do with the M-U region. We were interested in talk about the company’s Mariner East (ME) pipeline system and Marcus Hook terminal–and there was plenty of talk about those important assets too. Co-CEO Tom Long said he expects the last pieces of ME to finally be done in the second quarter of this year.
What is it with the recalcitrant members of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC)? As we told you a few weeks ago, the DRBC is being sued by a Wayne County, PA landowner–who stands an excellent chance of winning (see 
We hate it when the bad guys win even a small victory, as has just happened. We told you last week about a group of radicalized anti-fossil fuelers who raised a stink with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Proteciton (DEP) over the DEP’s routine, nothing-to-see-here renewal of permits for already-running (with no operational problems) shale wastewater recycling facilities scattered around the state (see 
Here’s a small victory to celebrate. In July 2018 three radical environmental groups dropped their objections to permits the DEP previously granted for the Mariner East 2 Pipeline. Clean Air Council, Mountain Watershed Association, and THE Delaware Riverkeeper “settled” their appeal of 20 permits issued to Sunoco for the ME2 project (see 
All three M-U states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania received 16 new permits. Ohio received 3 new permits. And West Virginia received 4 new permits.
Just yesterday we told you about the craziness in natural gas prices in Oklahoma (and elsewhere, like Texas) that happened last Friday, when the cash price for natgas hit $600 in trading at one hub in the Sooner State (see 
Oil and gas drilling giant Equinor (formerly called Statoil) is owned by the Norwegian government. Equinor/Statoil has drilled in the Marcellus/Utica for years. It looks like that may be coming to an end–at least the active drilling part. Equinor officials say they are evaluating their U.S. shale holdings, including their active drilling on 27,000 acres in the Utica Shale, with an eye toward selling.
Once you sort through all of the subsidiaries of subsidiaries of subsidiaries, you’ll find this news from a press release we spotted this morning: PennEnergy Resources has sold a gathering pipeline system in western Pennsylvania, called Pine Run Midstream, to a joint venture partnership between venture capital firm Energy Spectrum Partners (based in Texas) and utility/pipeline company UGI (based in Pennsylvania). Sale price: $205 million.