Weekly Shale Drilling Permits for PA, OH, WV: Sep 21-25
An unusual situation for permits to drill new wells for last week. Pennsylvania only had 5 new permits while West Virginia had 12 new permits. It’s typically the other way around. Could this be the beginning of the effects from PA raising the permit fee from $5,000 to $12,500 per well? Maybe! Ohio had no new Utica permits issued last week. Drilling seems to have slowed in the Buckeye State.
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Pieridae Energy’s Goldboro LNG project, located in Nova Scotia (with the potential to export Marcellus/Utica molecules) has been on our radar for years. In August Pieridae hired a senior VP to run the project (see
Consulting powerhouse Ernst & Young (EY) has just published results from a new survey titled “Oil & Gas Digital Transformation and Workforce Survey.” The survey/study finds “digital transformation” of oil and gas companies is essential to the future of our industry. What, exactly, is “digital transformation”? We’ll tell you.
NATIONAL: Are parking lots the next target for anti-fracking activists?; E&Ps plot lean second-half investment after second-quarter capex retreat; Polling continues to show voters support fracking; DOJ urged to investigate US environmental NGOs for foreign influence; INTERNATIONAL: Shell to cut up to 9,000 jobs as oil demand slumps; Ontario’s green-energy catastrophe.
It could have been avoided. The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has no one to blame but themselves for what happened at Marsh Creek Lake in Chester County, PA, when Energy Transfer (ET), drilling underground to install a pipeline for the Mariner East 2 project, experienced a drilling mud spill in August (see
Two months ago PTT Global Chemical signed a contract with the Mountaineer NGL Storage project to use Mountaineer’s planned underground storage facility in Monroe County, OH to supply ethane to PTT’s cracker plant in neighboring Belmont County when/if the cracker gets built (see
Here’s a story we haven’t written about in two years. American Water Management Services (AWMS) owns a wastewater injection well in Trumbull County that supposedly caused a low-level earthquake (that nobody could feel) in 2014. Actually there are two injection wells located at the site, both operated by AWMS. They were both “temporarily” shut down by the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources following the quake nobody could feel (see 
In the first half of 2020, the U.S. exported 5.4 million barrels per day (bpd) of petroleum products, a slight increase of 48,000 bpd (1%) from the first half of 2019. Wait, what? Exports went UP and not down? Even though the entire world shut down and used far less fossil fuels during 1H? That’s right. The reason we exported slightly more petroleum products is because NGLs (natural gas liquids) are part of those numbers, and the world kept using NGLs, like propane and ethane, even during the COVID shutdown.
Energy Transfer (ET), builder and operator of the Revolution Pipeline in southwestern Pennsylvania, last week received permission from the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to reroute a section that “slipped” after record rainfall two years ago, resulting in an explosion in Beaver County.
CNX Resources has applied for permits to drill up to seven new Utica shale gas wells on a single pad in Washington Township on the grounds of the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County. The reason it’s raising a few eyebrows is that the new pad is in the general vicinity of the company’s faulty Shaw 1G well.
Last week Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a racketeering lawsuit against FirstEnergy, former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, and four of Householder’s associates, all related to an alleged $60 million bribery scandal in passing the hugely unpopular House Bill 6 (see
Last Friday the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a “settlement” (with no admission of guilt) with MarkWest Energy, with MarkWest paying a $150,000 fine for failure to monitor for air emissions leaks at its Liberty Bluestone facility in Butler County, PA.