PA Lawmakers Send Bill Splitting Conventional & Shale Regs to Gov
The Pennsylvania Senate previously passed and yesterday “concurred” (signed-off on) Senate Bill 790, sending it to Gov. Tom Wolf for his signature. SB 790 restores sanity to regulations for conventional oil and gas drillers in the Keystone State. Unfortunately, Gov. Wolf has stubbornly said he will veto this common sense bill. Why are we not surprised?
Read More “PA Lawmakers Send Bill Splitting Conventional & Shale Regs to Gov”
Yesterday Rising Phoenix Royalties (RPR) announced it has purchased the future royalty payments from a landowner in the Utica Shale, in Monroe County, OH. This acquisition is RPR’s third Marcellus/Utica transaction this year.
An interesting week for permits. Last week Pennsylvania issued just 2 new shale well drilling permits after having issued 3 the week before (lowest numbers we’ve seen). Ohio, which has not issued many permits in recent months, was on fire last week with 17 new shale permits! West Virginia issued just 1 new shale well permit.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Gulf Power to retire its last coal units in Florida; NATIONAL: EIA expects U.S. crude oil production to remain relatively flat through 2021; Are we on the verge of a new bull market in natural gas?; The ‘war on coal’ is over…the next climate battle has just begun; How much damage to America can Biden do with his energy plan?; Joe Biden’s net-zero isn’t normal; Climate targets could slash natural gas investment by $1 trillion; Danly to cancel FERC press briefings; INTERNATIONAL: Covid-19 caused the loss of over 28,000 oil & gas jobs in Australia.
Deep Well Services (DWS), headquartered in Butler County, PA, is living up to the company name. DWS is one of our favorite oilfield services companies, born right here in the Marcellus/Utica. DWS specializes in “snubbing” work–completing those super-long laterals you read about. Earlier this year the company drilled three more record-breaking wells–the longest onshore wells ever drilled in the world! The current record-holding well drilled by DWS, completed just last quarter, is located in…
New England “doesn’t produce a barrel of crude oil, a gallon of NGLs, or a cubic foot of natural gas.” All of the considerable quantity of fossil fuels the region uses for energy must be brought in–by pipeline (very few pipelines), truck, ship, or rail. Propane is one of the primary heating fuels used in New England. Guess where the region’s propane comes from, and how it gets there?
Once again the price of natural gas traded on the Henry Hub in south Louisiana, the NYMEX December futures contract, has tanked. The price fell $0.30 yesterday to close at $2.70/Mcf. There were two primary reasons why: (1) The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released a storage report last Friday showing storage levels are near record-highs (too much supply), and (2) longer range weather models show temps staying warm (not enough demand).
We hoped it wouldn’t happen, but warned you it might when Gulfport Energy announced several weeks ago it had missed a debt payment and was in “restructuring” talks (see 
EOG Resources, one of the largest oil and gas drillers in the U.S. (with operations in Trinidad and China too) has just sold *all* of its Marcellus assets located in Bradford County, PA to (we’ll tell you below, MDN has the exclusive on this) for $130 million. EOG has now left the M-U building.
In August Southwestern Energy announced it is buying out and merging in Montage Resources in an all-stock deal (see 
Once again PTT Global Chemical is changing the timeline for a final investment decision (FID) to build a $10 billion ethane cracker plant in Belmont County, OH–for the umpteenth time. The most recent timeline had a decision coming by the end of this year or in the first quarter of next year. Whoops, they did it again! The new timeline is now “at least the middle of 2021.”