Retrograde: Enverus Onshore Rig Count Slips Again, Down 7 Rigs
Two weeks ago the Enverus onshore rig count finally hit bottom and turned around, nudging up by five rigs (see Bottom! Enverus Onshore Rig Count Finally Moves Higher Last Week). Last week the count climbed again, up another 11 (see Enverus Onshore Rig Count Higher Again, Leaving Bottom Behind). Over the past seven days the rig count faltered and has gone backward (retrograde) once again, going down seven rigs. The good news is that we’re still higher than the bottom hit a few weeks ago.
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We include this story on MDN because (a) it’s Friday and sometimes we get a little giddy and have fun on Fridays, and (b) to illustrate the lengths crazies will go to reduce the amount of “fugitive methane” that “escapes” into the atmosphere. Agriculture (farm animals) produce huge amounts of fugitive methane–a fact that the climate loons grudgingly have to deal with if they want to keep up the false pretense that the planet is catastrophically warming. So every now and again the crazies come out with truly insane plans to capture, or in this case restrict, the amount of methane cows fart and burp. Penn State is all proud of itself that it has determined the optimum “dosing” of a really big antacid tablet for Bessie…
Two weeks ago there were 27 new permits issued in Pennsylvania for shale drilling. Last week, July 20-24, there were only 3 new PA permits. Ouch. Finally, after several weeks of no shale permits in Ohio, the Buckeye State issued 8 new shale permits–all for the same well pad. In West Virginia, there were 3 new shale drilling permits (all for the same well pad) issued last week. The permits in PA were issued in Bradford, Susquehanna, and Washington counties. The OH permits were issued in Harrison County. The WV permits were issued in Wetzel County. There is no doubt drilling has greatly slowed throughout the M-U. Below are the details for each new permit issued.
Earlier this month Dominion Energy announced it is throwing in the towel and canceling the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project that would have stretched from West Virginia to North Carolina. The company also announced it is selling its pipeline business to Warren Buffett (see 
Yesterday MDN brought you the news that CNX Resources is buying out the balance of what they don’t own in their pipeline subsidiary CNX Midstream (see 
Less than one year after buying Baker Hughes, GE decided it didn’t want its bright shiny new toy anymore and would divest itself of Baker Hughes (see 
The National Whistleblower Center (NWC), a partisan (Democrat) nonprofit group, last December launched what it calls a “Climate Corruption Campaign” to “enlist whistleblowers in the fight against fraud and other crimes in the three industry sectors responsible for the vast majority of the world’s carbon pollution: oil and gas, coal, and industrial logging” (see 
President Trump visited the Permian Basin yesterday to announce export authorizations for LNG will now go through 2050, to sign four permits for pipeline and rail transport of fossil fuels, and to get the truth out about his administration’s efforts to make America secure by making our country “energy dominant.” The liberal media spin machine was in overdrive trying to cover up the great news about U.S. fossil fuels–but they could not. Trump was on his “A” game yesterday and it showed.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: US shale firm Apache reports $386 million loss, renewed international focus; NATIONAL: U.S. energy consumption in April 2020 fell to its lowest level in more than 30 years; How America’s shale industry can navigate tough times and emerge resilient; Henry Hub gas forwards turn bullish on tightening US supply-demand fundamentals; INTERNATIONAL: Shell flags production fall into Q3; assets impaired by $16.8 billion.
We love a story about an individual or company that defies conventional wisdom and succeeds by charting its own course separate from the herd. Diversified Gas & Oil (DGO) is one such company. DGO buys up older conventional (and shale) wells in Appalachia, making money off the “long tail” of low production (see 
Radical environmentalists (far outside the mainstream) are making one final push to pressure the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to expand an already onerous new regulation it is planning to implement. Last December the DEP’s Environmental Quality Board (EQB) approved new regulations that supposedly will capture every last molecule of stray methane that leaks from shale drilling operations (see 
FirstEnergy is in the middle of an excrement storm. The company’s former subsidiary FirstEnergy Solutions (now called Energy Harbor) allegedly paid $60 million in bribes to Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and several of his associates to gain their assistance passing the hugely unpopular House Bill 6 (see 
How does one make money in the natural gas market these days when the price of gas is at historic lows? One way is if an investor was fortunate enough to bet the price would go down. Those folks made money. The other way is to…invest in drillers? Yep. Even though low prices hurt drillers, investors still like the looks of what is on the horizon, especially for companies operating in the Marcellus/Utica. Example: The stock price for Range Resources and EQT is up over 30% each this year so far.
Here’s a little known factoid that will be useful for anyone wondering what the price of NGLs (natural gas liquids) will bring in a given market at a given time. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), our favorite government agency, points out NGLs almost always fetch prices that are “range-bound” between the price of oil on the high end, and the price of natural gas on the low end. Natural gasoline (an NGL) tracks closest the high end and the price of crude oil, while ethane is at the bottom of list closest to the price of methane.