Weekly Shale Drilling Permits for PA, OH, WV: Oct. 12-16
What do you know? All three M-U states issued new shale drilling permits last week! That’s the first time in perhaps the last two months all three states issued new shale permits in the same week. Pennsylvania issued 9 new permits, Ohio issued 3 new permits, and West Virginia issued 8 new permits.
Read More “Weekly Shale Drilling Permits for PA, OH, WV: Oct. 12-16”

Anti-fossil fuelers are predictable and their motives transparent. A movement anti in Chester County (liberal, far-left Democrat) wanted to expose confidential safety information about the Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline public. Specifically, he wanted to reveal “blast radius” information in hopes of inflaming opposition against the pipeline in his near-religious effort to get the pipeline permanently shut down. It’s a holy war for these people. Zealotry.
The price of natural gas trading at the Henry Hub terminal in southern Louisiana, the national benchmark price used for NYMEX futures contracts, has been on a rocket ship ride up over the past two days. Two days ago the price added $0.12 in a single day (see
American Energy Partners, Inc. (AEPT), based in Allentown, PA, is a small but diversified company. They have their fingers in a number of different oil and gas pies, including subsidies in drilling, remediation, water, valuation services, and education. AEPT announced a new deal yesterday to buy a producer with 230+ conventional natural gas wells in western Pennsylvania.
We are on the cusp of the quarterly earnings reports issued by all publicly-traded companies. In fact, EQT, the largest natural gas-producing company in the U.S., released their numbers and held a conference call this morning (we’ll report on it tomorrow). As Marcellus/Utica drillers get ready to release their third-quarter numbers, analysts on Wall Street are signaling what they want to see.
The mighty Mariner East pipeline system (ME1 and ME2) flows up to 345,000 barrels per day of NGLs, including propane and ethane, to the Philadelphia area where most of the ethane gets exported. Enterprise Products Partners’ 1,200-mile Appalachia-to-Texas (ATEX) ethane pipeline flows 145,000 barrels per day of ethane to the Gulf Coast. Even with all that ethane flowing out of our region to other markets, and even with some ethane sold and used in our region, most of the ethane produced in the M-U gets “rejected.”
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Trump blasts Biden’s fracking plans at rally; Cabot Oil & Gas: poised to generate nearly $700 million in positive cash flow in 2021; Energy Transfer awards $34,700 grant to protect Lower Chichester volunteer firefighters; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Texas oil trade group launches online career center as layoffs mount; NATIONAL: EIA forecasts slightly higher U.S. propane consumption this winter season; Trump commands energy sector’s financial backing, but Biden makes inroads; Five largest US oil and gas companies lost $307bn in market cap YoY, a 45% plunge amid COVID-19 crisis; INTERNATIONAL: Climate experts fly more often than other scientists.
Yesterday MDN told you of a new threat to LNG shipments from Louisiana with the grounding of a semi-submersible rig, blocking traffic coming from Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass LNG export terminal (see
Rystad Energy, headquartered in Norway, is an independent energy research and business intelligence company providing data, tools, analytics and consultancy services to the global energy industry. Rystad’s latest emailed newsletter contains a forecast for North American shale oil and gas production and capital investments, with the focus on the key contributing shale plays (including the Marcellus and the Utica). It is a fascinating forecast that shows a big increase coming in both shale oil and shale gas production between now and 2030.
Pennsylvania is so lucky to have a group of talented state legislators in both the House and Senate. Last week a group of House Republicans introduced a group of new bills they have dubbed “Commonwealth’s COVID Comeback.” The bills are aimed at bringing more jobs to the Keystone State in the manufacturing and energy sector. One of the bills is squarely aimed at getting the foot-draggers at the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to approve permits faster.
Methane (CH4) is one of the most abundant, naturally-occurring organic compounds on Planet Earth. And yet loony leftists claim it’s a pollutant and killing the planet. Go figure. We’ve always been fans of using methane as a fuel substitute for gasoline. But let’s face it, storing it in high-pressure tanks (CNG) or liquefying it and storing it at minus 260 degrees (LNG), is not an ideal way to use it in moving vehicles. It’s not handy or easy and takes special tanks. Researchers may just have found a solution for that problem.
New polls arrive each day now to proclaim that Donald Trump is toast and sleepy/creepy Uncle Joe Biden is going to win big. New polls arrive just about every week to announce that Americans are suspicious of shale fracking and would, in a heartbeat, dump fossil fuels. Don’t believe either the political or fracking polls so-called mainstream media releases. Why? Because the polls themselves are constructed not to determine public opinion, but to shape it. Almost all polls today are push-polls.
There is a battle underway by Big Green groups in Pennsylvania to unduly influence, pressure, and bully a quasi-governmental agency, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), into overturning a legally permitted LNG export facility planned for the New Jersey shore of the Delaware River by New Fortress Energy (NFE).