Shale Energy Stories of Interest: Thu, Jun 4, 2020
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: PA House committee to consider bill prohibiting carbon tax on gas plants; Days of violence also scramble Northeast energy situation; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas storage capacity remained relatively unchanged in 2019; INVEST Act appears to fund Gateway Project but comes down hard on liquefied natural gas transport by rail; SGA goes digital with two conferences; A precarious position for propane markets: reading the signals; INTERNATIONAL: Russia fears American energy dominance — and that’s a good thing; U.S. Senators to announce sanctions bill on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
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Gulfport Energy, the third-largest (by number wells drilled) producer in the Ohio Utica Shale, issued an update yesterday to its previous plans on drilling in the Ohio Utica (and Oklahoma SCOOP), revising down the amount of natural gas it will produce and revising down drilling activity previously planned for 2020. The company says it will delay until later this year/early next year more of its production than previously announced–due to ongoing low prices for natgas.
SECUR O&G, LLC is headquartered in Sewickley, PA, but its main operation, a Marcellus/Utica waste processing center, is located in the Bens Run Industrial Park in Friendly (Tyler County), WV. SECUR processes both liquid and solid drilling waste and handles TENORM (technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material) at its Bens Run facility. Last Friday SECUR filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of WV.
There were 7 new permits issued in PA for May 25-29. There were no new permits issued in WV for the same time period. The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) database is still down. MDN contacted ODNR today and was told by a spokesman, “The Division [of Oil and Gas Management] hopes to be able to resume permitting activities this week.” Does that mean no new Utica permits are being issued at this time?
A coalition of so-called environmental groups (leftist, very radical organizations) filed an official request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Saturday calling on FERC to conduct a supplemental environmental impact statement (EIS) for a project that’s already been studied to death: Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP). The once $5.5 billion project (now $8 billion because of delays caused by these nefarious groups) will run from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina.
We spotted an article by ICIS (Independent Commodity Intelligence Services) about ethylene contracts in May increasing in price after a six-month-long decline. How does that potentially impact drillers in the Marcellus/Utica? We’ll tell you…
MDN is updating our Calendar page more frequently to bring you the latest news on events of interest that have either been canceled, postponed, or in some cases, have gone virtual. We encourage you to review the list. A number of free and low-cost webinars and online events have popped up as an alternative to in-person meetings.
PTT Global Chemical, the huge Thailand-based petrochemical company looking to build a world-class ethane cracker plant in Belmont County, OH, has botched its messaging about when it will make a final investment decision (FID) about moving forward with the project. The latest FID was supposed to be now, by the end of June this year (see 
In April 2019, President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) instructing the Environmental Protection Agency to review Section 401 of the Clean Water Act–the section that grants states (and tribes) the right to have a say in pipeline projects (see 
Feedgas, which is the gas that flows to LNG export facilities, hit the lowest levels it has seen since last October according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. As we pointed out two weeks ago, natural gas prices are staying low because worldwide demand and prices for LNG is currently low (see 
New York City and Long Island are starved for new sources of natural gas. Utility giant National Grid supplies all of Long Island with gas, including NYC’s Brooklyn and Queens. National Grid’s best option to supply growing customer demand was a new pipeline. That option is now closed, thanks to Andrew Cuomo (see 
New Jersey Natural Gas (NJNG) has been saying, for years, that unless that state wants to run out of natural gas, it needs to allow a couple of new pipelines to bring new sources into the state. NJNG is promoting two pipeline projects–the Southern Reliability Link project and the PennEast Pipeline. Southern Reliability is currently under construction while PennEast is mired in a court battle. Now it seems the state is finally waking up to the fact they will run out of gas in the next 10 years if they don’t do something. So they’ve launched a study to see whether or not they can block the pipeline projects.
The mighty Mariner East 2X (ME2X) pipeline project gets closer and closer to 100% completion, despite the efforts of anti-fossil fuelers to hassle and block the project. In a bit of news ignored by mainstream media, another 13-mile stretch of ME2X in southeastern PA between Chester and Delaware counties went online late last week.