Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Coterra Energy (Cabot O&G) | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Susquehanna County
Cabot Ends Lawsuit Settlement Talks, Prefers Trial in Dimock Case
In April 2017 Dimock Township (Susquehanna County, PA) resident Ray Kemble and lawyers from two different law firms filed a new lawsuit against Cabot Oil & Gas over claims of contaminated water from local fracking. Thing is, those claims were settled by Cabot with Kemble years earlier. Cabot said this was a renewed attempt to sully its good name and reputation and countersued Kemble and his lawyers for $5 million (see Cabot O&G Countersues Dimock Anti, Lawyers).
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Anti-fossil fuelers know no depths to which they won’t sink in efforts to block *any* new natural gas pipelines. Louisville Gas and Electric Company (LG&E) has state approval to build a new 12-inch, 12-mile pipeline near Louisville to supply gas to 62 homes and businesses that can’t connect to LG&E’s local natgas utility system. The local Bernheim Arboretum has resisted attempts to build across three-tenths of one percent (0.028%) of Arboretum land–along an existing cleared path where electric lines already go (see 
We make no apologies for being big Donald Trump supporters here at MDN. Trump is the only presidential candidate committed to fossil fuel energy. All of the Democrat candidates, including the last two left standing–crazy Bernie Sanders and sleepy/creepy Joe Biden–are committed to ending the use of fossil fuels. We spotted an article in the New York Times (fake news alert!) that compares the positions of Sanders and Biden with respect to global warming and the environment. There is a difference, but not much of one. Both Democrats want to end the use of fossil fuels. The only difference is in how quickly.
We’ve commented from time to time on municipalities (cities) that stupidly ban new home and business construction from installing and connecting to natural gas supplies. Berkeley, California comes to mind since they were the first to do so. The trend is catching on in cities where leftist radicals infest city councils. In a bid to shut this madness down before it spreads (it’s the intellectual equivalent of the coronavirus), the state of Arizona, which shares a border with California wackos, last month passed a new law that puts a ban on municipal gas bans. Good for Arizona! Now five more states–Missouri, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Mississippi–are looking to ban gas bans too.
NETL (National Energy Technology Laboratory), one of our country’s treasured national lab facilities, recently released a report and case study that shows if we as a country want reliability in our electric grid (no blackouts), we need to build more natural gas pipelines to feed natgas-fired power plants. “As the electric power system relies more heavily on natural gas power generation, the reliability and resiliency of the Nation’s electrical system will become increasingly linked to the performance and capabilities of the natural gas delivery system.” How much more in the way of new pipelines are needed? “Conservatively, an investment of $470 million to $1.1 billion over that already entrained in the long-haul natural gas transmission system is identified to avoid even worse outcomes.” Start the backhoes!
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: ODNR awards three drilling permits; NATIONAL: North American midstream energy companies face $123 billion of debt maturities in 2020-24; Exxon CEO dismisses rivals’ climate targets as ‘beauty competition’; INTERNATIONAL: Coronavirus leads OPEC to recommend sharper oil output reduction through June; OPEC+ proposes major cuts, but Russia may not come along; Germany sees no role for natural gas in draft plan for hydrogen.
Is history repeating itself? Ohio House Bill 55 would require certain pieces of information to be included on royalty statements landowners receive from Ohio drillers. Ohio State Rep. Jack Cera (Democrat from Bellaire) introduced HB 55 last year–for the third time since 2011. Like the two previous times, the bill is now mired in committee and doesn’t appear to be making any headway toward a vote. Let’s look at what information landowners receive now under existing law, and what details they would receive under this bill if passed.
In 2015 Kelsy Warren and his Energy Transfer Equity (now just Energy Transfer) company pursued Williams, wanting to merge Williams into its own operation. Williams initially fought ET tooth and nail, but in the end, cut a deal (see 
A kerfuffle between Gulfport Energy and Tug Hill Operating has been settled by a Texas judge. Gulfport and Tug Hill cut a deal in November 2018 for Tug Hill to purchase certain Marcellus shale assets in Ohio from Gulfport for $26 million. According to Gulfport, Tug Hill never sealed the deal and should be forced to complete it now. Tug Hill said Gulfport didn’t come through with necessary releases from third parties related to the deal, and therefore the deal is null and void. The judge agreed with Tug Hill.
Water is the lifeblood of shale drilling. Water must get to the pad for use in drilling and fracking. But then, after the drilling is done and the well is connected, produced water continues to flow from the borehole for years to come. All that water must be managed. In the early days of Marcellus/Utica drilling every spare gallon of produced water got recycled for reuse drilling the next well. With a slowdown in new M-U drilling, produced water is piling up. What can be done to manage it? The 
Columbia Gas of Massachusetts (NiSource) never quite recovered (reputationally) from a series of explosions in September 2018 that occurred with its local delivery pipelines north of Boston (see 
IHS Markit employs more than 5,000 analysts, data scientists, financial experts and industry specialists. Their global information expertise spans numerous industries, including finance, energy, and transportation. Yesterday IHS Markit issued a bulletin to say its analysts expect when the tabulating is all done that world oil demand, due to fear over the COVID-19 coronavirus, fell by some 3.8 million barrels per day over the same quarter from 2019. That would be a new all-time, world record quarterly drop in oil demand. The previous record happened during the worldwide recession of 2009 when demand dropped 3.6 million bpd. Should we be worried that we are about to experience another worldwide recession?
In what has to be unethical at a minimum, and perhaps even illegal at the maximum, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro spoke on the phone with two anti-drilling “reporters” from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Don Hopey and David Templeton) to let them know he is on an official witch hunt launching “more than a dozen investigations” to turn fracking and anything connected with fracking into a crime.