Shale Water Management in the M-U, Coming to Pittsburgh Mar 24-25
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 10th Annual Cost-Effective Shale Water Management Marcellus and Utica 2020 event, coming March 24-25 in Pittsburgh, has the answers.
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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?
NATIONAL: Less petroleum and other liquids consumed in the U.S. is coming from refineries; Danly’s FERC nomination moves to full Senate over Democrats’ objections; US natural gas infrastructure investment increasingly risky; INTERNATIONAL: With oil prices down 20%, OPEC pushes for stability; PetroChina suspends some gas contracts as coronavirus hits demand.
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.
Some 30 radical environmental groups (including ringleader Penn Future) is fearful their campaign to stop House Bill (HB) 1100 is failing. HB 1100 is aimed at attracting new petrochemical investments to the state. How do we know Big Green is fearful? Because the groups are attempting to gin up opposition to the bill by staging a faux protest rally on March 9 at the Capitol in Harrisburg.
Last June the DRBC (Delaware River Basin Commission) approved a request by New Fortress Energy to build a $96 million 1,600-foot-long pier/dock on the Delaware River, to be used for docking and loading two ships at a time with LNG (see 
Are you interested in a great career in the pipeline industry in the northeastern part of the country? We may be able to help. The Appalachian Pipeliners Associations (APA), with a mission to help grow and support the pipeline industry in the northeastern U.S., is offering up to $50,000 worth of scholarships for use during the 2020/2021 academic school year to students pursuing Associates, Bachelors and Graduate degrees, as well as students pursuing Vocational or Trade School degrees/certifications. That’s right! Let the APA help fund your education so you have a great job when you graduate! But there is a catch…applications must be filed by March 6th (this Friday).
The American Petroleum Institute recently released the results of a study they commissioned that outlines the “dire consequences” of a ban on hydraulic fracturing–the kind of ban being pushed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Joe Biden. Here’s how dire it gets: If a frack ban is slapped into place by a Democrat President, by 2022 it will result in 7.5 million lost jobs, and by 2030 a total loss out of the economy of $7.5 TRILLION! You might as well say we will enter a new economic depression, the likes of which we haven’t experienced since the 1930s.
Last Friday the Ohio Utica’s third-largest (by the number of wells drilled) shale driller, Gulfport Energy, filed its fourth-quarter and full-year 2019 update. The bad news is that the company lost just over $2 billion in 2019. The good news is that the entire loss was an impairment charge, a “paper loss” and not an actual, out-of-pocket money loss. When you dig deeper into the numbers, you’ll find the company actually produced free cash flow of $37.8 million last year.
Last November Gulfport Energy, the Ohio Utica’s third-largest driller, announced they would lay off 13% of their workforce, end (for now) their stock share buy-back program, and “refresh” the board with three new members (see 
Summit Midstream Partners, formed in 2009 and headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas, operates natural gas, crude oil and produced water gathering (pipeline) systems in six unconventional resource basins, including the Marcellus and Utica. The company concentrates its time and money on four “core focus areas” including the Utica, the Williston (i.e. Bakken), the DJ Basin and the Permian. The Marcellus is part of the company’s “legacy” systems that don’t get as much love (and money). Last week the company issued its 4Q and full-year 2019 update. We will summarize it this way: Summit flowed less gas and consequently made less cash in 2019 than it did in 2018.
Last week MDN brought you the news that Chevron will begin to trim 320 jobs in the Marcellus/Utica beginning in early April (see