Shale Energy Stories of Interest: Tue, Mar 10, 2020
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Tellurian makes managements appointments; Columbia gas pleads guilty over Mass. pipeline blasts; NATIONAL: Climate change lawsuits collapsing like dominoes; Energy valuations: Freefall into bankruptcy or is this time different?; There are no winners in oil market’s price war; Brace yourself for another 33% drop in the price of crude oil; White House can lend U.S. shale a helping M&A hand; INTERNATIONAL: The coronavirus is an economic pandemic, panicking markets and slowing growth.
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Some Pennsylvania state Democrats are obviously feeling the political heat over their opposition to House Bill (HB) 1100, meant to attract brand new business and jobs to the state in the petrochemical industry (see 
The U.S. Energy Information Administration is reporting several natural gas pipeline upgrades are either planned or under construction in New England. Four pipelines are expected to increase compression in their systems by 2023, adding more than 350 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of natural gas pipeline capacity into the region, despite the best-laid plans of antis to resist any new supplies of natural gas from reaching New England. As near as we can tell, two of the four upgrades will flow more Canadian gas, but the other two are likely to flow Marcellus gas.
We’ll be right upfront and say this article is a hard one for us to wrap our brains around. In order to explain something in simple terms, you must first understand it. We don’t fully understand the concepts discussed below, but feel it’s important to pass along anyway. In September 2018 MDN brought you an article about a concept called blockchain, and to some degree, bitcoin (see 
Last Friday MDN told you about an initiative in Arizona and five other states to block the right of local municipalities from banning natural gas appliances and natural gas heat from homes and businesses (see 
Something pretty dramatic happened last Friday in Vienna, Austria. For the past three years, Russia and a few other non-OPEC countries have coordinated and cooperated with Saudi Arabia (which runs OPEC) in order to control the price of oil worldwide. Russia (mainly) plus OPEC has been called OPEC+. Creative, no? Given the COVID-19 coronavirus worldwide scare (much more a scare than an actual pandemic), and given the pullback in many countries, like China, of reducing manufacturing with the consequence of reducing their need for oil, and given there is now a surplus of oil sloshing around the world, the Saudis are spooked and want to cut production, NOW, in order to avoid having the price of oil drop into the sub-basement. Last Friday Russia walked into OPEC HQ in Vienna and said nyet to any production cuts. Translation: OPEC+ is dead.
Over 700 people gathered yesterday in Columbus, OH for OOGA’s (Ohio Oil & Gas Association) 73rd Annual Meeting. Industry leaders soberly assessed the state of current affairs. According to OOGA president Matt Hammond, the industry may have to downsize for a while. Jeff Fisher, CEO of Ascent Resources, agreed. Hammond said, “it’s just going to look a little bit different in the next few years” before the price of gas rebounds. The sentiment was clearly what we’ve been preaching: Expect lower for longer when it comes to gas prices.
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 
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!