Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Electrical Generation | Industrywide Issues | Monongalia County | West Virginia
Sierra Club Radicals Oppose Clean NatGas Power in Morgantown, WV
In September Longview Power filed an application with the West Virginia Public Service Commission to build and operate a Marcellus gas-fired electric generating facility in Monongalia County, WV, near Maidsville (see 1200 MW Gas-Fired Power Plant Files to Build in Mon County, WV). The Longview Power Clean Energy Center will include a 1,200 megawatt combined cycle power plant AND a 70 megawatt solar farm–both built next to Longview’s existing state-of-the-art 710 megawatt coal-fired power plant. A real “all of the above” type of facility. The nutters at the Sierra Club want to stop it all.
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Once upon a time conventional wisdom said if the price of natural gas or oil rose, the rig count would also rise and consequently more production would be the end result. The reverse was also true: falling prices equal fewer rigs and less production. But that conventional wisdom has been turned upside down with the shale revolution.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Garth Everett isn’t running after finishing out 7th term; ODNR issues 2 permits for Utica Shale drilling; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Summit Midstream Partners relocating corporate headquarters to downtown Houston, Texas; The 2020 outlook for Permian oil and gas markets; NATIONAL: Energy commodity prices rose more than other goods in 2019; Hard as it is, frackers should ignore Iran; Oil and gas group launches campaign to advertise itself as combating climate change; U.S. LNG exports soar in 2019 but supply glut may await in 2020; Natural gas looks awful now that it’s 2020.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) recent settlement with Energy Transfer (ET) concerning the Revolution Pipeline explosion in southwestern PA also has significant impact on southeastern PA. How? The signed consent order in which ET pays the state $30.6 million lifts a moratorium on granting new permits to ET for *any* of its pipeline projects in PA for the past one year–including permits to complete the Mariner East (ME) projects. With the consent order comes a lifting of that permit moratorium, meaning the final bits of ME can now be completed.
MDN previously reported in mid-December the very first load of Marcellus molecules liquefied at the Elba Island, Georgia LNG export facility was loaded onto a ship and headed to Pakistan (see 
This is a slightly older story (from December), but an important story that deserves your attention. Last October Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf went completely off his rocker with a power-grab to force PA into a regional alliance to tax natural gas-fired electric plants out of existence (see 
Last July MDN broke the news that LOLA Energy had filed a lawsuit in Greene County, PA against EQT for allegedly drilling shale wells under property EQT formerly leased, but property for which the leases had lapsed and were subsequently scooped up by LOLA Energy II (see 
In mid-November Gulfport Energy, one of the biggest drillers in the Ohio Utica Shale (210,000 acres), announced they are laying off 13% of their workforce, ending (for now) their stock share buy-back program, and “refreshing” the board with three new members (see 
Good news for oilfield services companies that offer fracking services in the Ohio Utica Shale. The Tenth District Ohio Court of Appeals recently ruled that an amendment to an existing law granting tax exempt status for oil and gas equipment not only applies to equipment purchased by frackers from now on, it also applies to equipment they’ve purchased (and paid sales tax on) going back in time too. In other words, some frackers are owed refunds on the sales tax they’ve paid in the past.
If you use the number of active rigs operating in a given shale play/state as the measure for “success,” 2019 wasn’t such a good year for the Marcellus/Utica. In January, Pennsylvania entered 2019 with 48 active rigs. In December that number was cut nearly in half, to 25 active rigs. It was a similar story for Ohio, which entered 2019 with 17 active rigs and exited with 12 rigs. West Virginia, on the other hand, entered 2019 with 15 rigs and exited the year with the same number. But at one point during the year WV had 21 active rigs. We have the monthly rig stats below for all three states.