Shale Energy Stories of Interest: Thu, Dec 12, 2019
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Nine well permits issued by ODNR; NATIONAL: Continental Resources announces Harold Hamm is stepping up to Executive Chairman; NGI 2020: U.S. drilling ban on E&P radar ahead of 2020 election; Enverus forecasts “significant slowdown” in US gas output growth in 2020; Natural gas boom fizzles as a U.S. glut sinks profits; Chevron’s charge points to billions more in U.S. gas writedowns; The great electric car ‘zero emissions’ boondoggle; INTERNATIONAL: Creating the OPEC of natural gas.
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In a bombshell announcement yesterday, Chevron said it is writing down (reducing the paper value) of all its shale assets by $10-$11 billion in the fourth quarter. “More than half” of it is a write-down of its Marcellus/Utica assets. Not only that, but Chevron says it is “evaluating its strategic alternatives for these assets, including divestment.” Translation: Chevron has put its M-U assets, all of them (over 
Antero Resources is working hard to get the company on sound financial footing. That’s the message we took away from an announcement on Monday from the company that says (a) they’ve asked for and received a break in midstream (pipeline) prices from their own subsidiary, Antero Midstream, and (b) they’re putting some of their considerable Marcellus/Utica assets up for sale, hoping to raise upward of $1 billion.
As it turns out, Exxon didn’t know. You may recall the hue and cry from radical anti-fossil fuelers that #ExxonKnew–knew they were toasting mom earth by extracting and encouraging the burning of oil and natural gas. The New Attorney General’s office launched an investigation, and then a lawsuit, charging the same thing. The NY AG claimed Exxon had defrauded shareholders by covering up knowledge of global warming. The first lawsuit to go to trial against Exxon for causing global warming was in NY, where the AG (Letitia “Tish” James) headed up a disaster of a lawsuit. She (and her office) was thoroughly and completely humiliated by a NY judge who said she never proved anything. Her team’s performance was worse than that of a first-year law student.
In a new report titled “Getting Greener: Cost-Effective Options for Achieving New York State’s Greenhouse Gas Goals,” the Citizens Budget Commission (of New York) attributes the 13% greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions drop New York State saw between 1990 and 2016 to an increased usage of natural gas and nuclear power. According to the nonpartisan Commission, New York is “already green” and if it wants to stay that way, it needs MORE natural gas, not less!
The National Whistleblower Center (NWC), a corrupt and partisan (Democrat) nonprofit group, has laughingly launched what it calls a “Climate Corruption Campaign” to “enlist whistleblowers in the fight against fraud and other crimes in the three industry sectors responsible for the vast majority of the world’s carbon pollution: oil and gas, coal, and industrial logging.” What a sick joke.
The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday refused to hear a case that challenged a ruling in the Hoopa Valley Indian Tribe case–a ruling/case that has HUGE implications for Williams’ Constitution Pipeline running through New York State. The Supreme Court rejection is a crushing defeat for Big Green groups Trout Unlimited and California Trout, and very good news for the Constitution project.
Williams, the pipeline giant, held its annual analyst day in New York City last Friday. The company’s top brass was there to wow and woo investors with the company’s plans for 2020 and beyond. In reading about the session, we picked up on some startling statistics. Stats like Williams now provides 30% of all LNG feed gas in the U.S. And most of that (all of it?) comes from the Marcellus/Utica.
The rig count in the Marcellus/Utica region is crashing–down to its lowest level for a December since the M-U became a “thing.” It’s now lower than the levels reached in 2014, which was the advent of the first “crash” in rig counts. BUT (and this is a big BUT), lower rig counts do not necessarily mean less drilling or less production. How can that be?
Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) previously filed a request with the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that judicially creates a new law stipulating pipelines can’t cross under the Appalachian Trail without (no kidding) an Act of Congress. The clown judges of the Fourth Circus (our name for that court) revoked a permit issued by the U.S. Forest Service. A list of 21 business and oil/gas industry groups filed a “friend of the court” brief yesterday supporting ACP, asking the Supremes to reinstate the Forest Service permit for the project.
In what is at least the second (maybe third or fourth) serious attempt, radical Democrats in the New York State legislature have floated a bill that would force NY’s public employee pension fund to completely divest any stock holdings in fossil fuel companies. Are NY retirees ready to take a $1 TRILLION hit in their wallets if it happens?
Once upon a time in BSE (before shale era) if you were to chart the price of oil and the price of natural gas together on the same graph, the path/track was almost identical. When the price of oil went up (or down), so too did the price of gas. With the advent of shale in 2008/2009, tracking between the two has changed. It’s gone. The value of natural gas compared to the value of oil is now *much lower* than it was in BSE.