WVONGA Fall Meeting Wraps Up with Talks on Pot, Petchem
Last week the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association (WVONGA) held its two-day 2019 Fall Meeting in Morgantown. We previously reported talk about WV’s new co-tenancy laws dominated the first day (see WVONGA Meeting: New Co-Tenancy Law Working, Still a Few Kinks). One of the key topics for the second day was the state’s medical cannabis program and how those in the oil and gas industry deal with it next year when a new state law goes into effect. The other key topic of the day was downstream (petrochemical) plants.
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On April 1 of this year the U.S. exited natural gas consumption season (“winter”) with a relatively low value of 1,155 billion cubic feet (Bcf) in storage. Fast forward to October 31 and the end of the injection season, when gas is stored away for the winter months, and that number had soared more than 3X to 3,724 Bcf. Underground storage of natgas as of October 31 was 37 Bcf higher than the previous five-year end-of-October average. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, our favorite government agency, calls this year’s injection season ramp-up pace a “near-record.”
Thank you for your patience while we navigated through web server hell this week. The MDN website was finally reactivated yesterday on its new server (computer). But then, as soon as that happened, MDN’s email account went offline due to some technical explanation we don’t fully understand, having to do with domain name servers and such. So if you sent MDN (or editor Jim Willis) an email yesterday afternoon/evening, he may not have received it. Feel free to re-send any messages you sent yesterday.
MDN will not publish today, Veteran’s Day. We thank our veterans for their service and sacrifice.
Pittsburgh Business Times ace reporter Paul Gough has done it again–breaking big news related to ExxonMobil and their very active search to locate a site in the Pittsburgh region to build a gigantic ethane cracker plant. This time Paul’s sources are telling him Exxon has widened their search. A few weeks ago we told you Exxon was looking for potential locations in Beaver County, PA, near where Shell is building their $8 billion cracker plant (see 
Speaking of cracker plants and the exciting news that ExxonMobil is very actively searching for a location in the Marcellus/Utica region to build one (see today’s lead story), the fact that Exxon is looking is driving leftist environmental kooks bonkers. They hate the Shell cracker going up in Beaver County, and they want to ensure there are no other such plants built anywhere in the region–or at least in Pennsylvania. The eco-leftists have bullied Pittsburgh’s Mayor Bill Peduto to join their cause, who recently stated in a speech, “I oppose any additional petrochemical companies coming to western Pennsylvania.” The president of the Pennsylvania Chemical Industry Council has responded to Peduto’s inane comments, exposing him for the dunce he is.
West Virginia’s new co-tenancy law is working, according to speakers at the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association (WVONGA) 2019 Fall Meeting held yesterday and today. Several speakers from major WV drillers, including Antero Resources and CNX Resources, sang the praises of the new co-tenancy law. WVONGA executive director Anne Blankenship also sang its praises, but said there’s still a few things to work out before the new law is “fully understood.”
Energy Transfer (ET), the big pipeline company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, issued its third quarter 2019 update yesterday. ET is the builder of the Rover Pipeline in the Utica Shale, the Mariner East trio of pipelines in the PA Marcellus, and the Revolution gathering system in southwestern PA. With Rover built and fully operational, our interest was in locating information/updates on the ME and Revolution projects. We hit paydirt in yesterday’s update.
We often spot stories in the press about the price of natural gas for end-user customers going down. A utility here and a utility there will announce a rate reduction. Most of the time we don’t bring you those kinds of stories because they’re pretty common. However, we spotted a story that’s different. The Public Service Commission in West Virginia says natural gas utility companies that serve 91% of the gas customers in the state have filed requests to LOWER the rates they charge for their gas–thanks to abundant supplies of Marcellus Shale gas being extracted in the state.
New York’s Attorney General has viciously gone after ExxonMobil in state court hoping to prove the company knew, for years, that burning its oil and gas would lead to so-called man-made global warming and eventually kill the planet. And, says the vicious AG, Exxon covered it up from investors because someday their stock will be worthless when everyone finds out, and they don’t want investors to know about it just yet. The AG is trying to prove the company has engaged in securities fraud.
Even though the oil and gas industry is currently going through another “down” cycle, make no mistake–some of the best and highest paying jobs in the country are still to be found in the fossil fuel industry. We have a list of the top 10 highest paying jobs below. We’ll state right up front they all require an advanced degree–bachelor’s degree or higher. But man oh man, do they pay! In 2018 some 1.5 million people were employed directly in the oil and gas industry, and another 1.2 million are employed in the closely-related power generation industry.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Labor sides with Big Oil in a feud with Pittsburgh’s mayor; City says it wants a role in Philly refinery Ch. 11 sale; New York State writes down value of Tesla plant in Buffalo; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Florida fracking ban bill is a classic government solution in search of a problem; Could an Alaska North Slope LNG project undercut Gulf Coast competitors?; NATIONAL: New natural gas pipelines are adding capacity from the South Central, Northeast regions; NAPE announces new ‘magazine for dealmakers’ to complement expos; U.S. natural gas prices rising toward winter; INTERNATIONAL: Yamal LNG cargo heading for Zeebrugge; Spain becomes Europe’s cheapest gas market on flood of low-cost LNG.
Last week Marathon Petroleum, the parent company of MPLX (formerly called MarkWest Energy) announced some big changes during their third quarter update. Namely, they have caved to “activist” investors (we still call them corporate raiders) and their demands to split the company and dump the current CEO (see 
In 2011 Ohio Gov. John Kasich (RINO) signed into law a provision to create the Ohio Oil and Gas Leasing Commission, a group to oversee drilling and fracking on state-owned land. Then Kasich refused to appoint members to the five-member commission, effectively skirting the law and imposing his own whacked moratorium on drilling on state-owned land. Why? Punishment for the industry refusing to endorse his obscene high severance tax rate. In 2017 under threat by the Republican legislature, Kasich finally relented and appointed the five members (see 
Do Rhode Island regulators read MDN? Maybe! On Monday we brought you a post about the coming natural gas outages like that experienced last January in the People’s Republic of Rhode Island, due to eco-socialist pressure to ban new natural gas infrastructure (see 
Toby Rice, still relatively new in his role of CEO at EQT, spoke about changing the culture at the nation’s largest natural gas-producing company. At a Southpointe CEO Association event yesterday afternoon in Washington County, Rice said, “These past 100 days, I tell everybody, they’re on the happiness campaign, they just don’t know it.” Our summary of his comments: “All Aboard the Happy Train!”