Shale Energy Stories of Interest: Fri, Oct 25, 2019
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: How to tell Cuomo frets the natural gas shortage: He’s passing the buck; Toomey praises Trump for shale gas exploration policies in Pennsylvania, U.S.; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Optimizing shale well designs could boost Eagle Ford and Permian economics by 19-23%; Cameron LNG natural gas facility officially opens today; Planned natural gas release angers compressor station opponents; NATIONAL: The United States now exports crude oil to more destinations than it imports from; Natural gas and renewables will rule America’s electricity future; Natural gas exports to Mexico swell, but is a tidal wave coming?; INTERNATIONAL: Novatek – TC LNG Shipping JV off “Blocked Person” list.
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MDN is on the road in beautiful Pittsburgh, covering the Shale Insight 2019 event, so today’s lineup of stories is all about yesterday’s opening day. We will return with full strength MDN news on Friday. Meanwhile, tag along with MDN and be a virtual attendee at our industry’s marquee event!
President Trump was in rare form as he addressed several thousand people at the 2019 Shale Insight event. He was the closing keynote speaker of the first day of the conference. MDN editor Jim Willis was there to capture the speech for our readers. After acknowledging and praising three cabinet officials who came along with Trump–Dept. of Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, Dept. of Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler (all of whom Trump had high praise for)–Trump opened his remarks this way: “I was here three years ago and you’re much happier now. You’re much wealthier now.” Trademark Trump!
We snapped a number of pictures of President Trump’s speech yesterday. Unfortunately the camera on our phone isn’t the greatest, and we were sitting far back, so the shots are a bit blurry. We snapped quite a few of the big monitor to improve the images. We’re not sure it helped. At any rate, come along to virtually attend the rally!
Yesterday the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee “reported out” (i.e. approved) Senate Bill (SB) 694, which is the Senate version of what was House Bill (HB) 247, a bill which allows fully leased parcels that are part of one drilling “unit” to be combined with parcels in a different unit–“cross unit drilling.” The full Senate voted to approve the bill on September 25 by a vote of 49-0 in favor. Yes, a unanimous vote, with both Republicans and Democrats voting to approve it in the Senate. We’re now one vote away from final passage–the full House. There’s little doubt it will pass.
The last time Equitrans talked about the status of its 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline project (from Wetzel County, WV to Pittsylvania County, VA) was July, when the company said the cost for the project had ballooned to $5 billion and the in-service date delayed until mid-2020 (see 
A common refrain for both landowners and drillers who want to buy/sell/swap mineral rights for drilling is the same: How do you find buyers (or sellers)? Some have resorted to auctions. Others, plain old word-of-mouth. They both have a new way to find buyers or sellers: Something called 
The fight to overturn Ohio’s House Bill 6, a $1 billion bailout (freebie) given to FirstEnergy to prop up its uneconomical nuclear power plants is getting nasty. Really nasty. We previously told you about FirstEnergy’s lying commercials that claim China controls the state’s natural gas industry–because a Chinese bank loaned some of the gas-fired plants money (see 
Andrew Cuomo, the man-child governor of New York, is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Or week. For the past few weeks the New York Post has repeatedly hammered Cuomo over his decision to block the Williams Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project that would bring critical new supplies of natgas to Long Island and New York City. The Wall Street Journal also joined in by hammering Cuomo over the same issue, pointing out Cuomo is to blame for thousands of utility customers of National Grid who now cannot connect, yet Cuomo is forcing National Grid to add them anyway (see 
Yesterday Dominion Energy announced it has sold a 25% stake in the completed Cove Point, Maryland LNG export facility to Brookfield Asset Management for a cool $2 billion. Dominion completed the $4.1 billion facility in 2018. The share just sold to Brookfield values the facility at $8.22 billion. Holy smokes! Nice play–to double the value of your investment in not much more than a year after completing it. What will Dominion do with all that cash?
In July MDN brought you the news that Range Resources had sold a 2% overriding royalty interest on 350,000 acres “in southwest Appalachia” for $600 million (see 
In April President Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) directing the Secretary of Transportation to write a new rule allowing specially constructed tanker cars for railroads (DOT-113 tank cars) to ship LNG, i.e., liquefied natural gas (see 
Natural gas end-users, which include American households, businesses, manufacturers, and electric power generators, have realized $1.1 trillion in savings since 2008 as a result of increased natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica region, according to a new report released yesterday. You read that right! Folks across the country have benefited by using M-U gas to the tune of $1.1 trillion in savings. Astonishing! The new report (full copy below) says the total savings works out to be an average of $4,000 per household. Thank God for fracking and horizontal drilling in the Marcellus/Utica.