Rice Addresses Belmont County, OH Landowners in Town Hall Mtg
EQT’s new CEO Toby Rice made the rounds and conducted four town hall-style meetings with landowners (see Road Trip! EQT CEO Toby Rice Talks to Landowners in Town Hall Mtgs). We found and brought you local media coverage for both the first and third meetings–in Waynesburg, PA and Bridgeport, WV, respectively (see EQT CEO Toby Rice Hits a Home Run with Landowner Meetings and EQT CEO Toby Rice Explains Combo Drilling at WV Town Hall Mtg). There was a meeting in between those two, held in Belmont County, OH. We’ve been accused of bias for not writing about that meeting.
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The Mariner East pipeline projects (plural) are an important part of the shale energy story in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. As is the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex (what we call the Marcus Hook refinery). Currently between Mariner East 1 and 2, somewhere around 170,000 barrels of NGLs (mostly ethane and propane) flow to Marcus Hook and most of that gets exported to other countries. Mariner East 2X is currently under construction and due to come online next year, increasing that number significantly. For many Marcellus/Utica drillers, selling NGLs is the difference between being profitable and not profitable.
The Independent Oil & Gas Association of West Virginia (IOGAWV) is already hard at work on legislative priorities for next/upcoming session of the WV legislature–which actually does not begin until Jan. 8, 2020. In WV the full legislature only meets for 60 days each year (other states can learn a lesson). IOGAWV is planning both a defensive (protect what we have) and offensive (new initiatives) strategy for next year. What’s on the list?
In May 2016, U.S.-based oilfield services company FMC Technologies announced they would merge with their much larger quasi-competitor, France-based Technip, in an all-stock deal to create a new company called TechnipFMC (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Natural gas bags: Pols scream at the results of their own war on fossil fuels; Rep. Keller gets crash course in education for gas workers; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Feds approve billion dollar conversion of LNG plant on Mississippi coast; NATIONAL: US shale industry credited with driving 10% of US GDP growth; Bullish EIA data unable to stop natural gas price slump; LaFleur exit fuels concern of future FERC slowdown; Seasoned association CEO tapped to head U.S. Chamber Global Energy Institute; Green “Real” Deal? (video).
To his credit (we don’t often heap praise on him), Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf toured a Mariner East 2 pipeline construction site in Chester County near Philadelphia last Thursday, along with some Democrat politicians, and told anti-pipeline residents “NO” to their faces when they asked him to shut down the Mariner East pipeline system. He was polite, but firm, telling them he disagrees with their position of the need to permanently shut down the Mariner pipelines. “Do a better job” with construction and impacts from the project? Sure, according to Wolf. Shut it all down permanently? NO.
Last October NEXUS Pipeline, a $2.6 billion, 255-mile interstate pipeline that runs from Ohio to Michigan, received permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to begin partial operation (see 
Last Wednesday MDN brought you the news that CNX Resources had laid off some 50 employees, with rumors circulating that more layoffs were coming (see 
Can it be possible that the shale industry and anti-shale environmentalists (those who irrationally espouse the end of using all fossil fuels) can actually agree on something? Turns out, we can! The something we agree on is opposition to PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to tax a single industry, shale drilling, $4.5 billion in order to use that money for Big Government programs.
In October 2017, officials in Plum, PA (Allegheny County) approved a plan by Huntley & Huntley (H&H) to drill a series of Marcellus wells on a single well pad in their municipality (see 
How dumb must you be to not understand that if there’s not enough gas supply, you can’t hook up new customers to the distribution grid? Yet some New York City legislators, 17 of them, are vilifying National Grid, one of NYC’s two main natural gas utilities, because National Grid continues to deny new customers who want gas service to be hooked up. It’s clearly Andrew Cuomo’s fault–he denied permission to build a pipeline to bring new supplies of gas to the region. Yet the legislators close ranks for this putz and blame the company that can’t get those new supplies. Some of these same legislators OPPOSE the pipeline! Yet they want more natgas. What kind of mental gymnastics does that require?
MDN is taking a rare vacation day today, Friday, August 23. We will be back on Monday to catch you up on all the latest news. In the meantime, we’ve updated our Calendar of Events (next post).
Events related (or of interest) to the Marcellus, Utica and other Appalachian shales happening from now through the end of this year.