Rig Counts Heading Down in Most Shale Plays – What About M-U?
It’s hard to miss the stories in oil and gas (even national) media: Company after company, in particular oilfield services companies, are predicting a big slowdown in drilling during the second half of 2019. Over the past few days OFS companies including Schlumberger, Halliburton, Patterson-UTI, Superior Energy Services, Helmerich & Payne, and RPC have all predicted a coming decline (crash?) in drilling in the near future. What about the Marcellus/Utica region? Does the coming slowdown affect us too?
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On Monday MDN brought you the news that Range Resources has sold a 2% overriding royalty interest on 350,000 acres “in southwest Appalachia” for $600 million (see 
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper has engaged in a months-long smear campaign to imply the shale industry in southwestern PA is guilty of causing a “cluster” of rare childhood cancers–even though there’s an old uranium dump in the same vicinity as those cancer clusters (see 
U.S. Senator from Mississippi John Wicker (Republican), and Congressman John Garimendi from wacko California (Democrat), have re-introduced a really bad bill euphemistically called Energizing American Shipbuilding Act. We’ve extensively covered the 1920 Jones Act that prevents any shipping from one U.S. port to another unless the ship is *built* and *owned* by Americans. The Jones Act prevents us from shipping homegrown LNG to any ports because there are not big LNG carries made here in the U.S. (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: NYC mayor suggests ConEd takeover after heat forces shutdown; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: TECO coal to natural gas conversion approved; A lot of new LPG export dock capacity is on the way; NATIONAL: Challenging times for U.S. shale: The industry has seen it all before; The EIA’s July energy report in pictures; Job losses hit as shale slows down; The New York Times says heat waves are getting worse…the National Climate Assessment disagrees.
A sad end to the hope that Braskem, the largest petrochemical company in Latin America (headquartered in Brazil), is going to build an ethane cracker in Wood County, WV, near Parkersburg. We hasten to add Braskem leaving doesn’t mean someone else won’t will build a cracker plant there–it just won’t be Braskem. News is leaking that Braskem has put the land they had purchased for a possible cracker up for sale.
Yesterday MDN brought you the news of a newly passed Ohio law to prop up two bankrupt nuclear power plants and coal-fired plants (see 
In February MDN brought you the news that EQT had settled a class action lawsuit in West Virginia with landowners and rights owners ending EQT’s practice of post-production deductions from royalty checks (see 
Earlier this week MDN told you that a New Jersey state appeals court shot down a lawsuit (one of many) against New Jersey Natural Gas’ (NJNG) $130 million, 22-mile natural gas pipeline project called the Southern Reliability Link (see 
Less than 24 people (some of them paid protesters) gathered at a park in Jersey City, NJ to protest and ask NJ’s leftist Governor, Phil Murphy, to block NJ Transit’s plan to build a tiny 140-megawatt natural gas-fired electric plant in Kearny, NJ (see 
Fossil fuel haters who refuse to allow a new natural gas pipeline in Massachusetts are causing real economic harm in cities like Holyoke. The mayor of Holyoke is one of those inflicting economic harm–on his own citizens!–by opposing a small 2.1-mile expansion of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline. A Holyoke City Council member is floating a resolution to support the pipeline, trying to change hearts and minds. Is he spitting in the wind?
JKLM Energy, a Pennsylvania gas drilling company founded by Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula, is “temporarily halting” operation of its single drilling rig (in Potter County) due to the low price of natural gas.
A landowner in Pike County, PA called King Arthur Estates LP, challenged Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) over the amount of money they should receive to have a pipeline cross its land–and has won the right to use PA’s more generous laws on compensation rather than the federal government’s more stingy laws on “just” compensation. The decision sets a precedent for all PA landowners.