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M-U Companies Dominate Top 10 NatGas Producers in 2019
Quick: Which company which recently had a board and upper management shakeup and focuses exclusively on Marcellus/Utica drilling is the #1 natural gas producer in the United States? That’s right, EQT. In a list of the top 40 natgas producers in the U.S. (full list below), it’s striking to note that eight of the top 10 are focused exclusively or primarily on the M-U.
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Two radical left members of the U.S. House of Representatives–Chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Peter DeFazio (D-OR), and Congressman Tom Malinowski (D-NJ)–sent a follow-up letter to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) requesting an update on where the special permit for Energy Transport Solutions, LLC to move liquefied natural gas (LNG) by rail stands now that the public comment period has closed. The letter was not *really* about seeking information, but about threatening PHMSA, signaling that the agency had darned well better block LNG by rail. Or else.
This is one of those “feel good” stories. Going back to 2012, a number of officials in Wyoming County and the borough of Tunkhannock began to dream about connecting the borough to locally extracted Marcellus Shale gas. Among those who helped turn the dream into reality were Williams (the pipeline company) and Cabot Oil & Gas (shale driller). Thanks to the efforts of all involved, Tunkhannock eventually received state-backed funding to build “phase one” of the project (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: U.S. natural gas permitting said ‘surprisingly healthy’ in July; Offshore wind mania grips governors; NATIONAL: Continental Resources CEO urges OPEC, shale oil output cuts; Shareholders have no love for shale companies; How I learned to stop worrying and love the trade war; Democrats aggressive on climate change.
Have you noticed the disconnect? While many in the press observe shale companies have lost an alarming amount of value–many over 90% of market capitalization in recent years–yet shale drillers are still in business and producing more oil and gas than ever. Record amounts, in fact. According to the EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration, our favorite government agency), in the coming month of September, the U.S.’s seven major shale plays will produce a combined 81.6 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas, and 8.8 million barrels of oil per day. That’s a brand new record high for each.
In Lansing, NY, just outside of Planet Ithaca in Tompkins County, the local utility (NYSEG) wanted to build a short pipeline in 2017 to supply new customers with natural gas, but was blocked by crazies who irrationally hate fossil fuels (see 
Score a (very) minor victory for THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum, in her holy mission to block a new fully authorized and permitted LNG export loading facility due to get built on the New Jersey bank of her beloved Delaware River (she thinks she owns the river and “speaks” for it). Riverkeeper filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for information about a facility New Fortress Energy is planning for a former DuPont dynamite factory site in NJ.
MPLX, formerly known as MarkWest Energy, recently released their second quarter 2019 update. There seems to be a new emphasis for MPLX on the Texas Permian play, which is detectable in the update. However, much of the company’s revenue continues to come from our region. A slide embedded deep in the Appendix of the latest slide deck tells an interesting story for us: Of the ten processing and fractionation plants MPLX is currently building or planning to build, six of them are in the Marcellus/Utica region. We have the list below.
Contrary to the media (and Big Green) narrative that environmentalists are some poor, lowly disadvantaged groups of righteous freedom fighters just trying to survive against gargantuan Big Oil companies to protect the planet, the opposite is true. Green groups are some of the most rich non-profit organizations in the U.S. (indeed, on the planet). They are controlled/funded by super-rich leftists whose goal is to twist the U.S. into a socialist state. We ran across an article, and a document, listing just how rich groups like the odious Sierra Club, NRDC, EDF and others really are. The numbers are staggering. Their revenue numbers are bigger than some oil companies!
Are oil (and gas) drillers on a precipice, about ready to go over the edge into oblivion? Become extinct? According to the article below, yes they are. The author is not necessarily rooting for that outcome, but simply recognizing that with market capitalizations in the toilet (down 90% or more), and the price of oil remaining low, many companies will not be in business in the next few years. That’s his thesis. Is he right?
Once again the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC), a corrupt political tool in the hands of an autocratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, has issued a denial of a federal Clean Water Act Section 401 water crossing permit for the National Fuel Gas Company’s Northern Access Pipeline project. Fortunately, DEC’s rejection doesn’t mean a hill of beans since the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) overruled the DEC last year.
In April President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) instructing the Environmental Protection Agency to review Section 401 of the Clean Water Act–the section that grants states (and tribes) the right to have a say in pipeline projects (see 
Some interesting comments by Jim Crews, vice president of northeast business development for MPLX (formerly known as MarkWest Energy), during a presentation he gave at the Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia’s (IOGAWV) Summer Meeting last week. Crews said lack of natural gas liquids storage is a crisis (our words, reflecting his sentiment). And we need storage not only here in the Marcellus/Utica region–but across the country. “We’re out of storage,” he said, and “Cargoes are just being given away.”