SWPA Gas-fired Elec Plant Next to Pot Farm Gets Ready to Build
In October 2017, MDN told you a second Marcellus gas-fired electric generating plant is planned for Greene County, PA (see 2nd Marcellus-Fired Electric Plant Proposed for Greene County, PA). Hill Top Energy Center, based in Huntington Bay, N.Y., is planning to build a 620 megawatt plant on 41 acres of land off Thomas Road in Cumberland Township. We have indications that the project is finally getting ready to begin construction.
Read More “SWPA Gas-fired Elec Plant Next to Pot Farm Gets Ready to Build”
We have news of a new, small pipeline project with the potential to carry more PA Marcellus natural gas to several locations in Delaware and Maryland. Eastern Shore Natural Gas Company (ESNG), a subsidiary company of Chesapeake Utilities Corporation, filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Sept. 2018 to build 19+ miles of new pipeline and new meter and delivery stations in Kent and Sussex counties in Delaware, and Wicomico and Somerset counties in Maryland. FERC has just issued a positive environmental assessment (EA) for the project.
The battle to buy Anadarko Petroleum by Chevron and Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) has taken an interesting turn. Over the weekend Oxy revised its offer. It will still pay Anadarko shareholders $57 billion (as before), but the offer was revised to dial up the amount of cash and dial down the amount of stock swaps. Never hurts to use cash as a sweetener. The new offer did the trick. Although Anadarko previously signed an agreement to sell itself to Chevron, Anadarko announced yesterday they are leaving Chevron at the altar and riding off into the sunset to elope with Oxy.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Cabot Oil & Gas rises after hedge fund names it a top pick; NY State Laborer’s ad seeks to boost NESE pipeline; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: President Trump to tour natural gas facility in Cameron Parish next week; Winklevosses, Bain eye gas-powered data centers to fix US gas glut; Key state certification denied for SW Oregon LNG export project; NATIONAL: Agencies call for increased US LNG deliveries to EU; Optimism at OTC as offshore industry shows signs of improvement; Factors affecting feedgas demand and LNG exports in 2019; Bad climate data leads to wrong conclusions (video); Trump’s steel tariffs stand in way of next US shale revolution; INTERNATIONAL: Poland eyes second LNG import terminal; The reason renewables can’t power modern civilization is because they were never meant to.
Last Friday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a final approval for Williams’ Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project by a vote of 3-1 (full copy below). The only remaining regulatory hurdles are for both New York State and New Jersey to issue federal Clean Water Act 401 certificates to allow the project to cross bodies of water in their respective territorial waters. All eyes are now on NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo and what he will do. Will he approve the project, benefiting New York City and Long Island with much-needed gas? Or will he veto the project, harming millions of NY residents, simply to placate a small group of very vocal radical leftists who pretend to care about the environment? He has until May 16 to decide.
“In our exploration and production business, even though we achieved our highest ever average daily production rate this past quarter, we were expecting more. It’s a slight disappointment that we modestly lowered the midpoint of our production guidance to the low end of the range that we established last August.” So said National Fuel Gas Company (NFG) CEO Ron Tanski in talking about NFG’s Seneca Resources shale drilling subsidiary on a conference call last Friday.
Gulfport Energy, one of the biggest drillers in the Ohio Utica Shale (210,000 acres) with record production in the Utica last year, announced last week (as part of its first quarter update) it has sold a “small footprint” of Marcellus drilling rights on some of their Utica acreage in southeastern Ohio for $30 million. Gulfport concentrates its drilling in the Ohio Utica and the Oklahoma SCOOP plays. Piecing together the company’s plans for this year, we’re calling 2019 the “Year of the DUC” for Gulfport.
Dominion Energy, a huge (one of the biggest) gas and electric utilities (and power generator) in the U.S., as well as a major pipeline company, issued its first quarter 2019 update last week. Our main concern and focus with the update is what Dominion said about the 600-mile, $7-$7.5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project. Given the ongoing lawsuits by radical green groups that have delayed the project and skyrocketed costs, Dominion CEO Tom Farrell said “it’s been a very frustrating process,” but “we are winding our way through it…and we’re making progress.” Farrell still plans to restart construction of ACP (currently stopped thanks to lawsuits) in the third quarter of this year.
This is a glittering example of how people who fancy themselves as “smart” are actually quite stupid. The so-called political leaders of Philadelphia are commissioning a study (paid for by Mike Bloomberg) on how the city can convert Philadelphia Gas Works, the nation’s largest municipal-owned utility company, into dumping natgas. Because, ya know, global warming. It’s bizarre (and breath-taking) to watch just how stupid people can get.
We’re sometimes criticized by MDN readers for too much “green bashing.” Yet how should we handle news like this: The Sierra Club is launching yet another attack on the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), which runs from Wetzel County, WV to Pittsylvania County, VA, by bastardizing the endangered species act in an attempt to bully the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service into blocking construction. Should we pretend to remain aloof and report that a respectable “environmental organization” is launching “new opposition” to a gas pipeline? Or tell you what we really think: That this evil, disgusting left-of-Attila-the-Hun group of thugs is once again organizing, using money from lefty billionaires like George Soros and Tom Steyer, to try and destroy a company and the people whose jobs depend on that company?
In January, TransCanada announced it would change it’s name–from TransCanada to TC Energy–in order to more accurately reflect the fact they operate in more than just Canada (see 
Antero Resources, one of the biggest Marcellus/Utica drillers (pure play) released first quarter 2019 numbers yesterday. The Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline, which Antero uses to ship and sell natural gas liquids (NGLs) had a huge beneficial effect for the company. Antero’s production was massive: 3.1 billion cubic feet equivalent per day (Bcfe/d) in 1Q19, up an astonishing 30% from 1Q18. But here’s the kicker: Nearly one-third of Antero’s production (29%) was NGLs. Without ME2, that big number would have been a small fraction of Antero’s production.
Williams, one of the biggest midstream (pipeline) companies in the U.S., issued its first quarter 2019 update yesterday. Williams is a gigantic company with operations in multiple regions, not just here in the northeast. It would be folly for us to try and summarize everything about the company and its many projects, so we’ll concentrate on projects in the Marcellus/Utica.