Energy Stories of Interest: Tue, May 28, 2019
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Hilcorp eyes two more wells in Columbiana County; PA’s environmental protection head signs letter urging against EPA budget cuts; Appalachian E&Ps poised to spend less on stronger natural gas headwinds; State of New Jersey Common Pension Fund D purchases new holdings in Antero Resources; Natural gas now beats coal, even in West Virginia; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Permian gas market searches for signs of improvement; NATIONAL: Trump Administration hardens its attack on climate science; Moody’s – US frac sand miners’ credit quality drops along with prices; The biggest losers in the shale slowdown; America must build more natural gas storage capacity; Pipelines welcome advancement of stalled safety rule to OMB review; Tax credits for electric cars must end; LNG confronts its demons; INTERNATIONAL: This world-class shale frontier just opened up; GAIL ties up with ExxonMobil to explore supplying natural gas; The EU election’s ‘green wave’ is set to transform energy policy.
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On Monday Toby and Derek Rice–the Rice brothers (formerly owners of Rice Energy that sold itself to EQT in 2017) sent an open letter to EQT shareholders and a “white” proxy card, asking shareholders to vote for the Rices’ picks as board members (see 
A new study just published in the peer reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters by an international team of researchers finds that natural gas “has half the carbon footprint of underground coal mining.” The researchers looked at (did measurements of, actual real science) methane in the atmosphere by flying transects over the southwestern portion of Pennsylvania and adjacent portions of West Virginia and Ohio. Marcellus/Utica central. One of the researchers from Penn State said this about the findings: “Obviously, renewable energy would be better, but there is no debate, switching to natural gas is worth it in the short run.”
During a President Trump trade trip to China in November 2017, Chinese officials signed an informal (non-binding) agreement to invest a whopping $83.7 billion in shale and petrochemical projects located in West Virginia (see 
The smear job Pittsburgh Post-Gazette propagandists Don Hopey and David Templeton began last week continues this week–an attempt to connect drill cuttings (leftover rock and dirt from drilling a hole in the ground) to “toxic” chemicals coming from a landfill in Westmoreland County where the drill cuttings are less than half of the dumped waste. The effluent–runoff from the landfill–is piped to a nearby sewage treatment facility in Belle Vernon for processing and discharge into the Mon River.
Earlier this year, under the direction of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the state issued new draft regulations aimed at shutting down most of the state’s “peaker plants”–small electric generating plants that produce electricity for brief periods during high demand (see 
You may think we’re being hyperbolic when we say this (but we’re not): You’re being lied to, on a regular basis, by so-called mainstream news organizations. Like the New York Times. Like the Washington Post. Like CNN. Like…the UK Guardian, a major news rag from across the pond. The editor of the Guardian has instructed “reporters” at the newspaper to go full-bore propaganda when “reporting” on global warming. Its scary. It’s Joseph Goebbels-type stuff. Our friend Mark Mathis at the Clear Energy Alliance has a new video to explain…
A pipeline feeding the MarkWest Hopedale Fractionation Facility in Jewett, Ohio was knocked offline last Sunday, and that outage caused a cascading effect throughout the region that forced three gas processing plants in West Virginia to temporarily scale back (or stop) operations, which further caused a ~2.1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) decrease in gas flows on two interstate gas transmission pipelines. The good news is that the problem is now resolved.
It would be a crushing defeat by the forces of evil (i.e. the Sierra Club and other radical leftist “green” groups) if Dominion Energy decides to give up on building the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) from West Virginia to North Carolina. The decision on whether to build or not appears to come down to this: If the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear Dominion’s appeal about crossing the Appalachian Trail (56 other pipelines have done in the past), some analysts say Dominion will give up the fight.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf continues to take credit for Pipeline Investment Program (PIPE), a program he didn’t create, didn’t support, and didn’t even sign into law. Typical. Even so, the program continues to benefit local rural communities throughout the state. The latest two communities to benefit are Crawford and Wayne counties where grants of $300,000 and $376,392 respectively have just been announced by Wolf’s Dept. of Community and Economic Development (DCED) to expand local natgas delivery pipes.
Yesterday MDN brought you the news that Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has sunk to a new low in his effort to slap a $4.5 billion severance tax on the Marcellus gas industry (see 
Range Resources released its first-ever Corporate Sustainability Report earlier this week. The report reviews Range’s accomplishments at reducing so-called greenhouse gases (methane emissions) over the past 10 years. However, the big news contained in the report is that Range is committing to the goal of zero greenhouse gas emissions from its operations. Someday. In the future. The report and the goal of zero emissions comes in response to pressure last year from a wacko leftist group that floated a shareholder resolution that almost passed.
UPS, the package delivery company, is so excited they’re about to burst. The company issued a press release yesterday to announce they cut a deal to purchase 170 million gallon equivalents of so-called renewable natural gas (RNG) through 2026. It is “the largest commitment for use of RNG to date by any company in the United States.” Horray!!! What’s that? What is “renewable” natural gas? That’s methane from pig and cow poop, and from landfills. Somehow because the word “renewable” is slipped into the label, companies like UPS mistakenly believe Big Green will be pleased. We hate to burst their bubble…
Last November the judges in Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court issued a ruling in favor of Penn Township (Westmoreland County) granting “special exception” permits to Apex Energy, allowing them to drill four shale wells (see