MarkWest Energy’s “Extraordinary Results” in 2018
The company we call MarkWest Energy is technically MPLX, renamed after MarkWest was bought out and merged into Marathon Petroleum in December 2015 (see Golden Parachutes Pop Open for MarkWest Top Management/Board). We still call it MarkWest because most people we know still call it that. It’s been over a month since MPLX/MarkWest issued its 2018 update, but we’d still like to analyze it. The company had a breakout year, earning more in 2018 than at any time in the company’s history.
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Yesterday IHS Markit released a study commissioned by Shale Crescent USA and JobsOhio that finds natural gas produced in the tri-state region of Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia will be 45% of the nation’s production by 2040, up from 31% this year. This is truly big news with lots of ramifications.
Anti-fossil fuelers really have no shame. We recently spotted an article that purports to lay out the case, chapter and verse, for how “frackers” are engaging in “accounting shenanigans” covering up true reserve estimates and depreciation expenses. In other words, they’re cooking the books, lying to investors. And ultimately America’s fracking boom as been “a bust.” Nonsense.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Oil majors rush to dominate U.S. shale as independents scale back; No link between Barnett Shale natural gas production and methane in groundwater, studies conclude; Fractionation constraints limit ethane supply as demand rises; SE Texas sitting pretty as nat gas booms; LNG industry eyes natural gas being flared in the Permian Basin; NATIONAL: Florida Congressman champion “Small Scale LNG Access Act”; EPA & Army Corps request voluntary dismissal of their WOTUS-related appeal.
The Canadians are coming! The Canadians are coming! Actually, they’re already here. Last summer we brought you the bombshell news that Encino Acquisition Partners (EAP) had purchased all of Chesapeake Energy’s Ohio Utica assets (see 
Two days ago MDN brought you news about a new bill in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, HB 247, which would allow fully leased parcels that are part of one drilling “unit” to be combined with parcels in a different unit (see 
The “great crew change” is taking place in the oil and gas industry in general, and in the Marcellus/Utica in particular. Older workers are nearing retirement and exiting the industry in increasing numbers, and the industry isn’t attracting enough newer workers to fill the ranks. According to the Ohio Oil & Gas Association, the need for new workers in Ohio’s O&G industry is pressing. Everything from welders and truckers to people working with technology.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is conducting a series of four public meetings (called scoping sessions) for both the Williams Leidy South Project (see 
Last October MDN told you that the man largely responsible for the huge success of Range Resources in drilling in the Marcellus Shale, Range’s former senior vice president in charge of the Marcellus, John Applegath, left retirement to head on over to Huntley & Huntley, to helm the drilling program there (see 
Yesterday our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, issued our favorite monthly report, the Drilling Productivity Report. The DPR is a forecast of oil and gas production in the country’s seven major shale plays for the coming month, made by the expert number crunchers at EIA.
On Friday MDN told you that Consolidated Edison’s deadline to apply to be added as a natural gas customer in Westchester County had arrived (see 
Last May, Liberty Utilities, located and operating in New Hampshire, announced a new pipeline project called Granite Bridge–27 miles of new natural gas pipeline to be buried along Route 101 from Stratham to Manchester, along with an LNG storage facility located midway along the pipeline (see