Energy Stories of Interest: Mon, Jun 17, 2019
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Rep. Causer introduces bill to separate conventional oil & gas regulations from shale; Judge in Exxon case to NY AG: stop stalling; Anti-Energy activists are trying to make Pennsylvania the next California; No need to tarnish the gas impact fee with severance tax; Unique partnership pairs Tunkhannock students with trout; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: ENGIE enters Massachusetts natural gas markets; Colo.’s new oil and gas law shifts rulemaking landscape; NATIONAL: Chesapeake Energy is losing its battle to stay afloat; A history of shale pessimism: “Always with you it cannot be done”; Will the red ink ever wash out of the U.S. shale gas industry?; Trump’s tariffs disrupt USMCA and the U.S. oil & gas boom; INTERNATIONAL: Canada natural gas said economic, possible avenue for shortages in U.S. Northeast; President of Poland visits Cheniere’s Sabine Pass LNG terminal in Cameron.
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Somebody’s lying–and our money is that the North Carolina Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ) are the liars. The DEQ recently denied a federal Section 401 Water Quality Certification permit (issued under the federal Clean Water Act) for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) Southgate project, claiming MVP has not provided information it needs to properly evaluate the project. MVP says it’s bent over backward and forward to give DEQ everything it needs.
Appalachia Development Group is leading an effort to build a ~$10 billion (or $2.5B, or $3.4B, depending on your source) NGL storage hub in Appalachia–most likely in West Virginia (see 
A Pennsylvania landowner thought he could finagle extra payments from XTO Energy after his land was drilled under from a neighboring property. The landowner had signed a lease, and the lease contains language that says if XTO were to drill “on” his property (i.e. install a well pad) the landowner would receive an extra payment. The landowner sued saying “on” also means “under” when XTO drilled under his property. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania disagreed, saying “on” means “on the surface” and “under” does not mean “on”.
There is a truly dreadful, jobs-killing piece of legislation in New York State that may get passed in the next few weeks. It’s called the Climate Community Protection Act (CCPA). The bill, if it becomes law, would mandate the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to eliminate all so-called greenhouse gas emissions from any major source in the state by 2050. The following manufacturing industries in the state would likely close and/or move out of the state: glass (say goodbye to Corning), steel, cement, auto, metal casting, food, pulp and paper, aluminum, plastics, ceramics and chemicals. Yeah, pretty much all of Upstate would close.
Oil and gas giant BP recently released its annual Statistical Review of World Energy–the 68th edition (full copy below). Among the interesting findings in BP’s analysis of global energy last year: wind and solar energy, while growing, only provide a minuscule 3% of the world’s energy supply. Meanwhile fossil fuels–coal, natural gas and oil–accounted for 85% of global energy consumption in 2018. Hey, tell us again how renewables are taking over the world–as we pick ourselves up off the floor from laughing so hard.
Yesterday the Pittsburgh Business Times broke the news that Range Resources, one of the Marcellus/Utica’s biggest drillers (and in fact the very first driller to sink a Marcellus well, back in 2004), has laid off 40 employees–roughly 5% of its workforce. The layoffs are split between the company’s Pennsylvania and Texas operations.
In mid-December there was an explosion at a MarkWest Energy natural gas processing plant in Chartiers (Washington County), PA, injuring four people (see 
Yesterday, over the shrill objections of THE Delaware Riverkeeper, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) approved a plan put forth by New Fortress Energy to build a $96 million 1,600-foot-long pier on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River at the former DuPoint dynamite factory site. The purpose of the pier? To dock and load two ships at a time–loading them with either LNG (liquefied natural gas) and/or NGLs (natural gas liquids, like propane, butane and ethane).
The hits keep coming from OOGEEP, the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program. In May we brought you OOGEEP’s top notch new resource to help workers discover new careers in the oil and gas industry (see 
It’s always better for an industry, like the oil and gas industry, to self-regulate rather than wait for the heavy hand of the government to do it. Case in point: There’s a coalition of upstream (drilling), midstream (pipeline) and downstream (utility) companies that formed an industry group called ONE Future, begun back in 2014. The aim of the group is lower methane emissions across all aspects of the natural gas infrastructure system nationwide to emit (lose into the atmosphere) no more than 1% by 2025. The group began with eight members and today has 17. Many of the members have major operations in the Marcellus/Utica. ONE Future’s newest member is pipeline giant Williams.
The war to control EQT continues. On Monday, Toby and Derek Rice (the Rice brothers) sent an open letter to EQT shareholders to “set the record straight on EQT’s misleading comments” about the Rice boys and their plan to take over EQT. In fact, the Rices’ say EQT has made “a number of false claims” and engaged in “personal attacks.” Yesterday, EQT issued a response to “correct the Toby Rice Group’s false and misleading statements” about what EQT said, and to “highlight significant omissions and errors” in the Rice analysis of EQT’s recent performance.