Energy Stories of Interest: Fri, Mar 1, 2019
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Nonprofit, educational organizations: don’t miss this chance to apply for environmental grants; New York and Massachusetts blow it with wacky wind projects; Governor Cuomo blames cold for population exodus; ODNR issues nine Utica permits; NATIONAL: Why natural gas prices will remain low for the time being; Collins to vote against Trump’s EPA pick; INTERNATIONAL: Despite recent supply reductions, global liquid fuels production to outpace demand.
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EQT is not holding their annual meeting in April this year, the month they’ve traditionally held the annual meeting until last year, when it was held in June due to an impending split of the company into upstream and midstream. Instead, the current board is using a legal loophole to delay this year’s annual meeting to July–as a way of obstructing the efforts of Toby and Derek Rice and their proxy war to take over the company.
Chesapeake Energy, started by Aubrey McClendon as a gas-focused drilling company that went on to become the country’s largest natgas producer, is doing its darnedest to get rid of its natgas assets and turn itself into an oil driller. Yet it was the company’s natural gas assets that boosted the company’s financial performance in 4Q18, helping them turn in a better financial performance than analysts expected. Ironic, no?
Energy Transfer and their Sunoco Logistics Partners unit are about to restart underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) work for the Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline in West Whiteland Township (Chester County), PA–work that has been on pause since July 2017. Yet ME2 actually went online in December (see 
Anti fossil fuel freaks have scored a victory in reducing the amount of electricity available to New Jersey’s southern shore area (rolling blackouts anyone?). There was a plan to convert a now-closed coal-fired electric generating plant to use natural gas, fed to it by a new (very short) pipeline.
The West Virginia Surface Owners Rights Organization (SORO) says WV has a serious problem. Drillers are not plugging old/non-producing wells (most of them conventional). In fact, SORO says there are some 4,500 wells that have been unplugged for so long, they are considered “orphaned”–the original driller is long gone, out of business, and there’s nobody around to do the plugging. Something’s got to change.
Range Resources, the very first company to sink a Marcellus well back in 2004, issued its fourth quarter and full year 2018 update yesterday. Range’s overall production increased 5% year over year, but production in 4Q18 actually fell from 4Q17 in part due to an explosion and extended processing plant outage at MarkWest’s Harmon Creek operation.
Summit Midstream has a meaningful presence in the Marcellus/Utica region. The company not only released their 4Q and full year 2018 update yesterday, they also released the bombshell announcement they have fired (our word, not theirs) CEO Steve Newby. Summit COO Leonard Mallett has become interim President and Chief Executive Officer while the company conducts a search.
The light at the end of the tunnel for Constitution Pipeline just got brighter. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to pass the ball back to them so they can reconsider whether or not to overrule New York State’s blockage of a permit for the Constitution. FERC’s action signals they may be ready to rule against NY and allow Constitution to begin construction.
Dominion Energy has about had it up to *here* with the clown judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circus. Dominion asked for all of the judges sitting on the Fourth Circuit to rehear a case that blocks the pipeline from drilling *under* the Appalachian Trail because of a lawsuit brought by colluding Big Green groups trying to kill the entire project. The clowns refused.
PennEast Pipeline, a $1 billion, (previously) 120-mile natgas pipeline that will stretch from northeast PA to the Trenton area of New Jersey, has made a few minor route adjustments, the most recent of which will make it another mile shorter, and anti-fossil fuelers like THE Delaware Riverkeeper is up in arms.
About a month ago MDN ran a story in which we said we think it’s likely that a new company called Westmoreland Gas is really just Mountain V Oil & Gas under a new name (see 
We really dig maps and charts that illustrate data about permits and drilling. Yeah, we’re shale geeks. We recently came across a series of maps issued by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) that summarize how many permits were issued, and how many wells were drilled, across all relevant counties in PA. And does so on a super-handy map. We grabbed the two maps you need to view and have them below–one showing permits, the other showing wells drilled.