Ohio’s Largest Regional Railroad Moving Frac Sand & NGLs Gets Sold
Yes, we’re suckers for a good railroad story. Always have been, always will be. And here’s one! FTAL Infrastructure owns short line and terminal switching operator Transtar and is an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group. It’s kind of a Matryoshka doll (a Russian “nesting” doll of one thing inside another). Transtar, owned by FTAL, which is owned by Fortress, is buying the Wheeling & Lake Erie (W&LE) regional railroad for $1.05 billion. W&LE, headquartered in Brewster (Stark County), Ohio, owns 840 miles of track in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Read More “Ohio’s Largest Regional Railroad Moving Frac Sand & NGLs Gets Sold”
We first told you about a frac sand company called Smart Sand some 13 years ago (see 
Eversource wants to build the Western Massachusetts Natural Gas Reliability Project in Springfield, Massachusetts, to prevent winter gas outages. The purpose of the tiny 5.3-mile pipeline is to function as a backup—to prevent natural gas from being turned off for 58,000 Eversource customers (200,000 people) in the region. The existing pipeline in that area is more than 70 years old with no backup. If the existing, old pipeline has an issue and the gas gets turned off, that’s 200,000 people with no natural gas in the dead of a New England winter. A small group of people, calling themselves the Springfield Climate Justice Coalition, acted like children at an open house held by Eversource to discuss the project. 
Venture Global has won an arbitration case brought against it by Shell. The case accused Venture Global of not delivering contracted LNG shipments *for years* while Venture Global sold those shipments on the open/spot market for more money than they would have made from honoring their contracts with Shell (and with other big LNG buyers, Shell wasn’t the only one to sue). Shell claimed to have spent some $1.7 billion more buying LNG than it would have if Venture Global had honored its contract. Yet in arbitration, the tribunal found that Venture Global did honor the letter of the contracts signed. Venture Global may have won based on the letter of the contract, but they certainly lost based on the spirit of the contract, by exploiting loopholes. They lost the trust of their customers. 
The Trump administration has been a blizzard of activity since it began in January. We absolutely love it. The Trump team has so overwhelmed the radical left that they run in circles chasing their tails. Yet every now and again, the Trump team makes a misstep (in our estimation). We understand that nobody is going to agree 100% with someone else. Not even spouses! But we strongly object to this misstep. Under new mandates proposed by the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), beginning in 2028, a total of 1% of America’s LNG exports must be carried via U.S.-flagged vessels. From 2029 onwards, 1% of U.S. LNG exports should be shipped on U.S.-flagged and U.S.-built vessels. 
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the United States set multiple records for energy production and exports in 2024. Of the record 103 quadrillion British thermal units (quads) of total primary energy production in the United States, a record 31 quads went to other countries. Who knew?! In 2024, the U.S. exported 55% of its domestic crude oil and natural gas plant liquids (NGPL) production either directly as crude oil or as processed petroleum products such as propane, distillate fuel oil, and motor gasoline. 
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: NextDecade secures $1.8 billion from TotalEnergies, GIP for Rio Grande LNG project; NY Climate Action Council member letter to the PSC; NATIONAL: Potential for ‘coolest August’ in eight years knocks natgas futures down; Wind and solar troubles – economics, not ideology; Tech giants may be the surest bets for data center power demand; INTERNATIONAL: Oil falls as China tariff truce extended; German gas drive fuels fears of climate backsliding. 
Diversified Energy, which owns significant assets in the Marcellus/Utica region (and other regions, too), issued its second quarter update yesterday. The company owns approximately 8 million acres of leases with close to 70,000 oil and gas wells, mostly conventional wells (by number of wells). However, the company now produces 41% of its production from shale wells, meaning the blend of assets has changed over time. The company’s business model is to buy already-drilled, lower-producing wells on the cheap and find ways to make them more productive. They do a great job at it. Diversified also owns midstream (pipeline) assets in addition to a well-plugging subsidiary called Next LVL. What does the 2Q update show? The company produced 1,149 MMcfe/d (73% natural gas, 13% NGLs, and 14% oil). That’s up a huge 33%! 
Iron Oak Energy is a proppant and solutions provider with over 34 million tons of annual production capacity (i.e., a big frac sand company). Iron Oak’s assets include leading positions in the largest U.S. shale plays and strategically located terminals to distribute sand to the company’s customers. Yesterday, Iron Oak announced a deal to buy the Northern White assets of HC Minerals, Inc. The assets include a frac sand plant in Wyeville, Wisconsin, and four terminals in the Marcellus and Utica shales to distribute the sand. 
This is too funny. Antis are up in arms over a bitcoin operation on the edge of Seneca Lake in Upstate New York that refuses to shut down. Even though they demand it. Bitcoin miner Greenidge Generation uses a clean-burning (very small) natural gas power plant to power its 15,300 computer servers at a facility on Seneca Lake in Yates County. The nutters on the enviro-left began carping and complaining about this plant back in 2021 (see 
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioner Mark Christie, who first became a FERC commissioner when appointed by President Trump during his first term, was promoted to become the FERC Chairman by Trump in January (see 
We spotted an excellent post on the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) website about the recent PJM capacity auction, which we reported on a few weeks ago (see 
Last week, the Baker Hughes U.S. rig count continued its downward trend, losing another rig to end at 539 active rigs nationwide. The count has been down 14 of the last 15 weeks, with the only slight increase happening a month ago. The Marcellus/Utica count remained the same (after gaining one rig three weeks ago) at a combined 36 active rigs. PA is running 18 active rigs. OH is running 11 rigs. And WV is operating 7 rigs. There were 24 rigs targeting the Marcellus and 12 rigs targeting the Utica last week. 
EOG Resources, one of the largest oil and gas drillers in the U.S. (with international operations in several other countries) announced at the end of May it had made a deal to buy Encino Energy and Encino’s massive Ohio Utica Shale assets for $5.6 billion (see