Cabot O&G Fracks Its First OH Knox Well, Drilling 3rd OH Well
According to a news account from Ohio, Cabot Oil & Gas is either in the midst of, or just recently completed, fracking their very first shale well in central Ohio. The well is located in Ashland County’s Green Township. As we previously reported, Cabot is targeting the Knox formation (see Cabot O&G Opens Branch Office in OH – Hoping to Find Oil in Knox). Cabot has already drilled two wells, fracked one, and moved their drilling rig last week to Vermillion Township (also in Ashland County) to begin drilling a third well. The first three wells are all located in Ashland. As for the next two, Cabot isn’t 100% sure. Maybe another well in Ashland, but maybe a well in Richland County instead. Cabot’s George Stark says to stay tuned for the location of the final two test wells the company will drill. Cabot plans to have all five test wells drilled and fracked by the end of this year. “It should be a busy September and October,” according to Stark…
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In an interesting coincidence, we spotted two different stories on the same day about the price of gas in the Marcellus Shale–detailing how prices this year are much higher than they were last year at this same time, and speculating that the perhaps we have finally turned a corner and our prices (compared with the benchmark Henry Hub price) will stay higher. Which is good news for both drillers and landowners who get royalty checks from those drillers. Why are northeast gas prices higher today and staying higher? In a word, pipelines. With Rover Pipeline now online and the final laterals that feed it going online soon, with NEXUS coming online by the end of this year (both of those projects carting gas to the Midwest and Canada), and with Atlantic Sunrise and other pipelines coming online to cart gas to the south, even as far as the Gulf Coast, Marcellus/Utica molecules are finding new homes in higher-paying markets. As Martha Stewart says, “That’s a good thing!”…
In May 2016, three Big Green groups–THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Lancaster Against Pipelines and the Sierra Club (fueled by money from the William Penn Foundation and Heinz Endowments)–conspired and sued the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) saying the DEP erred in granting federal Clean Water Act “401” stream crossing permits for Williams’ Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project (see 
You win some, you lose some. Today we brought you the news that THE Delaware Riverkeeper and other radical groups lost their case opposing the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project (see 
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading: New partnership provides STEM grants for West Virginia educators; Here’s the latest sign that Permian shale oil is slowing down; Like that cleaner air you’re breathing? Fracking says, ‘You’re welcome!’; Trump to name climate change skeptic as adviser on emerging technologies; Nord Stream 2 pipelay work starts in Finland; ExxonMobil to invest in chemical complex, LNG terminal in China; India to buy Iranian oil despite sanction threat; and more!
Some exciting news to share. Southwestern Energy, headquartered in Texas, has cut a deal to sell all of their Fayetteville Shale (Arkansas) assets to Flywheel Energy for $1.865 billion in cash. The sale makes Southwestern a pure play, 100% focused driller on the Marcellus/Utica region (i.e. Appalachia). What will Southwestern do with an extra $1.865 billion? According to their announcement: (1) Spend $900 million of it on retiring IOUs (“notes”) previously issued. That is, debt retirement. (2) Buy back up to $200 million in outstanding shares of stock. (3) Spend $600 million of it over the next two years (2019 & 2020) on more Marcellus/Utica drilling. But not just any M-U drilling. Southwestern owns acreage in both northeastern PA and the northern panhandle of WV (with a some acreage in Washington County, PA). According to Southwestern’s announcement, the extra $600 million will go to drilling in the company’s “liquids-rich Appalachia assets.” Northeastern PA is dry dry dry–no liquids. WV landowners brace yourselves–Southwestern will soon bring an extra $600 million (over half a billion dollars) worth of drilling to your area. If you’re signed with Southwestern and haven’t yet seen drilling, you now stand a much better chance! Here’s the exciting news, along with extra resources we’ve located to better help you understand the news…
We finally come down to the final two lateral pipelines for Rover. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) played a game of hardball with Energy Transfer (ET) over the Rover Pipeline. For months FERC refused to allow four Rover laterals–feeder pipelines to shuttle gas from where it’s produced into the main Rover pipeline–to start up (see 
It’s an amicable divorce, the split of EQT into upstream (drilling) and midstream (pipelines). But it’s still a divorce, and the parents have to decide which kids will go or stay with which company. The “kids” in this case are the top managers, the executives. And we have the list. After EQT announced its plan to buy/merge in Rice Energy last year, the company got pushback from a couple of so-called activist investors (i.e. corporate raiders). One raider, Jana Partners, tried its best to stop the EQT/Rice deal outright (see 
In early 2013, the Proctor & Gamble manufacturing plant in Wyoming County (northeastern PA) began generating 100% of its own energy needs thanks to the Marcellus Shale beneath plant property (see 
An intriguing concept: What if you could generate your own electricity for your own home–without big, ugly solar panels plastered on your roof, or without an unsightly (and loud) wind mill stuck in your yard? What if all you need is a natural gas pipeline connected to your home. What’s that? You don’t want to contribute to man-made global warming by *burning* natural gas? No problem. This nifty little invention, called a fuel cell, uses natural gas in a *chemical* reaction to create electricity. These types of fuel cells have been around for a while, but what’s new is that they are now getting good enough to be commercially viable. Peoples Natural Gas, the largest natural gas distribution company in PA, providing natural gas service to approximately 700,000 customers in western PA, West Virginia, and Kentucky, has cut a deal with a Westmoreland County fuel-cell manufacturer to put 100 test systems in customer’s homes to create electricity at home. It’s an experiment. If all goes well, more will be deployed. Remember when cable companies first began offering internet access, then telephone access? Yeah, electric utilities and electric generators might want to look over their shoulder. They may get some serious competition! If natgas fuel cells ever take off for the residential market, demand for natural gas would be ginormous. Hence our interest. Is this technology anywhere near mainstream yet? No. But let’s keep a close eye on this potential new market for Marcellus/Utica gas. It may happen sooner than you think…
If you live in New York State, as MDN editor Jim Willis does, you often shake your head at the stupidity of our political leaders. Especially people like Gov. Andrew Cuomo. How could he, in good conscience, turn against natural gas and block pipelines, electric plants and fracking? Is he obtuse? Is he getting paid-off by someone? There has to be a reason for his obviously irrational behavior. What is that reason? We have, perhaps, a better understanding now. The radical left is well-organized–think Saul Alinksy, Obama and Hillary Clinton’s idol. Taking a chapter from Alinksy’s “Rules for Radicals” book, the green radicals in NY have organized themselves to pressure Cuomo. We’d call it highly organized and well-funded. The radicals have weekly meetings, plan strategy, and motivate groups of blind followers to show up and heckle Cuomo at public events. And guess what? Cuomo caves–every time. Like a house of cards. The radicals have found the magic formula to pressure Cuomo into doing their bidding. Andrew Cuomo is actually weak-willed. He’s a patsy for the green movement because he fears them, fears a public shaming by them. And so they have their way with him–every time. None other than a liberal Gannett reporter has outed Cuomo as a Big Green patsy…
You know, for years we’ve poked fun at green leftists, saying they were raised watching Captain Planet cartoons–and that’s what warped their brains. Little did we know how right we were in our jocularity! Captain Planet was a cartoon created and produced by Ted Turner & Barbara Pyle, airing from 1990-1996. Did you know that there’s now a foundation, endowed with big bucks, called The Captain Planet Foundation? No lie! It was set up in 2001, funded by Turner and other lefty whack jobs. This is what we’re up against folks. The Captain Planet cartoon, brainchild of radical leftist Democrat Ted Turner (Turner Broadcasting), intentionally brainwashed a generation of our children, planting kindergartenish, simpleton ideas into our children’s heads. Unfortunately some of our kids never grew up. Not intellectually. Some of them still harbor childish, immature ideas that corporations are out to “loot and plunder”–there’s a character in CP cartoons called Looten Plunder, no lie. Do you know how silly it looks to support a foundation based on a kid’s cartoon?…