EIA Feb ’18 Drilling Report: M-U Production Up Another 1/3 Bcf
Yesterday our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issued our favorite monthly report, the Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The DPR is the EIA’s best guess, based on expert data crunchers, as to how much each of the U.S.’s seven major shale plays will produce for both oil and natural gas in the coming month. The numbers continue to be AMAZING. Natgas production continues to explode (poor metaphor!)–especially here in the Marcellus/Utica region, which is labeled “Appalachia” in the report. EIA predicts production in the Marcellus/Utica will soar another 321 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d), roughly one-third of a billion cubic feet (!), between February and March. That’s after M-U production went up a stupendously massive 428 MMcf/d last month, even more than the 377 MMcf/d originally forecast (see EIA Jan ’18 Drilling Report: M-U on Fire, Up 1/3 Billion Cubic Ft). Incredible! Our region isn’t the only prodigious producer. The Permian is primarily an oil play. But because each oil well also produces at least some natural gas along with the oil (called associated gas), and because so many wells are getting drilled in the Permian, it’s natgas production is forecast to jump 216 MMcf/d in the coming month. In a string going back more than a year, the seven major plays in the U.S. will once again hit new record natgas production in March–estimated to be 64.9 billion cubic feet per day. Of that, the M-U region will produce 27.1 Bcf/d–or 42%…
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Today a co-tenancy bill is due for a vote by the full House of Delegates and from there will get sent on to the WV Senate. Co-tenancy is NOT forced pooling. It is legislation that will give a majority of rights owners in a property the authority to sign a lease on behalf of all the rights owners. In WV there are often multiple rights owners listed for a property–sometimes 200 or more rights owners for a single piece of property! It is often difficult, if not impossible, to track them all down and get them all to sign on the dotted line. Co-tenancy corrects that situation. In the current bill, House Bill (HB) 4268, if 75% of the rights owners agree to lease the property for oil and gas drilling, that’s “good enough.” The bill will open up more Marcellus and Utica acreage to be drilled. As we previously reported, almost everyone is in favor it, including landowner groups (see 
We often write about pipeline projects in the Marcellus/Utica and their mission to move our prodigious natgas production to new markets where the gas will fetch a higher price. Last fall MDN provided a list of 15 active pipeline projects in our region, aimed at moving our gas to new markets (see 
In October 2016, Indeck Energy announced a plan to build a $1 billion electric generating plant (powered by natural gas) in Niles, Michigan, not far from Chicago (see 
Here’s something you don’t read every day with respect to pipeline construction: “Some township officials have praised the care of contractors in minimizing and reacting to disturbances and nuisance issues such as muddy roads and traffic backups.” Those comments come from officials in (yes), Lancaster County, PA, referring to the stellar job Williams is doing in building the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline–a $3 billion, 198-mile natural gas pipeline project running through 10 Pennsylvania counties to connect Marcellus Shale natural gas from northeastern PA with the Williams’ Transco pipeline in southern Lancaster County. What happened to the “over 1,000 protesters” willing to get themselves arrested as they stand in front of heavy equipment to block construction in Lancaster County? Where are the Clattberbucks and their Lancaster Against Pipelines gang? Nowhere to be found, apparently. The opposition to Atlantic Sunrise appears to have run out of steam. Meanwhile, Williams is full of steam–going full steam ahead with the project–and local officials could not be happier as Williams drills under 70 roads, 67 streams and 17 wetlands in Lancaster County…
Limiting fracking to an impossibly small 150 acres (out of 12,620 acres) that make up Monroeville–a mere 1% of the acreage–is not enough of a ban for radical antis in the municipality of Monroeville (suburb of Pittsburgh). They want it all banned–every single centimeter. The only problem with that is the Act 13 law, passed in 2012, requires each municipality to allow drilling in at least one zoned area. But hey, disobeying the law isn’t a problem for antis–they do it all the time. They are anarchists by nature. Last October, Monroeville Council passed a temporary ban on oil and gas well drilling everywhere except for those areas marked M-2 industrial zoning–a big change (see 
Last June, the West Virginia Public Service Commission held a public hearing in Clarksburg, WV on the proposed ESC Harrison County Power Plant project (see 
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Cheniere ordered to close 2 Sabine Pass LNG tanks following leaks; US shale oil output in Permian almost 3 million barrels/day; Chesapeake Energy sells remaining Mississippian Lime assets for $500M; Trump admin proposes repealing Obama methane leak rule; Trump budget slashes EPA budget 23%; Big Green lawyers hope latest tactic will sink fossil fuel companies; and more!
We’ve often called Rex Energy, a driller focused mainly on the Marcellus/Utica (headquartered in State College, PA), our “little energy company that could.” Rex has, in the past couple of years, had stiff challenges, at least on the financial front. It has swapped out old IOUs for new IOUs, converted debt (IOUs) into equity (shares of stock), sold off assets in other basins–a whole lotta stuff to keep on drilling (
Tree clearing for Dominion’s $5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) has already begun in West Virginia (see 
In a sure sign that the $1.1 billion, 120-mile PennEast Pipeline will get built, the Bethlehem Authority, which manages watershed land in the Pocono Mountains that supplies drinking water for the City of Bethlehem, has signed a $1.7 million deal to allow PennEast to traverse four miles of Authority land. Rather than challenge PennEast and potentially lose an eminent domain case, Bethlehem Authority officials said they brokered the deal–not only for the money it will bring in, but also to ensure there are certain protections in place during construction. The State of New Jersey is trying its best to stop the PennEast project (see 
As MDN reported last week, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, an extremely partisan Democrat, is once again beating the drum for a Marcellus Shale-killing severance tax in the last of his annual budgets (see 
In October 2017, local officials in Plum, PA (Allegheny County) approved a plan by Huntley & Huntley (H&H) to drill a series of Marcellus wells on a single well pad in their municipality (see 
A far-left group of radicals calling themselves Ending Dirty Gas Exploitation Philadelphia (EDGE Philly) is borrowing a tactic first pioneered by THE Delaware Riverkeeper, to oppose a short pipeline project near Philadelphia. In November, MDN shared the exciting news that an old oil pipeline stretching from Northampton County, PA through Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester counties, terminating in Delaware County at Marcus Hook, had been purchased by a subsidiary of New Jersey Resources and will get converted to flow Marcellus natural gas to the greater Philadelphia region (see