Industry News

Blackstone Looks to Sell M-U Driller Olympus Energy for $2 Billion

Huntley & Huntley Energy Exploration (HHEX), a shale driller headquartered in Southpointe (Washington County), PA, that leases ~100,000 acres and drills in the Pittsburgh suburbs, was founded in 2012. The company renamed itself to Olympus Energy in 2019 (see PA Driller HHEX Renames Itself Olympus Energy). Olympus is majority-owned by private equity firm Blackstone. Bloomberg…

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Ohio’s Utica Condensate/Light Crude Part 3 – How It’s Transported

Condensate production (super-light crude oil) in the Utica Shale’s volatile oil window in eastern Ohio has more than doubled over the past three years. RBN Energy has done a deep dive into the Ohio Utica condensate market with several posts (three so far). The first article (in early January) dealt mainly with Encino Energy, the…

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Many Types of Service Companies Needed to Plug Orphaned Wells in PA

Have you ever considered all the different goods and services required to plug an orphaned well? It’s a surprisingly long and complex list! You might think (as we did), “There’s an old well, pull up with a cement mixer, dump cement down the hole, and voila, it’s done.” Not so! The process begins with locating…

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TVA Green Lights New 500 MW Natural Gas Power Plant in Mississippi

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the U.S. TVA’s service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. TVA is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the U.S. In 2021, MDN told you…

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Woodside Close to a Decision to Proceed with Former Driftwood LNG

MDN chronicled the rise and fall of Tellurian, founded by Charif Souki (who also founded Cheniere Energy), and Tellurian’s LNG export project, Driftwood. Tellurian’s primary focus was to build Driftwood LNG, a 27.6 million tonnes of LNG per year facility that would cost $14.5 billion. Construction began on the project in March 2022, even without…

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Stop Press! Trump Pledges to Revive PA-to-NY Constitution Pipeline

Never in our wildest dreams did we see this one coming. And we must caution against too much hope. However, we are JAZZED. Last Friday, President Trump signed yet another executive order. This EO creates the National Energy Dominance Council, directing the new council to move quickly to increase domestic oil and gas production (see…

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Trump Signs EO Establishing National Energy Dominance Council

President Trump signed an executive order Friday establishing the National Energy Dominance Council. The Council will be chaired by Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and vice-chaired by Energy Secretary Chris Wright. The other members are essentially all of the cabinet members, the secretaries of the other executive branch agencies, including State, Treasury, Defense, Justice,…

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Commonwealth LNG Set to Make FID After Trump DOE, FERC Approvals

On Friday, Commonwealth LNG achieved two significant milestones on the way to making a final investment decision (FID). The first was that the Department of Energy (DOE) issued a long-delayed (because of Biden) approval to export LNG to non-free trade agreement (FTA) countries. The second is that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a…

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National Rig Count Gains 2 @ 588; M-U Count Steady @ 34

For the third week in a row, the Baker Hughes U.S. rig count regained some of the rigs lost earlier this year. Two weeks ago, the rig count gained four rigs to 586. Last week the count regained another two rigs to 588. Note that for much of last year, the national count remained in…

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Have Marcellus/Utica Drillers Gone DUC Hunting Too Often?

DUCs are drilled but uncompleted wells. Drillers sink a hole first and then return later to “complete” the well by fracking it and connecting it to sales. An increase in DUCs means more new drilling is happening. A decrease in DUCs means fewer new wells are drilled while previously drilled wells are completed. According to…

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