Shale Gas News – August 3, 2019

Bill desRosiers
External Affairs Coordinator, Cabot Oil & Gas

The Shale Gas News, heard every Saturday at 10 AM on 94.3 FM, 1510 AM and Sundays on YesFM, talked about Nord Stream 2 Pipeline, Hurricane Barry, Mississippi LNG exports and much more last week.

The Shale Gas News has grown again; welcome Gem 104 as our FOURTH station! Gem 104 helps to solidify the Shale Gas News coverage in an important Marcellus region, PA’s northern tier. The Shale Gas News is now broadcasting in Bradford, Lackawanna, Lancaster, Lebanon, Luzerne, Lycoming, Pike, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga and Wayne Counties, as well as in greater central PA. The Shale Gas News is aired on Saturday or Sunday depending on the station.

Every Saturday Rusty Fender and I host a morning radio show to discuss all things natural gas. This week, as guests, we had Mike Atchie, manager of public outreach at Williams Partners  & Dave Williams of the PA Farm County Radio Network.

Shale Gas News

The Shale Gas News, typically, is broadcast live. On the August 3rd show (click above), we covered the following new territory (see news excerpts below):

  • Hurricane Barry Knocked 700,000 Barrels Of Oil Per Day Offline And Hardly Anyone Noticed.  Domestic U.S. crude oil production tanked by 700,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) during the week ended July 19, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), and hardly anyone noticed. Gasoline prices didn’t spike – they actually dropped slightly – refiners didn’t experience shortages of feedstock, no interstate pipelines had to be shut in due to pressure issues linked to lack of line fill.  When Hurricane Katrina churned up the Gulf of Mexico in late August/early September, 2005, all of these issues and more resulted from about 1 million bopd being knocked off-line. But when Hurricane Barry mandated the shutting-in of most producing platforms in the Gulf this year, the impacts to the country were barely noticeable.
  • Department of Energy Authorizes LNG Exports from the Gulf LNG Liquefaction Project in Mississippi. The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy today issued an order to Gulf LNG Liquefaction Company, LLC (GLLC) approving exports of domestically produced liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Gulf LNG Liquefaction Project, which will be located in Jackson County, Mississippi, near the city of Pascagoula.  The Gulf LNG Liquefaction Project, owned 50-percent by Kinder Morgan’s Southern Gulf LNG Company, LLC, will be built at the site of the Gulf LNG Terminal, an existing import terminal owned by Gulf LNG Energy, LLC.
  • Senate panel backs Nord Stream 2 pipeline sanctions bill.  A U.S. Senate committee passed a bill on Wednesday to slap sanctions on companies and individuals involved in building the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany that the Trump administration says would strengthen Moscow’s economic grip on Europe. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed the “Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act,” by a vote of 20 to 2. The bill, which reflects some lawmakers’ concerns over Russian influence in Europe, would still need to pass the full Senate and House of Representatives and be signed by President Donald Trump into law.
  • Trump campaign seizes on Biden’s pledge to eliminate coal, fracking.  The Trump campaign reacted with a mixture of disgust and glee Wednesday night when former Vice President Joseph R. Biden pledged to get rid of the coal and natural-gas fracking industries. Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted, “Bye bye coal, Democrats & @JoeBiden just said they are done with you. How do you feel about that Pennsylvania?” During the debate in Detroit, Mr. Biden was asked if he would eliminate coal and fracking if elected president. “We would make sure it’s eliminated and no more subsidies for either one of those,” Mr. Biden declared with a wave of his hand. Team Trump’s reaction showed that the president’s campaign believes Mr. Biden made the kind of blunder that would haunt him if he wins the Democratic nomination.
  • The Bakken Oil Boom Is Facing A New Bottleneck. Bakken drillers could struggle to grow oil production as they may soon run into transportation bottlenecks. The latest snag comes from a new law in Washington State, set to take effect at the start of 2020, that would prevent refineries in the state from unloading oil from a rail car that has a Reid vapor pressure over 9 psi. That metric is a measurement of volatility in the oil. Importantly, a lot of oil from the Bakken has vapor pressure over that threshold.
  • PTT Buying Homes Near Proposed Cracker Plant in Belmont County.  PTT Global Chemical continues to behave is if it’s going forward with building a $7.5 billion ethane cracker in Dilles Bottom (Belmont County), Ohio. The latest evidence? The company is actively buying up homes close to the proposed site. Over the past two months the company has snapped up six homes and is in discussions right now with others.
  • Tug Hill Ramps Up Low-Cost Utica Drilling in WV Panhandle. The last time MDN reported on Tug Hill Operating was more than two years ago, a story about Tug Hill’s XcL Midstream subsidiary working to build a new gathering pipeline system in West Virginia to flow gas that would come from Tug Hill’s THQ Appalachia drilling subsidiary (see XcL Midstream Building New Dry & Wet Gas Gathering Pipes in WV). Both the midstream and drilling subsidiaries have been busy over the past two years. In fact, Tug Hill’s THQ subsidiary says it has unlocked the secret to drilling cheap Utica wells in the Mountain State.

The Shale Gas News sponsored by Linde Corporation

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