Shale Gas News – October 3, 2020

Bill desRosiers
External Affairs Coordinator, Cabot Oil & Gas

…

…

The Shale Gas News, heard every Saturday at 10 AM on 94.3 FM, 1510 AM, 1600 AM, 104.1 FM and Sundays on YesFM, talked about Canadian railway to Alaska, landowner leases, Atlantic storms and much more last week.

The Shale Gas News has grown again to the Williamsport area on stations WEJS 1600 AM & 104.1 FM. 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 and now the Williamsport area. The Shale Gas News is aired on Saturday or Sunday depending on the station.

Every Saturday Rusty Fender, Matt Henderson and I host a morning radio show to discuss all things natural gas. This week, as a guest, we had James May, Regional Press Director at Pennsylvania Department of Transportation

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

• Trump-backed Canadian railway to Alaska could free landlocked oil, faces high hurdles. A private-sector proposal endorsed by U.S. President Donald Trump to build a railway from Canada’s oil sands to ports in Alaska would free landlocked crude but faces numerous steep challenges. Trump wrote on Twitter over the weekend that he would issue a permit for the Alaska-Alberta Railway Development Corporation (A2A Rail) project to move Alberta crude 1,600 miles (2,570 km) to the Alaskan coast, as well as freight in the other direction.
• America’s energy picture is very good, and getting even better. In 2019, for the first time since 1957, America’s energy production exceeded its energy consumption, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports. And energy exports exceeded imports for the first time since 1952. Fossil fuels — coal, natural gas and petroleum — accounted for 93 percent of U.S. energy production in 1966, and despite the arrival of new fuels for energy production, fossil fuels still accounted for 80 percent of our energy production last year.
• Litigation that targets pipelines seen adding uncertainty to capital return timelines.  Litigation around the permitting of long-haul US oil and gas projects has made timing of returns for large capital investments uncertain, leading some midstream companies to avoid such projects, industry officials said Tuesday. Their comments came during a Sept. 29 panel discussion on legal challenges affecting major oil and gas pipeline projects at the Shale Insight conference, organized by the Marcellus Shale Coalition.
• Rebound in industrial gas demand stumbles following busy Atlantic storm season. A recent flurry of hurricanes and tropical storms in the Gulf of Mexico are likely to be blamed for a floundering recovery in US industrial gas demand as refineries and chemicals facilities along the Gulf Coast are yet to recover from prolonged slowdown in activity. The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season has, by any measure, been an active one.
• New 1-Mile Pipe Near Ithaca, NY Not Enough to Lift Gas Moratorium. In Lansing, NY, just outside of Planet Ithaca in Tompkins County, the local utility company, NYSEG, wanted to build a short pipeline in 2017 to supply new customers with natural gas, but was blocked by crazies who irrationally hate fossil fuels. The pipeline was never built and since that time businesses and homeowners who wanted to build in the town have gone elsewhere.
• Tioga County, PA Leased Landowners Lose Case to Block Gathering Pipe. Last Friday a federal judge in Pennsylvania rejected arguments from three Tioga County, PA landowners who claimed Marcellus driller Repsol did not have a right to install a gathering pipeline across their property. The landowners leased their property for oil and gas development and their property now flows gas, for which they’re paid royalties. Even so, the landowners claim Repsol does not have the right to build a pipeline because it flows gas from other properties not part of their unit.
• EQT & Equitrans Spat Over Hammerhead Pipeline Goes Public. There’s trouble brewing in EQT-land. Once upon a time, EQT was both a producer (drilling) and midstream (pipeline) company. But then so-called activist investors forced the company (after its merger with Rice Energy) to split in two–drilling and pipelines. The split happened in November 2018. The new pipeline company was eventually renamed Equitrans Midstream. The two companies, EQT and Equitrans, have maintained a close relationship with Equitrans doing the lion’s share of gathering EQT’s production and getting it to market.
  .

The Shale Gas News sponsored by Linde Corporation