Industrywide Issues

NGSA Predicts Colder Winter Coming, Increase in NatGas Price

Colder weather and increased demand will place slight upward pressure on natural gas prices compared to last winter, the Natural Gas Supply Association (NGSA) said last Thursday in its 24th annual Winter Outlook forecast of the wholesale winter natural gas market. NGSA also projected higher-than-average storage, record production and supply, and modest GDP growth this…

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Biden-Harris DOE Covering Up Study Conducted Before LNG “Pause”

In January, the Biden-Harris Department of Energy (DOE) announced it would “pause” any approvals for new LNG export plants (currently 17 requests in the pipeline) for at least one year while D.C. swampies fart around pretending to figure out how to measure global warming as a new consideration for whether or not to approve such…

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Ohio Supreme Court Affirms Permit for 3.7-Mile Pipe Near Toledo

Yesterday, the Ohio Supreme Court issued a “slip opinion” dismissing a challenge to a tiny 3.7-mile, 30-inch pipeline Columbia Gas wants to build in Maumee, a city in Lucas County, Ohio, a suburb about 10 miles southwest of Toledo. The owners of a commercial office building claimed they would suffer “irreparable financial harm” if the…

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New Poll Shows Swing State Voters Want Answers on Energy Policies

A new Morning Consult/American Petroleum Institute (API) poll recently surveyed registered voters in the key swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Inflation is a huge issue for voters in those states, with 81% to 86% saying the price of daily necessities has become “financially painful” and anywhere from 88%…

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Québec May Have to Pay Questerre $4.8B for Utica Drilling Ban

The province of Québec, Canada, with a huge supply of Utica Shale gas sitting beneath it, passed a new law in 2022 outlawing all oil and natural gas production throughout the province (see Quebec Pulls Trigger & Commits Energy Suicide – Bans All O&G Prod.). It was a breathtaking grab of totalitarian power. It’s also…

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Cornell Tries to Prop Up Junk “Study” on LNG by Park Foundation

Two days ago, MDN told you about a Congressional investigation looking into the Department of Energy’s use of a prematurely released “study” as an excuse to “pause” (i.e., ban) new LNG export approvals (see Congress Probes Role of Bob Howarth Study in DOE LNG Pause). Cornell professor Robert Howarth, using money from the anti-fossil fuel…

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Hydrogen from Methane Pyrolysis Potential New $$ for Drillers

There are so many colors for hydrogen (denoting how it is produced) that we’ve lost track of the number. Some 95% of all hydrogen today is made by using steam with natural gas to separate hydrogen from carbon, referred to as “gray” hydrogen. If the hydrogen producer captures the carbon dioxide generated during the process,…

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Fed Court Certifies Class Action Lawsuit Against Range Resources

Today, we bring you news about a lawsuit filed just over three years ago, in September 2021, by four landowners in southwestern Pennsylvania who leased their land to Range Resources for drilling. The lawsuit is just now coming on our radar screen. Range did drill and, claims the landowners, deducted expenses from royalty checks for…

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PA DEP Program Gives Fed $$ to Plug “Lower Priority” Orphaned Wells

In August, the Biden-Harris administration promised (but hasn’t yet delivered a dime of) up to $152 million in “Phase 2” federal money, i.e., your taxpayer dollars, to help plug old conventional oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania (see Convenient Timing: Biden-Harris Promise Pa. Another $152 Million). In September, Biden-Harris said a check was in the…

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PA Sen. Yaw Bill Plugs Old Conv. Wells Using $$ from Solar Credits

Pennsylvania State Senator Gene Yaw believes he has a solution to help fund plugging many of the state’s ~350,000 orphaned and abandoned conventional oil and gas wells. Yaw recently introduced a bill, Senate Bill (SB) 1330, that directs the PA Department of General Services to sell any alternative energy credits it owns from buying unreliable…

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Work on Shale Wastewater Injection Well in McKean County Progresses

In January, MDN brought you the news that the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) approved a plan by Catalyst Energy to convert an existing conventional gas production well on Route 646 in Cyclone (Keating Township in McKean County, PA) into a shale wastewater injection well (see PA DEP Approves Shale Wastewater Injection Well in…

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U.S. LNG Feedgas Dropped Last Week Due to Maintenance & Hurricane

MDN previously told you that gas flows (called “feedgas”) heading to the Cove Point LNG export facility along the coast of Maryland had fallen to zero as of Sept. 20 because the facility is undergoing annual maintenance (see Flows Drop to Zero @ Cove Point LNG, Closed for Annual Maintenance). Maintenance will likely last about…

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Chesapeake & Southwestern Complete Merger; Now #1 U.S. Gas Driller

Move over EQT Corporation, there’s a new number one natural gas producer in the U.S. Yesterday, Chesapeake Energy announced that its buyout of and merger with Southwestern Energy in a $7.4 billion deal was completed. The newly merged company was renamed Expand Energy Corporation and will begin trading on the NASDAQ stock market today under…

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EQT Laying Off 15% of Workforce Following Equitrans Acquisition

EQT Corporation is now the #2 largest natural gas driller in the U.S. following the merger of Chesapeake Energy with Southwestern Energy to form Expand Energy Corporation (see today’s lead story). EQT took the opportunity yesterday, while everyone was focused on the shiny new object (Expand Energy), to file a Form 8-K with the SEC…

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Calpine Corp, Big Power Generator Using M-U Molecules, Gets New CEO

We spotted a press release about new leadership at the top of Calpine Corporation, one of the largest power producers in the U.S. with major assets in the upper East Coast area (fed by Marcellus/Utica molecules). The company’s CFO, Andrew Novotny, is becoming the CEO. Beyond the tie-in with the M-U because the company uses…

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