Industrywide Issues

Dominion Energy Announces New 45-Mile Pipeline for North Carolina

The contours of how and why Equitrans Midstream decided to cut its MVP (Mountain Valley Pipeline) Southgate project in North Carolina are becoming apparent. We told you in January that Equitrans had decided to slice MVP Southgate in more than half (see Equitrans Slices MVP Southgate Pipe Project From 75 to 31 Miles). Now comes…

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PA DEP Wants RGGI Carbon Tax Forced on Everyone for Everything

Democrats will never be satisfied until they tax you for breathing and even existing, which was perfectly illustrated by a proposal submitted by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to its so-called Climate Change Advisory Committee on Tuesday. Not satisfied to try and force a Marcellus-killing carbon tax (called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative,…

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PA Towns Grapple with Zoning O&G for Other Uses Like Cryptocurrency

Townships and local municipalities in Pennsylvania are now beginning to deal with a new issue, particularly where there is active natural gas drilling. For years, local towns in PA have dealt with the issue of zoning and where to allow gas drilling. A recent (past few years) development is that cryptocurrency “miners” are beginning to…

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Equitrans Looking at Potential Buyer; MVP Now Delayed Until 2Q

Two really big (huge) pieces of news are coming from yesterday’s Equitrans Midstream fourth quarter and full-year 2023 update. The first bit of news is that Equitrans is actively considering a buyout offer. The company doesn’t use that exact language, but that’s what’s happening. This should come as no surprise, given the rumor mill on…

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Sources: Occidental Looking to Sell Its Share of Western Midstream

According to sources whispering to reporters from Reuters, Occidental Petroleum is “exploring a sale of Western Midstream Partners,” a U.S. natural gas-focused pipeline operator that has a market value of close to $20 billion. Western Midstream responded to the news report by issuing a press release to say it is NOT engaged in any kind…

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Antis Ask Court for Emergency Stop to Drilling Under OH State Parks

The money behind Big Green never stops. Where in the heck do they get it all? In November 2023, the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) met in a public forum and voted to allow shale drilling under (not on top of) three different state-owned tracts of land: all 20,000 acres of Salt…

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LNG Exports Figure Big in Antero’s Future Starting This Year

Last week, Antero Resources, which is 100% focused on the Marcellus/Utica with over 500,000 net acres under lease (and the largest M-U driller in West Virginia), issued its fourth quarter and full-year 2023 update, which we covered (see Antero 4Q – Production Up 6%, Profits Down 87%, 21 New Wells). While we picked up and…

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Clean Energy Future Sells Lordstown Power Plant to ArcLight Capital

In June 2016, Massachusetts-based Clean Energy Future broke ground on an $800 million, 940-megawatt Utica gas-fired electric plant in Lordstown (Trumbull County), OH (see Lordstown Energy Center Breaks Ground on $890M Electric Plant). The plant was completed and went online in October 2018 (see Lordstown (OH) Energy Center Now Online, Generating 940 MW). In 2019,…

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DT Midstream 4Q – M-U Pipeline Operations Expand, Looking for M&A

DT Midstream (DTM), headquartered in Detroit, owns major assets in the Marcellus/Utica region and other regions like the Haynesville. DTM issued its fourth quarter 2023 update last Friday. The Marcellus/Utica region (which they call Northeast in the report) received several prominent mentions during a conference call with analysts. Also of note were comments by DT…

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About 20 Property Owners Left to Sign for W. Ky. NatGas Pipe

In September 2022, MDN told you about a new 53-mile pipeline project in Western Kentucky — a 16-inch natural gas pipeline to feed natgas to the southern Pennyrile Region (see Kentucky Spending $30M on New NatGas Pipe to Expand Biz Growth). The $115 million project is partly being underwritten by a $30 million grant from…

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TVA Issues Final EIS for East Tenn. Power Plant, Moving Forward

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 country. Last May, TVA announced that…

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Making the Case for Carbon Capture & Storage in Rural PA Communities

Last week, MDN told you about landmen knocking on doors in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, looking to sign up landowners for a big carbon capture and sequestration project (see Landmen Knocking Doors in PA, OH, WV to Sign for CCS, Pore Rights). Tenaska is looking to sink 20-30 wells across a massive 80,000 acres…

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WV’s Botched NatGas Property Tax Gets Messier with House Vote

Last summer, MDN told you that a new system to assess valuations of shale wells in West Virginia had turned into a royal mess (see WV NatGas Property Tax Rule Still a Mess, 303 Cases Appealed). In January, that mess got a whole lot messier — what we call a hot mess — when a…

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NYMEX Gas Price Free Fall Continues – Flirting with $1.50/MMBtu

It feels like the NYMEX Henry Hub futures price for natural gas is in a free fall, heading for $1.50/MMBtu or (gasp) maybe even lower. Yesterday, the NYMEX price for the front month closed at $1.58/MMBtu. The price has been down for eight trading days in a row and is at the lowest price since…

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ProFrac’s Alpine Silica Frac Sand Subsidiary Launching IPO

ProFrac Holding Corp. is an oilfield service company (OFS) providing well-stimulation services, proppants production, and other complementary products and services to oil and gas companies engaged in the exploration and production (E&P) of unconventional oil and natural gas resources throughout the United States. In other words, ProFrac is a fracker-for-hire. The company has its own…

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