Natural gas prices are at $2.66/MMBtu, having bounced around quite a bit from $2.48 to $2.96 this month. Drilling rigs are at 654, down another 21 from last month. Gas storage is at 3,030 Bcf, right between the five year average and the five year high.
Joe Manchin has filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. So have the Republican representatives and senator. Chief Justice John Roberts is expected to decide the case on his own, but he could put it to the whole court.
The Appalachian Regional Commission is working on a project that will hopefully make the area more interesting as an energy storage hub.
Wondering whether we’ll run out of oil and gas to use? RBNEnergy analyzes the reported reserves we have in the ground.
TC Energy operates a lot of pipelines in the Marcellus Shale region, and quite a few of them are in West Virginia. They’re selling a 40% interest in the pipelines to Global Infrastructure Partners.
A 26-inch natural gas pipeline exploded in Shenandoah County, VA. The video and pictures were shocking. Subsequent investigation suggests that environmental cracking is the culprit.
Saudi Arabia is expected to keep its 1 million barrel per day production cut in place until September.
EQT claims to have drilled a world record 18,200 foot well in 48 hours.
The Supreme Court has vacated the stay imposed by the 4th Circuit. Construction on the Mountain Valley Pipeline will probably start very soon.
The White House is creating a cabinet-level position to fight methane gas emissions.
A company called Zefiro has joined the Gas & Oil Association of West Virginia (GO-WV). Zefiro is a company that plugs old oil and gas wells in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It might seem strange for them to join GO-WV, but it will help them get to know the players in the industry.
This is a comprehensive article about West Virginia’s property tax law as it relates to oil and gas. The law is still difficult to understand and implement, and it’s made a lot of West Virginia oil and gas owners very angry and frustrated.
The Mountain Valley Pipeline is expected to be in service by the end of this year. It should give royalty owners a slight, short-term bump up in royalty checks when it comes online.
West Virginia’s severance tax collections for July went down dramatically. Low natural gas prices are to blame.
An article over at Reuters goes into detail about how fewer drilling rigs has resulted in less natural gas production. That relationship seems obvious on its face, but details are almost always useful for analysis and decision making.
Cunningham Energy has been acquired by Houston Natural Resources and the merged company will be known as Cunningham Natural Resources Corp. Cunningham Energy was active here in West Virginia in horizontal fracking of shallow formations in the search of oil. It’s apparently more challenging that one would think, as Cunningham is the only company I’ve heard of that’s doing that. That fact continues to surprise me.
Some protesters have locked themselves to equipment that’s being used to build the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
A South Dakota Sioux tribe has said it wants to buy ammonia from a West Virginia plant that will produce ammonia using natural gas.
Opponents of the Mountain Valley Pipeline filed challenges to its permits, but the 4th Circuit dismissed them, stating that there is no live controversy to adjudicate now that Congress and the Supreme Court have weighed in on the subject.