The following Shale Directories Members are OPEN for BUSINESS during COVID-19 related shutdown.*
Support them when and how you can!
ACF Environmental
Allison Crane & Rigging
Anderson Excavating
American Energy Fabrication
Barbco, Inc.
Beaver Excavating
Boyd CAT
Cintas
Dawood Engineering
Doss Enterprises
EJ Breneman, L.L.C.
Frontier Group of Companies
Furbay Electric, Oil & Gas Division
Green Valley Seed
HYTORC Penn Ohio
Inland Tarp and Liner
Kessel Construction
MJ Painting Contractor Corp.
Mansfield Crane Service
Marshall County Co-Op – Southern States
Mustang Sampling
NAI Ohio River Corridor
Oglebay Resort and Conference Center
ORT Tool
Skycasters Converged Wireless
Wampum Hardware
Water Transport
Zimmerman Steel and Supply Company, Inc.
*list subject to change
Shale Directories Conferences
8th Annual Midstream PA 2020
New Date: December 10, 2020
Toftrees Golf Resort
State College, PA
NEW DATE!
8th Annual Utica Downstream
New Date January 21, 2021
New Location: Holiday Inn Belden Village
Canton, OH
8th Annual Upstream PA 2020
New Date: February 4, 2021
Toftrees Golf Resort
State College, PA
Latest facts and a rumor from the Marcellus, Utica, and Permian, Eagle Ford Plays
Last Shell Cracker Information. Roughly 7,000 workers are connecting some 300 miles of pipe and pulling cables at Shell Chemicals ethane cracker complex in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, a $6 billion project more than 70% complete, Shale Directories reports.
Addressing his audience virtually at the Fourth Annual Appalachian Storage Hub Conference, the massive project’s spokesman, Michael Marr, presented an update/status report on the largest project in Western Pennsylvania in decades.
The conference was held Nov. 5, at the Southpointe Office Park south of Pittsburgh, presented by Shale Directories and TopLine Analytics.
The 7,000 men and women onsite at the project are up from just 300 maintenance and cleaning personnel when work at the site was stopped March 18, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, the site’s workforce totaled more than 8,000.
In mid-July, the project’s own COVID testing lab, operated by RJ Lee of Monroeville, Pa., opened onsite. Testing is performed on workers who may show symptoms or may have had close contact with a confirmed COVID-19 case.
Workers will be tested, sent home and then receive test results in roughly four hours, according to Shell. In addition, all new workers brought on site will undergo testing.
The Falcon Pipeline, which will supply the world-scale cracker with ethane, to be converted onsite to ethylene and eventually polyethylene pellets, is more than 95% completed.
The Falcon system will connect three major ethane source points: Houston, Pennsylvania, Scio, Ohio, and Cadiz, Ohio, in the rich gas portions of the Marcellus and Utica Shale plays.
Marr refused to reveal when the project will come online.
I have heard that the Shell cracker plant will be up and running in early 2022. This is not based on anything Michael Marr said at out conference. (RUMOR)
Early Comments on Biden’s Impact on Energy
- CNBC. Big Oil execs say they’re not worried about Biden’s energy plan, hope to ‘get his staff on board’. The prospect of a Joe Biden presidency and the most progressive climate strategy the U.S. has ever attempted is not something that should concern the energy industry, oil and gas executives have told CNBC. At present, however, Biden’s energy plan is more moderate. “Talking about climate is often like talking about religion with some politicians. They don’t actually understand the complexities of the energy system very much and that’s never very satisfying,” said Bob Dudley, former CEO of BP and chair of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), an umbrella group of some of the world’s leading oil and gas producers.
- Seeking Alpha. A Biden presidency is very bullish for oil prices. Seeking Alpha. Under a Biden administration, US oil production will never fully recover back to ~13 mb/d. Oil market deficit set to balloon to -4 mb/d by 2025, assuming all OPEC+ spare capacity. Increased regulation, limits on flaring, ban of fracking on federal lands, no more leases on GOM, and a host of other stuff will prevent US oil production from growing wildly. At this point, there’s pretty much nothing that will take us away from this scenario. So, if oil demand does recover back to 2019 levels by end of 2021, and we observe normal demand growth, a super spike is coming.
- E&E News. Biden’s oil plan: The good, the bad and the illegal. An overhaul of the federal oil and gas program didn’t make it into President-elect Joe Biden’s transition priorities listed on his website Sunday after he was declared the winner of the presidential race. But observers are still expecting Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to curtail oil and gas development on federal lands and waters, an area where the president can exert significant direct control, experts say.
- Forbes. Apparent status quo election outcomes in 4 key energy states could be deceiving. While the various fracking bans proposed by the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris ticket attracted the most attention during the general election campaign, the 2020 elections also produced outcomes in four key states that appear to be status quo in nature, but which could still produce significant impacts on the domestic oil and gas industry. From Pennsylvania to Montana to Texas to New Mexico, operators, pipeliners and refiners will all have to remain vigilant and ready to engage on energy-related proposals that are likely to arise.
- Seeking Alpha. What the U.S. election results likely mean for midstream investors. With a divided Congress, there are severe limitations to what a president-elect Biden could accomplish. This is the primary reason analysts believe the stock market has reacted with such a vigorous rally. With Senator McConnell now almost certain to hold the Senate gavel, the doomsday scenario that many midstream investors feared is extremely unlikely. Remember that even under Obama – who was hardly a friend to the oil industry – U.S. oil production almost doubled.
EQT Looking for More Deals. EQT may seek more shale deals after Chevron. EQT Corp. indicated it’s not done yet with driving consolidation in the fragmented Appalachian natural gas industry, two weeks after agreeing to buy Chevron Corp.’s assets in the region for $735 million. The U.S.’s largest gas producer is no longer in growth mode and acquisitions are a way to gain economies of scale and help it return capital to shareholders, according to EQT Chief Executive Officer Toby Rice.
CO2 Emissions Drop. U.S. energy related CO2 emissions drop. U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 3 percent last year, offsetting a 3-percent increase in 2018, as a record-high share of low-carbon sources were used in the electricity sector—the main contributor to emissions decline in 2019, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Tuesday. Total energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2019 were about 150 million metric tons (MMmt) lower than in 2018, and nearly all of that decline, or 96 percent, was due to the changing mix of fuels used to generate electricity.
More Shale Acquisitions Coming. World’s top oil trader weighs U.S. shale acquisitions. The world’s largest independent oil trader, Vitol Group, is considering potential acquisitions in the U.S. shale patch, chief executive Russell Hardy said on the Reuters Commodity Trading Summit on Tuesday. “Nothing has been done, it’s just an area where we feel there might be a fit from an asset point of view, where capital is leaving and some assets are going to want new owners,” Hardy said at the summit.
Plunging Prices Will Drive M&A in the Permian. Plunging shale acreage values may create new Permian M&A wave. The price to drill an acre of land in the biggest U.S. shale basin has tumbled amid the oil rout, creating conditions ripe for more mergers and acquisitions. Drilling rights in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico averaged about $24,000 an acre in recent deals, down 67% from 2018, according to Rystad Energy, an Oslo-based research firm. Across U.S. shale, the average price has plummeted to about $5,000 an acre, compared with $17,000 two years ago.
Energy Transfer Addresses Pipeline Opposition. Pipeline opposition, hurdles sharpen focus on existing assets: Energy Transfer. With new long-haul natural gas pipelines facing substantial opposition, Energy Transfer is focusing on optimizing existing assets, and seeing growth opportunities mostly in its natural gas liquids segment, according to a company senior executive. Speaking at the virtual LDC Gas Forum’s 2020 conference, Adam Arthur, Energy Transfer’s senior vice president-business development, said Nov. 9 that while one day new gas cross-haul pipelines will be needed again, “right now there’s a lot of capacity running west to east and right now, we’re staying full. We’ve very happy with that, but when we start thinking about how can we allocate capital, how can we do projects in this environment, what’s the best way to execute on these projects, given the difficulties, we really think asset optimization is key,” he said.
Appalachian Storage Hub Conference. Last week’s Fourth Annual Appalachian Storage Hub Conference gave project updates in developing underground natural gas liquids storage in the Appalachian Basin. “We pleased that we could give the latest and best information about underground storage prospects in the Appalachian Basin,” commented Joe Barone, President and Founder, Shale Directories. He further added, “Hydrogen is receiving more attention as source energy for the United States.”
But no fewer than three of eight speakers at the all-day conference talked about the importance of hydrogen in the oil and gas industry, how the most prolific mineral on earth is becoming increasingly important to an industry coping with cellar-dwelling prices and heightened environmental pressures. “The hydrogen opportunities coming to U.S. industry is sizeable and it solve the global warming issue,” stated Tom Gellrich, CEO and Founder, TopLine Analytics.
As countries worldwide seek to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while providing energy to businesses and consumers, hydrogen is emerging as a key technology – and many experts believe it could become a multi-billion industry in the U.S., Shale Directories reports.
Nonpartisan climate policy think tank Energy Innovation has developed two scenarios in which hydrogen becomes a major part of the U.S. energy mix, earning revenue of $130-170 billion annually by 2050 while lowering GHG emissions by 20 or 120 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2e) each year.
Today, there is global interest in hydrogen storage, something the U.S. has had for 20 to 30 years, and has been around for 60 years,” Mike Tritt, President, Lane Power & Energy Solutions, one of the premier underground storage developers in the world, said at the storage hub conference.
Nearly all hydrogen consumed in the U.S. today is used by industry for refining petroleum, treating metals, producing fertilizer, and processing foods. U.S. petroleum refineries use hydrogen to lower the sulfur content of fuels.
A $384 million project in Clinton County, north-central Pennsylvania will use onsite-produced natural gas as a fuel to produce low-carbon, so-called blue hydrogen and blue ammonia, along with diesel exhaust treatment and power plant exhaust treatment.
KeyState Natural gas Synthesis plant will also practice carbon capture and storage (CSS) which company CEO and Chairman Perry Babb told storage conference attendees will be a major piece of the U.S. natural gas industry.
“Most hydrogen produced in the next 30 years will come from fossil fuels,” according to Babb. His project is located in what he refers to as a 17-state “blue ocean,” as it will be the only production facility for ammonia, urea and diesel exhaust fluid within that multi-state region.
Hydrogen has great appeal as a renewable fuel, and can replace batteries as a storage medium, according to underground storage conference presenter Ken Thompson, founder and President, Mustang Sampling.
Hydrogen can be stored underground or flow via pipelines (up to 25% of line capacity), Thompson said, but does require “special attention” because of hydrogen’s active chemical nature.
“Hydrogen is highly reactive and requires attention since it permeates metals and elastomers,” according to Thompson. He added hydrogen may supplement other energy types in the short term, but infrastructure costs currently are very high.
The Fourth Annual Appalachian Storage Hub Conference was held Nov. 5, south of Pittsburgh in the Southpointe Office Park, and presented by Shale Directories and TopLine Analytics.
Revolution Pipeline Delayed by DEP. Pennsylvania environmental regulators are forbidding the operator of the Revolution pipeline that exploded in 2018 from filling the line with natural gas or liquids until the company addresses unstable slopes along its route.
ETC Northeast Pipeline LLC told the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection on Oct. 20 and Nov. 3 that it plans to put the pipeline into service soon, but did not specify when gas would begin flowing, DEP said.
In response, DEP ordered the company on Wednesday not to fill the pipeline — or to empty it if it has already been filled — until receiving DEP approval of plans to permanently stabilize 26 sites along steep or unsteady slopes, like the one that slipped in Beaver County in 2018 and caused the pipeline to rupture.
The explosion destroyed a home, displaced residents, burned several acres and collapsed six high-voltage electric transmission towers, the agency said.
Rachel Adams-Heard Pipeline billionaire that operates area natural gas assets follows playbook, stepping down but staying, “There are currently numerous unstable slopes along the pipeline route,” DEP said in a press release Thursday.
Another landslide and rupture “could be worse than the explosion in 2018 because the pipeline’s contents would be more explosive with the addition of natural gas liquids. This would cause a significant pollution event and pose a great danger to human health, safety and the environment.”
The 40-mile Revolution pipeline route crosses parts of Butler, Beaver, Allegheny and Washington counties, linking Marcellus and Utica shale wells with a gas processing plant.
ETC Northeast Pipeline is a subsidiary of Texas-based Energy Transfer Corp.
The company paid a record $30.6 million fine in January and agreed to shore up landslide-prone areas and ensure that the pipeline is secured in bedrock or dense soil along steep slopes.
Since then, the company accrued hundreds of new violations as it struggled to keep the unsteady earth in place. In September, it began rerouting the pipeline around the site of the explosion in Center Township.
DEP said the company has failed to submit required stability designs demonstrating enhanced safety factors along steep slopes and has “repeatedly stated to DEP that it has no intention of doing so.” The agency identified 26 slopes as unstable and prohibited the company from flowing gas through the line in those sites, which are distributed across nearly all the pipeline’s route.
The remnants of a house and garage on the property of Joyce and Sam Rosati that was destroyed after a natural gas pipeline explosion as photographed Dec. 19, 2018, in Center Township. The Revolution pipeline, a 24-inch line owned by Energy Transfer Corp., exploded Sept. 10, 2018.
The Revolution pipeline, two years since it exploded, is back under construction in Beaver County
Energy Transfer said on Thursday it is not in violation of the department’s earlier orders and DEP is now making up a new standard for what constitutes an unstable slope, creating inconsistencies with the agency’s own policies.
An independent engineering firm has confirmed that the pipeline is in stable soil, spokeswoman Alexis Daniel said, and DEP-approved stabilization work has been completed or is ongoing.
“Months ago, we requested approvals for additional stabilization work, which as of today, have not been approved by the DEP for no apparent reason,” she said.
The state agency said ETC has also not revised its required preparedness plan to adequately outline steps it would take to protect the public and environment if the pipeline again leaks or breaks. DEP notified the company in June 2019 that its plan was deficient.
DEP said the company must submit a new preparedness plan within 30 days.
Wolfe Wants to Kill Pennsylvania Residents with High Energy Bills. Tom Wolf arrogantly demands Pennsylvania join RGGI to pay 50% higher electric bills like the rest of the Northeast states in the suicide pact
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf vetoed the state legislature’s bill that would prohibit new taxes without legislative approval and ordered his staff to continue with the implementation of the state joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in 2022.
Background
RGGI is a coalition of Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States that agreed to use a “cap and trade system” to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the electric generating sector. A cap is placed on the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted from electric generators (i.e., coal, oil, and natural gas generators). Electric utilities that emit more carbon dioxide than their assigned cap must purchase allowances at an auction to offset their excess emissions. The cost of the allowances is essentially a tax that increases the electricity bills of the residents in the participating states. The Pennsylvania Senate did not have the votes needed to override the governor’s veto.
Governor Tom Wolf estimates show the tax from selling the allowances at auction would garner $2.36 billion over the next decade. Pennsylvania energy consumers would have to pay this additional cost through their electricity bills.
Pennsylvania currently gets about 60 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels. Despite that, the state has decreased its carbon dioxide emission by 33 percent since 2009 by switching from coal to natural gas because of low natural gas prices from the use of hydraulic fracking. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have made Pennsylvania the nation’s second largest natural gas producer.
As a result, Pennsylvania’s electricity prices are lower than the average prices of the RGGI states (Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont), whose electricity prices are 50 percent higher than those of Pennsylvania. In 2019, RGGI states average electricity prices were about 5 cents per kilowatt-hour higher than Pennsylvania’s average electricity price of 9.81 cents per kilowatt hour. The lower prices and the reduced emissions resulted from the market working as it should and not from a government mandate.
Pennsylvania is now the largest net exporter of electricity in the United States. It delivered an average of 58 million megawatt-hours annually between 2013 and 2017. It is the nation’s second-largest producer of natural gas, third-largest producer of coal, 16th-largest producer of crude oil, and third-largest producer of electricity.
Pennsylvania sits atop of the Marcellus Shale that runs from upstate New York to West Virginia. In the mid-2000s, drillers applied hydraulic fracturing techniques, opening up Pennsylvania’s natural gas resources. The Marcellus Shale contains an estimated 84 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it the largest natural gas field in the country. Utica Shale, another large shale formation, also runs beneath Western Pennsylvania. Hydraulic fracturing enabled drillers to reach the natural gas trapped in the shale quickly and cheaply, creating tens of thousands of jobs in the shale, pipeline, and petrochemical industries.
A ban on fracking could cost the state over 600,000 jobs over the next five years, along with a $261 billion reduction in GDP. In addition, the ban would increase the cost of living by $4,654 per capita for goods and services, while reducing household incomes by about $114 billion. Eliminating natural gas drilling and production by other means would likely have similar impacts.
Other Alternatives to Increasing Renewable Energy
Like a number of other states, Pennsylvania has a renewable energy standard that requires a certain amount of electricity to come from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. Pennsylvania’s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards Act was first passed in 2004 and expires next year. Currently, the law requires less than 10 percent of power purchased from Pennsylvania’s utilities to come from solar. Pennsylvania could change the standard to require additional renewables.
The state also has a bill that promotes community solar that has not gotten out of committee, but was written to garner bipartisan support. It is not clear if any solar panels are manufactured in Pennsylvania, although a list of solar businesses in the state includes one. That one, however, has a website name which is for sale. Therefore, it appears that any increase in solar installations in Pennsylvania will rely upon outsourcing the production from the state. China is by far the world’s biggest producer of solar panels with a 73 percent market share. Eight out of the world’s top 10 solar panel makers are Chinese.
Conclusion
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf wants the state to join the RGGI despite the higher electricity bills that will ensue for the state’s residents as utilities buy allowances that allow them to emit carbon dioxide. The state’s legislature tried to stop the state’s entrance into the RGGI but Governor Tom Wolf vetoed the bill. Residents of Pennsylvania will see higher electricity prices as the current 10 RGGI states have prices that are 50 percent higher than those of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has been reducing its carbon dioxide emissions from the generating sector by switching from coal to natural gas and at the same time providing lower electricity bills to its residents. That resulted from market forces working. Any time a mandate is used, prices will increase.
UGI Commissions New LNG Facility. UGI Energy Services, LLC, a subsidiary of UGI Corporation, today celebrated the commissioning of its new liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the site in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The new Bethlehem storage and vaporization LNG facility joins the company’s expanding network of LNG and peak shaving assets.
“UGI is excited to bring our new Bethlehem LNG facility online in advance of this coming winter,” said John L. Walsh, President and Chief Executive Officer of UGI Corporation. “We see rising demand for peaking services as local distribution companies and end users respond to regional supply constraints resulting from pipeline construction delays. This new $60 million facility will help meet that demand and keep natural gas costs affordable for families and businesses.”
The new Bethlehem facility adds two million gallons of LNG storage to UGI’s LNG network and provides peak shaving services during extremely cold periods in a cost-effective manner. The LNG facility will be used to deliver a supply of gas during peak demand periods to the UGI Utilities’ distribution system in the Lehigh Valley.
“UGI Energy Services is grateful to all those who helped construct our Bethlehem facility on-budget and on-schedule,” said Joe Hartz, President of UGI Energy Services. “It’s interesting that almost three years ago to the day, we were just outside Harrisburg celebrating the opening of our similar Steelton LNG storage and vaporization facility.
Now, with the addition of our Bethlehem facility, we’ve further enhanced our supply position to meet the region’s continued demand for natural gas on peak.”
The Bethlehem LNG facility has the capacity to deliver 70,000 dekatherms of vaporized LNG per day. In addition to peak shaving, the facility also is able to load LNG into, or unload LNG from, tanker trucks.
Other featured speakers at today’s event included PA Public Utility Commission Chairman Gladys Brown Dutrieuille, State Senator Lisa Boscola, PA-18, and Appellation Construction Services’ Electrical Division VP Matthew Green.
During today’s event, UGI also highlighted significant stream restoration work the company provided on a tributary of the East Branch of the Saucon Creek that runs north to south through the UGI Bethlehem LNG property. This work mitigated an area prone to flooding.
“As part of our agreement with Lehigh Valley Industrial Park, we were happy to assume responsibility for restoration of the tributary which had been part of the former Bethlehem Steel property,” said Hartz. “The UGI team is committed to not only minimizing the impact of our operations, but also to improving the areas where we live and work whenever possible.”
Visit ugies.com/liquefied-natural-gas/ to learn more about UGI Energy Services’ LNG experience and capabilities.
U.S. Permits Climb Before Election. (Thank You, NGI) U.S. explorers during October increased their oil and gas permit requests for the third month in a row, with an uptick in developing leaseholds on federal lands, according to Evercore ISI.
The analyst firm each month provides data using state and federal sources regarding permits for oil and gas wells, plugging and abandoned (P&A) wells approved and detailed variances of onshore and offshore permitting.
The gains in federal land requests preceded the election of Democrat Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has said he would seek to ban drilling on federal lands.
U.S. applications by exploration and production (E&P) companies accelerated 25% month/month (m/m) in October, “which is the largest monthly increase so far in 2020,” Evercore analysts said.
Permian Power
The increase mainly was driven by the Permian Basin, with permits up 76 over September. Requests to drill on federal lands in the Permian jumped by 19% m/m, according to Evercore.
Marcellus Shale permit requests rose by 83 from September, with Bakken Shale requests increasing by 20, the data indicated.
Operators filed 1,301 permits in oil formations, up by 199 from September, with 46% approved for the Permian and the Eagle Ford Shale.
Leading up to the U.S. election, Evercore noted that Devon Energy Corp. boosted its permit activity in the Permian by 15 m/m in October, “as it pressed ahead with plans to receive regulatory approval of 650 federal permits by year-end.”
Concho Resources Inc. and Occidental Petroleum Corp. (Oxy) “ramped their permits to a new 2020 peak in October,” analysts said. Oxy “scaled up applications to 63 (plus 40 m/m) with the bulk of permits focused mainly in New Mexico.”
Even though Concho’s federal acreage represents only 20% of inventory, “it added applications to cover drilling plans in the basin for the next two years,” according to Evercore. The operator filed 58 permits in October, up by 36 m/m, “and has received approval for 285 wells year-to-date.”
The Bakken permit count rose to 73 during October, up by 20 from September, “which is only 3% lower from January,” said analysts. “Incremental activity was primarily driven by ConocoPhillips,” up by 28 m/m, and the October count “reached the highest level so far this year.”
Overall, permitted wells in oil formations had declined through October by 67% year/year (y/y) to 14,656, primarily from a “collapse in the Powder River Basin,” which had plunged by 67%, Evercore noted.
Permian activity through October stood at 5,353, off by 37% y/y. The pullback was driven by “sharp reductions” at ExxonMobil, off by 52%, Marathon Oil Co., down 75%, and ConocoPhillips, whose permitting activity was 61% lower.
The joint permit count by ExxonMobil, Marathon and ConocoPhillips, three of the biggest Permian operators, had “fallen to 435 from 1,012” through the first 10 months.
Additional permit pullbacks in the Permian have been implemented by Oxy (down 21% y/y) and EOG Resources Inc., off by 9%.
According to Evercore, the energy majors had reduced their Permian drilling permit applications by 52% y/y through October.
Meanwhile, public E&Ps working in Appalachia’s Marcellus Shale increased their permitting activity by 1,038% from September, according to the data.
Gas Growth
Natural gas prices are forecast to strengthen, along with activity in the gassy formations of the Marcellus and Utica shales, and the Haynesville Shale.
Overall, state regulators during October granted 220 permits in Lower 48 gas formations, up by 98% from September, with “a strong recovery in the Marcellus and the Utica, where applications are returning to 1Q2020 levels,” said Evercore analysts.
“Wells permitted in the Marcellus ramped to 91 (up 83 m/m),” driven Antero Resources Corp., up 28, Southwestern Energy Corp., up 15, and Chesapeake Energy Corp., up by 11.
Public operators submitted 75% of the October permits in the Appalachian plays, Evercore noted. Meanwhile, Utica permit activity was higher at 27, an increase of 13 over September, “trending upward for the second consecutive month.”
In the Haynesville, the permit recovery was driven by BP plc, which requested five more permits than in October, and by Comstock Resources Inc., which requested 10 permits, the data showed.
Year-to-date, however, permits in gas formations have decreased to 1,803, down by half y/y, according to Evercore.
P&A permit activity remains solid in the Permian, with regulators in Texas and New Mexico approving 876 wells, up 169 m/m. It was the second consecutive month of gains, said analysts.
The Railroad Commission of Texas reported “significant” P&A permit growth in District 8, the center of activity in Midland, which was up 76% m/m. New Mexico regulators also granted 19 P&A permits to Chevron Corp., “the largest set since January 2019.”
Permian P&A well count year-to-date “has risen to 7,260 (up 160% y/y),” but it’s weighted to West Texas with only 11% approved in New Mexico.
Still, the Bakken Shale posted a reduction in P&A well permitting, down 19 m/m to 28, which Evercore attributed to “fewer applications by private companies,” which fell by 11.
PA Permits November 5, to November 12, 2020
County Township E&P Companies
- Greene Gray Rice
- Lycoming Gamble Seneca
- Lycoming Gamble Seneca
- Lycoming Gamble Seneca
- Lycoming Gamble Seneca
- Lycoming Gamble Seneca
- Lycoming Gamble Seneca
- Susquehanna Springdale Cabot
- Susquehanna Springdale Cabot
- Susquehanna Springdale Cabot
- Susquehanna Springdale Cabot
- Tioga Delmar Seneca
- Washington Union EQT
OH Permits November 5, to November 12, 2020
County Township E&P Companies
- Carroll August EAP OH
- Richland Monroe Columbia Trans.
- Richland Worthington Columbia Trans.
WV Permits November 2, to November 6, 2020
- No Weekly Permits
