shale gas news
Bill desRosiers
External Affairs Coordinator, Coterra Energy
Host, Shale Gas News

…

…

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 Russia, WOTUS, Mountain Valley Pipeline 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 shale gas. This week, as guests, we had Tom Shepstone, President of Shepstone Management Company, Inc. and NaturalGasNOW; and Gordon Tomb, Senior Fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation.

The Shale Gas News, typically, is broadcast live. On the April 30th show (click above), we covered the following new natural gas territory (see news excerpts below):

• Russia cuts off natural gas to Poland and Bulgaria, threatens to disconnect more nations. Russia dramatically escalated its standoff with the West over the war in Ukraine on Wednesday, cutting natural gas off to NATO members Poland and Bulgaria and threatening to disconnect even more nations. European leaders decried the move as “blackmail.”  A day after the United States and other Western allies vowed to speed more and better military supplies to Ukraine, the Kremlin upped the ante, using its most essential export as leverage.
• Is The U.S. Headed For Another Recession? The Covid recession of early 2020 was the shortest U.S. recession on record. The question now is how long the post-Covid economic rebound can last—and whether we might even be heading for another recession. The Federal Reserve recently raised interest rates for the first time since 2018—to a range of 0.25% to 0.50%—and suggested that the federal funds rate could climb to 2.5% or higher by the end of 2022. In forecasts released with the rate decision, Fed economists lowered their economic growth projections for the year.
• World is in First Global NatGas Crisis, It Will Get “Much Worse” – Every now and again we find it helpful to raise our heads, take a step back, and look at the big energy picture. We in the Marcellus/Utica don’t live in a bubble, although sometimes it seems that way. What happens in other countries does, to some extent, have the ability to influence what happens in energy markets here in the northeast. The question is how much of an influence do world energy markets have on us?
• US Supreme Court Reinstates Trump WOTUS Rule…for Now. The Barack Hussein Obama administration went crazy with over-regulation in many areas. One of them was to redefine “waters of the United States” (or WOTUS) as everything down to, no exaggeration, mud puddles. When Donald Trump took office, he set about to correct some of the insane abuses of the Obama era, including WOTUS. He finally got it fixed. However, last fall a radical federal judge appointed by Obama once again plunged the country back into madness by re-enacting Obama’s abuses under WOTUS. On Wednesday the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated (for now) the Trump-era rule.
• FERC Approves MVP Use of HDD Construction at 183 Streams/Wetlands. We didn’t see this one coming! Must be the intense pressure from U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had the intended effect. On Friday, FERC commissioners voted (unanimously) to authorize the completion for part of the remaining pieces of construction for the 94% complete, 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. The order allows MVP to use underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) to complete the installation of the pipeline below 183 streams and wetlands (swamps). Construction won’t begin just yet, but this ruling definitely helps.
• Marcellus & Utica are 2 of 3 Largest Gas Fields in the World! We always knew the Marcellus (and the Utica) are special, but here’s something we didn’t know until today. The Marcellus and the Utica are two of the three largest natural gas fields on the planet. Only the South Pars/North Dome gas field straddling Qatar and Iran holds more natural gas than either the Marcellus or the Utica individually. Together, the M-U actually is the largest gas field in the world! If we had the pipelines in our region to export our gas to other regions of our own country, and pipelines (and plants) to export our more M-U gas to other countries, we have more than enough gas in the M-U to supply the entire U.S. and the world *for decades.* That’s how massive our beloved Marcellus/Utica is.

The Shale Gas News sponsored by Linde Corporation