Bill desRosiers
External Affairs Coordinator, Cabot Oil & Gas

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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 LNG demand, petroleum and natural gas, extreme weather events 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 Rob Wagner, supervisor of the trucking division at GasSearch Drilling Services (GDS) and Chris Heck, President/CEO – Pittsburgh Airport Area Chamber of Commerce.

The Shale Gas News, typically, is broadcast live. On the July 31st show (click above), we covered the following new natural gas territory (see news excerpts below):

• U.S. Natural Gas ‘Off to the Races’ on Strong LNG, Mexico Demand and Producer Discipline. U.S. natural gas demand and prices are “off to the races,” driven by a convergence of supply and demand-related factors as the world emerges from Covid-19, IHS Markit’s Jack Weixel, senior director, said Monday.  Liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to the global market, pipeline exports to Mexico, and capital discipline by upstream producers all have contributed to a “whiplash” in prices from below $2.00/MMBtu in late 2020 to current prices well above $3.00, Weixel told the LDC Gas Forums Northeast Forum in Boston.
• United States continued to lead global petroleum and natural gas production in 2020. More petroleum and natural gas was produced in the United States than in any other country during 2020 (a trend that began in 2014), despite year-on-year declines from the record-high production in 2019. U.S. petroleum and natural gas output in 2020 totaled 66.9 quadrillion British thermal units (quads), which was more than both Russia’s 45.5 quads and Saudi Arabia’s 26.5 quads of petroleum and natural gas production.
• Extreme weather events justify more coordination between electricity, natural gas sectors. There’s a technical interdependence between the production of natural gas and the production of electricity, which in many states each rely on the other to be produced, a situation increasingly impacted by the ongoing and more frequent assault of extreme weather on both systems.
• Central PA Startup Wants to Help Marcellus Transition to Hydrogen. You can’t pitch a stone these days and not hit a startup company targeting the hydrogen sector, hoping to catch the energy wave of the future. (Hydrogen has been the “future” of energy for about 50 years now.) A new startup in central Pennsylvania believes they have a cutting-edge solution to convert water (including wastewater) into hydrogen without using electricity–by using a chemical process only. One of their target markets: the Marcellus Shale industry.
• Warren Buffett & Dominion Cancel Planned $1.7B Questar Pipe Deal. One year ago, in July 2020, we brought you the bombshell news that Dominion Energy was calling it quits in the pipeline business, abandoning the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project (on which they had already spent billions of dollars) and selling its existing (extensive) pipeline network to Warren Buffett for $9.7 billion. Part of the deal included selling Dominion subsidiary Questar Pipeline, a pipeline system located in the Western U.S. That part of the deal ($1.3 billion in cash and $430 million in assumed debt) never consummated and is now officially dead.
• NatGas Power Plants Fire Up at Shell’s PA Cracker Site. As the mighty Shell ethane cracker plant complex in Monaca (Beaver County), PA continues its march toward full operation sometime next year, another key piece has fallen into place. Shell reports that the 250-megawatt, gas-fired electric plant that will power the mighty cracker was fired up yesterday–all three turbines–and that the facility produced and flowed electricity onto the PJM electric grid. It was “a major milestone” on the way to finishing the now 80% complete cracker complex.
• PA’s 5 Biggest Shale Drillers Back in the Game, Permits Soar in June. According to an analysis done by S&P Global Market Intelligence, the five largest drillers in the Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale resumed their drilling in June in a big way. S&P’s analysis shows those five drillers were responsible for 51% of the new drilling permits issued last month, up from 28% of new permits issued in May. Perhaps we know why. The price of natgas at regional hubs in PA rocketed over the past month. At the Leidy Hub in the northeast’s dry gas window (centered on Susquehanna County, PA), cash prices went from a low of 93.7 cents/MMBtu on May 3 to $3.07/MMBtu at the end of June.

The Shale Gas News sponsored by Linde Corporation