Expand Ends CEO Search, Hires Bakken Boss with Marcellus Roots
After an eight-month search, Expand Energy, the country’s #1 natural gas producer and one of the biggest drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, finally has a permanent boss. Yesterday, the company named Daniel E. “Danny” Brown, the CEO of Bakken oil driller Chord Energy, as its new President and CEO, effective next Monday, Oct. 26. Board Chairman Mike Wichterich, who has been keeping the seat warm since the board fired Nick Dell’Osso in February (see Earthquake at Expand Energy: CEO Nick Dell’Osso Fired by the Board), goes back to being non-executive chairman. Brown may run a North Dakota oil company today, but he’s no stranger to Pennsylvania. He once ran Anadarko’s Appalachia operations. And right now, his (soon-to-be former) company is Expand’s partner in a big chunk of northeast PA Marcellus wells. Read More “Expand Ends CEO Search, Hires Bakken Boss with Marcellus Roots”
The Trump administration just put real money where its mouth is on the Constitution Pipeline. Yesterday the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced it will spend up to $42 million in Defense Production Act (DPA) money to nudge Williams’ long-dead, now-revived 125-mile pipeline from Susquehanna County, PA to Schoharie County, NY closer to reality. The money won’t buy a single length of pipe—it pays for permitting and pre-construction work. And it doesn’t change the fact that New York and its Big Green allies are still fighting the project tooth and nail. But it sends a loud message: Washington now officially considers Constitution a national security asset. 
It’s official, or at least as official as these things get. America’s LNG export plants are drinking more natural gas than ever before. Two separate data trackers now say feedgas, the gas piped into LNG plants to be supercooled into a liquid and loaded onto ships, has set a new all-time high above 20 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day). NGI clocked 20.7 Bcf/d on Monday, the third straight day above its prior record. RBN Energy says feedgas has topped 20 Bcf/d for the first time ever. The milestone comes almost exactly a decade after the first LNG cargo left Cheniere’s Sabine Pass terminal in 2016. It also arrived just as a big chunk of Marcellus gas came back online after a leak on TC Energy’s Mountaineer XPress (MXP) pipeline in West Virginia. 
On Monday, gas buyers in Europe paid $28.91 per MMBtu for natural gas. Buyers in Japan and South Korea paid $30.01. Here at home, the November contract at Louisiana’s Henry Hub (the U.S. benchmark) closed at about $3.06. And last Thursday, gas sold at Texas Eastern M-2, the main price point for southwestern Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, fetched just $1.055. Same molecule of methane. Europe and Asia are paying nearly 10 times what the rest of America gets, and about 27 times what our Appalachian gas sold for last week. Why the giant gap? And what does it mean for your royalty check? 
A new study from the Boston-based Fiscal Alliance Foundation puts a price tag on what New England’s pipeline shortage costs Massachusetts families. The study, done by Always On Energy Research, finds that Enbridge’s proposed Project Beacon, a 300 MMcf/d (million cubic feet per day) expansion of the Algonquin Gas Transmission pipeline, would have saved Massachusetts ratepayers an average of $367 million per winter over the past seven winters. Even after paying their share of the pipeline’s cost, the average gas-heated household comes out ahead by $76 each winter, and small businesses by $622. 
Back on Sept. 2, we told you about Invenergy’s plan to build two big gas-fired power plants in Brillion, Wisconsin (see 
North Carolina’s Oil and Gas Commission is doing something it is required to do once every 10 years: review its entire rulebook for oil and gas drilling, including fracking. The Commission’s verdict so far is that every last rule is “necessary.” Case closed, right? Not if you’re an anti. Clean Water for North Carolina (CWFNC) is in full alarm mode, urging supporters to flood the Commission with “not one step back” comments before the November 9 deadline. Why the panic over rules that have never been used (not once) in 11 years? Follow the gas. A company wants to reopen an old vertical well in Lee County to power an AI data center. It would be the first commercial gas well in the state’s history. 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Bundle up – Pennsylvania’s power gap is growing; Utica Shale Academy debuts new program; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures settle lower; Hybrid sales rise while battery electric sales remain lower after tax credit expiration; “Green” isn’t always clean; Elon Musk’s gas strategy shows how the US market is changing; The energy election – 2026 midterms likely to determine your power bill; INTERNATIONAL: Oil prices hover near five-month high; What will happen to the oil price over the next few quarters?; Greenpeace protest forces shutdown at Woodside’s $12.5 billion gas project; UN climate panic rests on false scenario and buried past. 
Seven weeks. Same number. The Marcellus/Utica held at 33 rigs again for the week ended October 16, while the national count held at 603 for a second straight week, tying the 52-week high set last week. Underneath that flat national number, oil rigs dropped by three and gas rigs added one. Frac spreads slipped by four, snapping a five-week winning streak. On the price board, oil and gas went in opposite directions: WTI blasted past $100 to settle at $101.41 a barrel, while natural gas fell back to $3.116 per MMBtu. Plus: Expand Energy grabs the top spot on the Enverus permit list, and a name we don’t recognize shows up at No. 4. 
On Friday, we told you a leak on Columbia Gas Transmission’s Mountaineer XPress (MXP) pipeline had pushed Appalachian gas down to $1.06 (see 
Ten days ago, after Devon Energy agreed to sell its Eagle Ford assets for $4.2 billion, we asked whether the Marcellus would be next (see 
The feds have spoken: this winter in the Northeast will most likely be warmer than normal, and maybe a little soggier, too. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center released its official winter outlook last Thursday (Oct. 15), and a “super” El Niño is calling the shots. For those who make a living from Marcellus/Utica gas, a warm winter means less gas burned to heat homes, and that means softer prices. The market noticed. November futures slid 12 cents on Friday. But here’s the twist. In pipeline-starved New England, traders are still betting on $20-plus gas in January. A mild winter can’t fix what bad policy broke. 
The PJM Interconnection, the outfit that runs the power grid for 13 states plus Washington, D.C. (including Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia), had a rough week last week. Unusually warm October weather, combined with a big chunk of power plants down for fall maintenance, pushed PJM into emergency mode on October 13 and 14. The lights stayed on. But PJM says weeks like this are becoming normal, because electricity demand from data centers is growing faster than new power plants and power lines are being built. PJM’s answer? More power plants. 
Last Thursday, in a unanimous 5-0 vote, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) proposed something it has twice before refused to do: create a “blanket” authorization program for LNG plants. That’s regulatory-speak for letting LNG export terminals (and the smaller LNG “peak shaver” storage plants up here in the Northeast) make upgrades, swap out equipment, boost capacity, and even build new liquefaction trains, tanks, and marine berths without begging FERC for a separate, case-by-case order each time. Interstate pipelines have had a blanket program like this since 1982. LNG never did. FERC Chairman Laura Swett called it “historic,” and for once the word fits. The proposal is a notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR), not a final rule, and the usual suspects are already lining up against it, including nine blue-state attorneys general. But if it goes through, more gas gets out the door faster, and that’s good news for the Marcellus/Utica.