Appalachia

Southwestern Energy Co. increased year/year production by 5% to 946 Bcfe in 2018, even after divesting its Fayetteville Shale assets and becoming a pure-player focused on the Appalachian Basin, where it continues to extend laterals in a big way and see success in different intervals such as the Upper Devonian Shale.

Range Resources Corp. is continuing to take hits from its acquisition more than two years ago of Memorial Resource Development Corp. (MRD) and the underperforming assets in North Louisiana that were part of the deal, which accounted for the bulk of a nearly $2 billion loss in 2018.

Southwestern Energy Co. said it would spend less this year compared to last, while lower well costs and longer laterals are expected to help drive a healthy gain in production as it embarks on its first full year as an Appalachian pure-play operator.

TransCanada Corp. reported that shippers have cut long-term firm bookings for eastbound deliveries on its Mainline from Alberta and British Columbia to about 1 Bcf/d from 5 Bcf/d as competition from Appalachian natural gas has squeezed the system’s transportation contracts.

As Arctic cold settled in Wednesday across a wide swath of the country, from the Midwest to the Northeast, producers and midstream companies in the Appalachian and Williston basins were busy trying to fight the effects of record-setting temperatures on their operations and crews.

The tenacious natural gas production growth that has characterized the Appalachian Basin over the last decade finally appears to be slowing as an epic pipeline buildout nears its conclusion, demand ebbs and operators realign their visions for the future.

Appalachian pure-play Antero Resources Corp. plans to cut its capital spending and development activity this year in response to sliding oil and natural gas liquids (NGL) prices.

The Department of Energy (DOE) on Tuesday unveiled a long-awaited report demonstrating the feasibility of developing a natural gas liquids (NGL) storage hub in the Appalachian Basin that it says would increase supply and geographic diversity for the nation’s petrochemical and plastics industries.

The opening of the Mariner West I ethane pipeline and new processing plants should provide some relief to current wet gas constraints in the Marcellus and Utica shales, and the plays should be largely de-bottlenecked by the end of next year, according to analysts at Barclays.