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Southwestern, Equinor Win Post-Production Deduction Lawsuit in WV

Just coming to light (for us) is a decision issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on Dec. 1, a ruling on post-production deductions by drillers when calculating gas royalties “at the wellhead” in West Virginia. The drillers, in this case, were Southwestern Energy and Equinor (formerly known as Statoil). The drillers won the right to claim certain post-production deductions.
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Virginia DEQ Changes Pipe Regs in Effort to Block MVP Finish

Don’t you love playing a game with a child and part of the way through the game, the child simply changes the rules for how the game is played (particularly when they are losing)? That’s what comes to mind with the Virginia Dept. of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) recent action in disallowing any pipeline bigger than 36 inches to use a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Nationwide Permit 12 (NWP12) to cross creeks, rivers, and wetlands. The move is meant to block Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a 42-inch pipeline, from finishing its installation work (the pipeline is 92% complete).
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Dominion Files Plan with FERC to “Undo” Atlantic Coast Pipe Work

Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) had laid 30 miles of pipeline and had cut trees for 222 miles along the 600-mile route before Dominion decided last summer it no longer wanted to be in the interstate pipeline business, canceling ACP (see Dominion Cancels Atlantic Coast Pipe, Sells Pipe Biz for $9.7B). Earlier this week Dominion filed a plan (full copy below) with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to clean up and “undo” the project.
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IFO Projects 2020 PA Impact Fee Revenue Fell by $55.9M (28%)

In early 2020 Pennsylvania raised $198.2 million from its version of a severance tax, called an impact fee, based on drilling activity from 2019, which was down from the previous year (see IFO Projects 2019 PA Impact Fee Revenue Fell by $53.6M (21%)). The state’s Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) is out with projections for how much revenue will be raised this year (based on drilling in 2020). Given the pandemic and a crash in natural gas prices early in the year, you won’t be surprised to learn the impact fee will drop another $55.5 million, to $144.85 million. That’s a drop in the impact fee of 42% over the past two years. Ouch.
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Antis Hope to Convince Biden Admin to Block Dela. River LNG Exports

Anti-fossil fuel zealots including THE Delaware Riverkeeper are attempting to convince the Biden administration to block the now fully permitted and authorized LNG export terminal New Fortress plans to build on the New Jersey shore of the Delaware River in Gibbstown. They’re hoping they can appeal to Biden’s parochial concerns for his home state of Delaware, hoping to scare an old man with dementia into blocking LNG ships from transiting the Delaware River by lying about safety issues.
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Fringe Groups Try/Fail to Remove PA Rep. Metcalfe from Enviro Ctte

PA Rep. Daryl Metcalfe

Some 42 far-outside-the-mainstream, fringe, radical “environmental” groups circulated a petition at the end of December requesting PA’s Republican Party remove Rep. Daryl Metcalfe as Majority Chairman of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee. Why? because Metcalfe doesn’t believe in the fairy tale of catastrophic man-made global warming. The woke cancel culture attempted political assassination of Metcalfe, but he had the last laugh (as he always does).
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