Trump Admin Releases Updates to National Environmental Policy Act
In January President Trump announced a list of proposed changes to the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in an effort to strip away some of the governmental red tape that has built up over the years like plaque in an artery, preventing important infrastructure projects like pipelines, dams, bridges, and roads from getting built (see Trump Seeks to Speed Up Pipeline Projects by Tweaking NEPA Law). Over the past 20 years or so the left has become adept in their use of NEPA to block new projects, claiming environmental harms. Trump wants to reverse that trend. Yesterday the final version of the Trump Administration’s tweaks to NEPA was released, setting off a firestorm of protest from the more radical elements of the “environmental” movement.
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In April 2019, President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) instructing the Environmental Protection Agency to review Section 401 of the Clean Water Act–the section that grants states (and tribes) the right to have a say in pipeline projects (see 
Some 12 days ago Dominion Energy announced it is throwing in the towel and canceling the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project that would have stretched from West Virginia to North Carolina. The company also announced it is selling its pipeline business to Warren Buffett (see 
Rystad Energy, an independent energy research and business intelligence company headquartered in Oslo, Norway (but with major offices in cities including Houston), recently issued their latest assessment of the worldwide oil and gas marketplace. Rystad is predicting the number of oil and gas wells drilled worldwide in 2020 will fall by a staggering 23% from the number drilled last year. Rystad’s prediction models stretch out five years and forecasts over the next five years the number of wells drilled in any given year will *still not* exceed the number of wells drilled in 2019. Yuck.
There were 15 new permits issued in PA for shale drilling July 6-10. There were no new permits issued in OH nor in WV for shale drilling last week, unfortunately. In PA, new permits were issued in Bradford, Lycoming and Susquehanna Counties–in the dry gas northeastern part of the state.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Dakota Access shutdown avoided (for now) as appeals court grants administrative stay; NATIONAL: Activist groups attack renewable natural gas despite environmental benefits; U.S. LNG exports’ slide continues in May.