MDN Interview: CEO of Plastics Industry Assoc. LOVES Shale Energy
The 8th Annual Utica Downstream Conference will be held on Feb. 25 in Canton, OH. MDN editor Jim Willis had the opportunity to interview one of the keynote speakers, Tony Radoszewski, President & CEO of the Plastics Industry Association, in December. Tony assumed the role of president & CEO in early 2020, just prior to the pandemic. Jim spoke to Tony about his upcoming talk, to get some insights into the state of the plastics industry in America in general, and in the Appalachian Basin in particular. It was a fascinating discussion.
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Yesterday the mighty Chesapeake Energy emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy having hosed previous stockholders (making their shares of stock worthless), and making the company’s debtors the new shareholder/owners. The company dumped $7.8 billion worth of debt and emerges with $1.27 billion in debt on the books. As we told you last week, everything old is new again: the company will focus on natural gas drilling and downplay oil drilling (see 
Two weeks ago CNX Resources issued its 4Q and full-year 2020 update, except at the time they didn’t issue the usual press release with a summary overview (see 
As we reported two weeks ago, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (Democrat) has, for the seventh year in a row, introduced a Marcellus-killing severance tax proposal as part of his annual budget proposal (see 
West Virginia is represented by one Republican U.S. Senator, Shelley Moore Capito, and one Democrat, Joe Manchin. Manchin is tolerable (just) because he advocates for coal and oil/gas. Manchin is also the new chairman of the powerful Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Manchin, to his credit, is pushing back against Joe Biden’s ill-advised cancelation of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. In fact, both Biden and Capito are loudly supporting Keystone and (important for us) the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project, which runs through WV.
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