FirstEnergy Agrees to Pay $230M to Settle Nuke Plant Bribery Case
Ohio’s House Bill (HB) 6 law granted billions (plural) of dollars to FirstEnergy in an attempt to prop up the company’s economically failing nuclear power plants. FirstEnergy bribed state legislators to pass, and keep passed, HB 6 by paying out $61 million to a small group of insiders, including the now-former Speaker of the House (see FirstEnergy Involved in Bribery Scheme to Pass $1B Nuke Bailout Law). It is the biggest bribery scandal in Ohio history. FirstEnergy finally, openly, admitted they paid the bribe money just a few months ago (see FirstEnergy Admits to $61M Payment in Massive Bribery Scandal). Last Thursday the company announced it will pay the federal and Ohio state governments $230 million (split evenly) to make the mess it’s made go away.
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A Pennsylvania Democrat lawmaker from Beaver County (southwestern PA) who professes to support the Marcellus industry, Rep. Rob Matzie, has written a letter to Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Pat McDonnell (a fellow Dem) asking him to deny a request by PennEnergy Resources to withdraw as much as 3 million gallons of water a day from Big Sewickley Creek and one of its tributaries for shale fracking. Matzie says that’s just too much water to withdraw from the creek.
So-called environmentalists filed a lawsuit last week to block the construction of an LNG unloading facility in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. National Grid, a huge utility company that supplies natural gas to all of Long Island, including two New York City boroughs (Queens and Brooklyn), needs a way to inject more natural gas into its distribution system…or else. Or else during extreme winter weather events some folks will run out of gas for heating and cooking. Antis don’t care–until they’re the ones who run out.
According to one of our favorite Forbes authors and research analyst, Jude Clemente, “demand for natural gas can only grow.” Right now the world collectively uses 375 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natgas. Clemente says demand “is set to grow substantially in the years ahead.” One of the drivers of that growth will be carbon-neutral LNG. What is it and why will it drive more use of natgas? Clemente explains…
NATIONAL: U.S. oil & natural gas industry supported millions of jobs, trillions in economic impact in 2019; US weekly LNG exports increase another week; Tellurian’s Charif Souki on LNG, going green and the nuclear option; Questioning the sustainability of Biden’s brave new green world; How the FERC sets oil and gas pipeline rates.