EQT ASCENDs in Rare Earth Mineral Partnership, Building Plant in M-U
Ace reporter Paul Gough at the Pittsburgh Business Times has scored another exclusive. At least we can’t find any other mentions online about this latest, very big news. EQT Corporation has signed a memorandum of understanding to partner with ElementUS Rare Earths & Minerals, a Louisiana company, to potentially build a plant somewhere in the Marcellus/Utica region to process rare earth minerals that are “used in industry for everything from fuel cells to batteries, magnets for electric vehicles and insulator coatings.” The project is called ASCEND. Why is EQT interested in rare earths?
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Yesterday the “front month” price of natural gas trading on the NYMEX Henry Hub closed at $7/MMBtu, the highest NYMEX price in 13.5 years (since Nov. 10, 2008). It was just two days we told you the NYMEX price was making a run for $7, closing at $6.64 on Monday (see 
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, has (for months) forcefully pushed the issue of completing the 94% done-and-in-the-ground Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project, a 303-mile pipeline from WV into Virginia. In early March Manchin let all five Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) commissioners know of his displeasure that MVP, along with other pipeline projects, is delayed (see 
MDN has highlighted Capstone Turbine Corporation, a California company that manufactures small electric-generating plants that run on natural gas, several times in the past (
A story out of Port St. Joe, Florida, involving LNG, caught our attention for a couple of reasons. Nopetro LNG plans to construct and operate as many as three liquefaction trains that will liquefy up to 3.86 billion cubic feet per year of natural gas for export and delivery to markets in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. That’s 3.86 Bcf for an entire year, not per day. Modern facilities that export LNG from the Gulf Coast, like Sabine Pass, export close to 4 Bcf per day. The facility proposed by Nopetro is minuscule in comparison. It will receive natural gas from St. Joe Natural Gas Company Inc. Nopetro recently asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to declare that it (FERC) does not have jurisdiction and regulation over such a tiny facility. FERC agreed!
Although a number of publicly-traded oil and natural gas companies have gone along with so-called ESG (environmental, social, and governance) programs and have pledged to reduce their so-called carbon footprint by X percentage by Y date, apparently O&G companies are not genuflecting far enough or fast enough for Big Green Nazis like Bloomberg. The latest laughable tactic we’ve noticed is that Bloomberg has taken to carbon-shaming, you know, like fat-shaming–the use of ridicule and bullying as a pressure tactic to imply a person isn’t “enough” because of their weight (or race, or economic status, or carbon emanations). Leftists like Bloomberg “News” are so predictable–they always fall into the same tired routines. Are oil and gas companies not dancing to your tune? Use the blowtorch pulpit you have (a news service) to try and shame them into doing it. We say to Bloomberg, blow your carbon-shaming out your (ahem) Bloomberg Terminal…
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: These are the oil and gas workers most in demand in Texas right now; Haynesville natural gas production reached a record high in late 2021; Permian drilling permits hit monthly record, signaling more production ahead; NATIONAL: Fitch Solutions raises Henry Hub price forecast; Before Joe Biden cracked down on natural gas, Hunter Biden pushed it on China; U.S. upstream M&A going strong with $14bn in first quarter of 2022; INTERNATIONAL: Russian LNG exports still climbing despite calls to limit transactions; Lloyd’s of London switches to remote trading after climate protests; Extinction Rebellion occupies Shell headquarters in London.