Energy Services | Equitrans/EQT Midstream | Industrywide Issues | Regulation | Statewide WV | West Virginia
Joe Manchin Cuts MVP “Deal” in Return for Selling Out Country
The radical left is trying to salvage what’s left of Traitor Joe Manchin’s reputation–but they can’t do it. We saw multiple stories pop up yesterday to say that Manchin, U.S. Senator from West Virginia, “secured an agreement” to fast-track the completion of the 94% completed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in return for selling out the entire country by voting for the Big Green “Build Back Better” bill, now renamed to the laughable “Inflation Reduction Act” (see Tragedy: Joe Manchin Caves & Agrees to Big Green Build Back Better). Big Media is reporting Manchin convinced Democrats to “allow” MVP to finish up pronto. Except that’s not what they have agreed to–at all.
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It finally seems as if economic activity is picking up once again in the Marcellus/Utica. And we don’t mean just shale drillers and pipeline companies. The companies that supply those companies–the supply chain–is seeing an uptick in business, according to an article appearing in the Pittsburgh Business Times. Companies like U.S. Steel, MSA, and Steel Nation are reporting strong increases in sales in 2022.
Not all that long ago, the spot (physically traded) price of natural gas around the Marcellus/Utica region, and the regions it feeds, including the Southeastern U.S., had some of the lowest spot prices for natural gas in the U.S. We recall being excited to see the price per Mcf (or MMBtu) get above $1 in northeastern PA. That all changed over the past year or so. According to RBN Energy, “cash and forward prices in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast have rocketed, becoming the highest gas prices in the land, and in some cases are at never-before-seen levels for this time of year.” What happened? Why is the price so high now, in a region flooded with natural gas, where once we couldn’t get the price to go over a dollar?
One of the questions MDN editor Jim Willis (who lives in New York State) often gets at family gatherings and the occasional conference (when folks find out he writes about “fracking” and “shale energy”) is this: “Will New York ever get fracking?” Jim’s tongue-in-cheek answer is, “When pigs fly!” The slightly longer answer is that the ignominious politician Andrew Cuomo, while he was governor, slipped a permanent ban on fracking into law as part of the 2020 state budget bill (see 
Most of the time, when we write about LNG (liquefied natural gas), we write about exports. In particular, U.S. exports. The International Group of Liquefied Natural Gas Importers (GIIGNL) advocates for the other end of the deal–those importing LNG. GIIGNL recently issued its 2022 annual report (full copy below). It really is quite fascinating. The report includes a list of long- and medium-term contracts (>4 years) signed in 2021–who the buyer is, who the seller is, and which countries the gas is going from and to.
In April, MDN told you about an exciting new FREE service for landowners and rights owners called 
NATIONAL: USA ramps up rig count; U.S. needs more natgas to decarbonize rest of the world; INTERNATIONAL: European gas situation moves from bad to ugly.