Antero Prevails Against Corrupt Employee, Wins $12.9M at Trial
Antero Resources is one of the largest drillers in the Marcellus/Utica (with major assets in West Virginia). The company is the fifth largest natgas producer in the country and the second largest LNG exporter. It’s also one of our favorite Marcellus/Utica drillers. As good and careful as companies like Antero are when hiring, sometimes there’s a rotten apple found in the barrel. Such was the case with a former employee who headed up the company’s operations in WV–where most of its drilling happens. The former employee took bribes and kickbacks from a vendor over a period of years (2012-2015), steering contracts to that vendor. The vendor’s performance was not as good as other competitors. At the end of years of litigation, Antero has finally been awarded compensation from a jury, and a bit extra from a judge, to make up for the actions of their rogue employee.
Read More “Antero Prevails Against Corrupt Employee, Wins $12.9M at Trial”
It grieves us to write this, but New York State and its uber-leftist, very destructive Governor, Kathy Hochul, is running rings around Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia with respect to attracting one of four $2 billion hydrogen hubs. Hochul has just orchestrated adding two more states to what is now a six-state coalition aimed at grabbing the hub. In addition to six northeastern states, the NY coalition boasts the participation of 14 private sector industry leaders, 12 utilities, 20 hydrogen technology original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), ten universities, seven non-profits, two transportation companies, and three state agencies. There are over 60 partners cooperating to lay the groundwork for attracting the hydrogen hub to New York State.
We’ve heard from a few MDN subscribers who think we’re being too hard on Joe Manchin and his sellout of the country in return for finishing the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. We don’t think so. The one thing everyone agrees on, those who support Manchin and the many of us who do not: It’s time to finish MVP…now.
Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass LNG export facility in Louisiana shipped its inaugural cargo of LNG back in February (see 
We spotted a Reuters story with the headline, “U.S. oil & gas rig count falls for first time in 25 months – Baker Hughes.” We thought, “Oh oh, has the recovery in drilling finally peaked?” So we dug out the numbers for ourselves. We wanted to know how rig counts in the M-U (in PA, OH, and WV) are doing, as well as the total U.S. rig count. What we found is that the Reuters story is not accurate–one of the very few times we’ve observed Reuters being wrong about something.
You have to hand it to the wackadoodles of the Sierra Club–they sure are creative. They look for any way they can to block American fossil energy. They try to stop drilling for oil and gas via frack bans. They are behind many of the efforts to ban new customers from connecting to natural gas lines in “blue” cities (the ignorant fools fall into the trap almost every time). The Clubbers try to block the transportation of oil and gas by launching lawsuits against pipelines. And now, they are trying to block clean-burning American natural gas (far cleaner than any other gas extracted on the planet) from being exported to help our allies in Europe. The Clubbers and their radical brethren at a group called Healthy Gulf have challenged a “dredge and fill” permit granted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Driftwood LNG facility now under construction near Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Here’s a sobering (and startling) prediction: Within the next year, crude oil will likely hit $200 a barrel, translating to $10 a gallon at the pump. It will result in protests and demonstrations across the country and around the world. That’s the prediction of veteran financier and hedge fund manager Salem Abraham, who founded Abraham Trading Company over 30 years ago. Abraham says the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) coupled with a chronic underinvesting in fossil energy companies is why the price of oil is about to go haywire.
NATIONAL: DOE funds transforming energy production, low emissions tech; Firms make deals to boost LNG exports 60% from U.S., Canada, Mexico; INTERNATIONAL: Shell CEO warns energy crisis may last more than one winter; Musk says world needs more oil, gas as bridge to renewables.