3 Groups Sue PA DEP, EQB to Block New VOC Conventional Regulation
Yesterday MDN brought you the news that as of Friday, a new regulation controlling volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions, and by extension methane emissions, for Pennsylvania’s conventional oil and gas drillers went into effect (see PA DEP Decrees Onerous VOC Reg for Conventional O&G in Effect Now). We said in that post, “We’re guessing the conventional industry, which warned the DEP and EQB not to adopt the regulation, will end up suing to challenge it.” Turns out to be a prophetic statement. The three statewide organizations that represent PA’s conventional drillers filed a lawsuit yesterday against the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Environmental Quality Board (EQB), challenging the legality and legitimacy of the new VOC regulation for conventional drillers.
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The front-month NYMEX futures contract (based on the price of gas trading at the Henry Hub) dropped like a rock yesterday–down 70 cents (-12.6%) to $5.58/MMBtu. The price has dropped for the past four trading days in a row. Some say it’s free fallin’. In total, the price has lost $1.66 (-22.9%) over the last four sessions. NYMEX trading during the day yesterday hit its lowest point since March of this year. Why? Mainly a warm short-term weather forecast, coupled with the continuing outage at the Freeport LNG export facility.
And just like that, the horse everyone thought was dead has come back to life and is leading the race. We’re talking about U.S. Senator Joe Manchin’s so-called permitting reform bill to help save the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). The bill proposed by Manchin would bypass the clown judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals who are blocking it. Manchin got a pledge from his buddy Chuck Schumer to allow a vote on permitting reform in return for Manchin selling out the country by voting to pass the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (see 
We’re sure this post will not make some of our industry readers/friends happy. But we think it’s time to rip the scab off the festering ESG/Next Generation/Responsible Gas wound and expose it. As Joan Rivers used to say, Can we talk? What got us thinking about responsible gas certification was an announcement from Virginia Natural Gas that the company has entered into a deal with BP to buy “Next Generation Natural Gas” for resale to its customers. VNG will buy it from wells in the Louisiana Haynesville Shale. We asked ourselves these questions: What’s the likelihood that molecules of so-called responsible gas from Louisiana will actually travel all the way to Virginia? And if they do, what happens to those molecules once there?
We spotted an article about the left’s war on fossil energy, and how that war is causing economic chaos around the world. We disagree 100% with the premise of the article, which begins this way: “Climate change is a real and urgent problem. More than a century of carbon emissions is warming the planet and causing floods, droughts, fires and other cataclysmic events that are killing people, threatening livelihoods and upending economies.” However, the author goes on to say that the war on fossil fuels (which are, according to the author, the source of carbon emissions) is causing its own form of chaos. He makes some great points about the chaos that comes from not having a good transition plan in place to get us from fossil energy to so-called renewables.
In October, MDN brought you the news that the company created and backed by Dan Rice (and his brothers), called Archaea Energy, is selling itself to BP for $4.1 billion (see 
INTERNATIONAL: European gas consumption is 24% below the five-year average.