WV Advances Bill to End Severance Tax Investment Fund
In March 2014, the West Virginia legislature passed, and then-Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (Democrat) signed, the Future Fund bill, which was designed to set aside 3% of revenue raised from WV’s oil and gas severance tax in a rainy day fund (see Back to the Future (Fund) – WV Gov. Tomblin Signs New Law). Do you know how much money that fund has collected from that day to this? NOTHING. Zero. Nada. So the 2023 session of the WV legislature is rapidly moving along a new bill to dismantle and kill the moribund Future Fund.
Read More “WV Advances Bill to End Severance Tax Investment Fund”
Last week the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) granted permission to Freeport LNG, which has been offline since an explosion last June, to begin the process of restarting the facility (see 
On December 23, 2022, natural gas consumption in the U.S. Lower 48 states reached a new, all-time daily record high of 141.0 billion cubic feet (Bcf). The previous record was set in January 2018. As you may recall, we had a cold snap and nasty winter weather in late December, driving up the use of clean, abundant, and still relatively cheap natural gas. Gas for heating saw a big increase in use, along with increased demand from gas-fired power plants. Combined, it drove usage to a new all-time high.
As we reported yesterday, the price of natural gas continues to bump along in the mid-$2/MMBtu range (see 
The mighty BP (formerly British Petroleum) is an oil and natural gas company trying to convert itself into a renewable energy company. We’d say they’re failing, big time. BP has gone screwy. It’s a European company and has bought into the false narrative that fossil energy is on the way out due to concerns over mythical global warming. In BP’s recently published Annual Energy Outlook for 2023 (full copy below), the company predicts (once again) that fossil energy is on the way out, but now it’s happening even faster than before because of (a) Putin’s war on Ukraine, forcing Europe to adopt unreliable renewables even quicker than before, and (b) Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, pouring billions into the effort to smash fossil energy and elevate electric-everything.
Leftist top-down bureaucracies never work. NEVER. Socialism never works. Communism never works (at least in the long term). They all spring from the same poisoned root–arrogant elitists believe they know better than you how to run your life. They extinguish freedom. Example: The Bidenistas want to make decisions for you about which forms of energy you can and can’t use. They dream about a future where dirty, filthy fossil energy is no more. And they allocate trillions of dollars to make it happen. Then what happens? These egg-headed toads sit around and talk about it–and NEVER distribute the money! They hold endless Zoom calls. They require grant forms filled out in triplicate. And then, no money gets distributed. Welcome to Bidentopia.
NATIONAL: The billionaires behind the gas bans; Highest paying engineering jobs of 2023; North Hudson launches $275 million energy credit fund; INTERNATIONAL: Shell is selling ‘carbon neutral’ fossil fuels again.