Hydrogen Hub Winners Announced – WV Takes Prize in M-U Region
As predicted by Reuters, on Friday, the Bidenistas announced the Hydrogen Hub Hunger Games winners. There were seven projects selected from 33 finalists. Among them was the West Virginia-led Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2), which is a project that will use Marcellus/Utica natural gas as the feedstock to produce “blue” hydrogen, which is hydrogen made from natgas where carbon dioxide from the process is captured and either used or stored underground. While there is no doubt the big winner is West Virginia, other neighboring states, including Ohio and (yes) even Pennsylvania, will benefit with several locations that will be part of the larger hub project. We’ll explain below.
Read More “Hydrogen Hub Winners Announced – WV Takes Prize in M-U Region”
Joe Biden traveled to Pennsylvania (campaign rally) on Friday to make the official announcement of the seven lucky winners of the Hydrogen Hub Hunger Games (see today’s lead story). Joe pitched Pennsylvania as the big winner, which is a joke. PA scored small pieces of two approved projects. The one big, main hydrogen hub project pitched by PA to the Bidenistas — the Decarbonization Network of Appalachia (DNA H2Hub) — didn’t make the cut. Joe needs to win PA in the next election, or he’s toast, hence his visit to Philly on Friday (with a complicit media) to try and paint PA as the big winner. It was not.
With all of the good news about WV (and OH, and PA) winning the Biden Hydrogen Hub Hunger Games contest by scoring $925 million for the WV-led Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2) (see today’s lead story), there is a potential black cloud on the horizon. Investments in ARCH2 might not actually come to pass unless the IRS resolves the 45V hydrogen tax credit. Yes, an obscure rule part of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has the potential to scuttle most of the planned investments in ARCH2 and other hydrogen hub projects.
The U.S. rig count actually rose last week, adding a piddly four rigs to 622 active rigs (regaining the four it lost the week before). We remain near the lowest point since February 2022. The count in the Marcellus/Utica, after falling by one three weeks ago and holding steady two weeks ago, gained one rig (in Pennsylvania) and now stands at 39 active rigs. The national rig count is down 147, or 19%, below this time last year. We’d classify it as limping along, but we’re happy to see this slight reversal.
Emily Satterwhite, who teaches Appalachian studies at Virginia Tech and has been engaged in illegal activities against the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) going back more than five years (
Shell’s new CEO, Wael Sawan, is capable of rational thought, unlike his predecessor, Ben van Beurden. Previous CEO van Beurden had set the company on the suicidal path of reducing oil and gas drilling in favor of investing in renewable energy. It turns out that’s not making any money for the company. So at an investor meeting in June, Sawan unveiled a new strategy — back to more drilling for oil and gas and less dithering with renewables (see 
It’s becoming increasingly apparent that there’s a whole bunch of people in our energy-climate discussion who just won’t accept what can only be described as obvious and undeniable facts. What are those facts? Fossil fuels supply 80% of the world’s energy and about 80% of the energy consumed in the U.S. Without fossil fuels, it would be impossible to build and maintain so-called renewable energy and electric vehicles. This is an indisputable fact. Yet the uninformed insist that we can dump the production of fossil fuels now if we only had the will. They are WRONG.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Manchin trails Justice by 13 points in new WV Senate poll; Columbia Gas temporarily halts service for nearly 4,000 Pittsburgh-area residents; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Tellurian requests 3 more years to finish Driftwood LNG; NATIONAL: More infighting at Sierra Club; New golden era for natgas storage looms as demand, rates rise; Doubts around shale response to high prices re-emerge; BlackRock clients pull $13 billion from long-term funds.