WV Big Coal Pushes Back Against Partnership to Promote LNG Exports
Two days ago, MDN told you that the Apostle of LNG, Toby Rice (CEO of EQT), had convinced his buddies at Williams and TC Energy (two pipeline companies) to join him in his latest effort to push for more U.S. LNG exports (see EQT, TC Energy, Williams Launch Partnership to Promote LNG Exports). The new club Rice and his friends formed is called the Partnership to Address Global Emissions (PAGE). The group said it would advocate for policies that encourage the development of the infrastructure (pipelines) needed to increase the production and exporting of LNG in order to replace coal and lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. That bit about replacing coal has raised the hackles of the West Virginia Coal Association.
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Another week of pathetically low numbers for new shale drilling permits issued during the week of Oct. 3-9. The previous week saw only nine new permits too. All of a sudden, Pennsylvania is seeing far fewer permits issued than is typical. Just five new permits were issued in PA for Oct. 3-9, with all five in the northeastern part of the state. Chesapeake received two permits, and Coterra received three permits. In Ohio, just four permits were issued, with two going to Diversified Energy (typically doesn’t drill new wells) in Monroe County, and two going to Encino Energy in Harrison County. West Virginia had a big, fat, goose egg last week. No new permits.
EQT Corporation filed a Form 8-K on Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission to let regulators (and investors) know that the company has lost money on derivatives. EQT told regulators that (on paper), the company lost $1.627 billion on derivatives during the third quarter of 2022, and has lost a total of $5.55 billion in total for the first nine months (quarters 1-3) of this year. But does that mean EQT has actually paid that much money out of pocket?
EQT CEO Toby Rice has been and is on a mission to spread the gospel of LNG (see 
We’ve heard of vegetable gardens. We’ve heard of flower gardens. We’ve heard of rose gardens. Remember the Lynn Anderson song, “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden”? We’ve also heard of rock gardens, raised gardens, herb gardens, and indoor gardens. One garden we hadn’t heard about until today is a “rain garden.” Ever heard that term? Rice Energy (now part of EQT Corporation) is paying a big fine, $147,250, for work done at a well site in Greene County, PA, in 2019 that allowed erosion and soil to contaminate not one but three rain gardens. I beg your pardon!
Equinor, Norway’s largest oil company (state-owned, used to be called Statoil before they became ashamed to have the word “oil” in their name), announced it had achieved 100% certification for its natural gas produced in the Ohio Utica using Equitable Origin’s EO100™ standard. Equinor now produces “responsible” natural gas for its 27,000 operational net acres, and 242,000 non-operational net acres. Congrats!
In September, EQT Corporation announced it is buying Tug Hill Operating’s West Virginia shale assets for $5.2 billion (see 
There’s ESG, and then there’s ESG. We’ve tried to make this distinction a number of times, and will use the latest ESG report issued by Antero Resources to make the distinction again. When a huge (very important) company like Antero Resources, a natural gas driller focused on West Virginia, talks about ESG (or Environmental, Social, and Governance), it’s talking about all of the things the company does to prove to wackos that it behaves in an environmentally responsible manner when extracting hydrocarbons out of the ground. When the wackos talk about ESG, they mean (a) get everyone to divest from fossil energy, and (b) if a company happens to be in the fossil energy business, it needs to move away from extracting oil and gas and toward investing in sketchy so-called renewable energy sources.
In August, Jennifer Granholm, hands down the most incompetent Secretary of Energy ever to hold the office, sent a letter to seven major refinery companies threatening them that if they don’t scale back exports of gasoline, diesel, and other liquid petroleum products, Granholm will have old dementia Joe whip up an executive order slapping a ban on such exports (see 
Chesapeake Energy is interested in new LNG export projects–but not just LNG exported along the Gulf Coast near its new Haynesville assets. Chessy is jazzed about the possibilities of exporting LNG along the East Coast. The company has its eye on a project announced for the Philadelphia area, on the Delaware River (see 
It was an interesting day yesterday for the final day of the Marcellus Shale Coalition’s Shale Insight event, being held in Erie, PA. Shell outlined its vision for a regional hydrogen hub with Shell itself at the center of the action (guess we can’t blame them for trying, although we wish they were working with a broader coalition). More interesting, for us, were the addresses of four key politicians. Republicans Dr. Mehmet Oz, running for U.S. Senate in PA, and Doug Mastriano, running for governor in PA, addressed the event in person. Their counterparts, Democrats John Fetterman (running for Senate) and Josh Shapiro (running for governor), aired recorded messages and didn’t bother to show up in person–a MAJOR insult to the shale industry.
Some 225 hypocritical nutters were whipped into a frenzy by Big Green and its so-called Beyond Plastics campaign during a Zoom call Tuesday night to “prepare” for the startup of Shell’s mighty ethane cracker plant in Monaca, PA. It was really quite hilarious. There was talk of nurdle patrols, “sacrifice zones,” and celebrations over defeating Joe Manchin’s permitting reform bill. Why hypocritical? Because every single person on the call was using a computer or phone made out of (wait for it)….plastics. The clothes on their bodies and shoes on their feet are made largely from plastics. The cars and boats and paraphernalia they use to hunt down evidence of environmental plastics pollution from the cracker plant–all made from plastics. We wonder, Do they know how stupid they look?
In something of a shocker, EQT Corporation, the largest natural gas producer in the country with its headquarters (and most major drilling operations) in Pennsylvania, is throwing its weight and support behind a coalition in West Virginia to attract one of the so-called regional hydrogen hubs (worth $1 billion or more in taxpayer investment) to the Mountain State, not to the Keystone State. EQT is one of the main players in forming a new coalition called the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2). Other big energy companies supporting ARCH2 include Williams, Dominion Energy, CNX Resources, and New Fortress Energy (among many more).