FirstEnergy Involved in Bribery Scheme to Pass $1B Nuke Bailout Law
We told you that the law passed in Ohio (House Bill 6) granting FirstEnergy (now called Energy Harbor) $1 billion in corporate welfare from ratepayers, destroying the fair playing field for natgas-fired electric plants in the bargain, stunk to high heaven. We told you that the entire thing was corrupt (see OH Nuclear Bailout Corruption: Gas Sacrificed for Nuke Investors). We didn’t realize just how right we were! Yesterday the Republican Speaker of the Ohio House, Larry Householder (along with several associates) was arrested on racketeering charges for taking $60 million in bribes from FirstEnergy for promoting and pushing (against the will of the people, we might add), HB 6. FirstEnergy has been served with a subpoena related to the case, although they have not (yet) been indicted. This is the largest bribery scheme in Ohio’s history!
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BJ Services, a pressure pumping (i.e. fracking) company, began life in the 1870s. BJ was purchased by, and merged into, Baker Hughes in 2009 for $5.5 billion. In November 2016, Baker Hughes along with financial partners Goldman Sachs and CSL Capital Management combined forces (and money) to turn the Baker Hughes BJ division back into a standalone company (see 
TC Energy’s Columbia Gas Transmission subsidiary has not given up on building a 3.37-mile, 8-inch pipeline under the Potomac River. The pipeline, from Maryland on one side of the river to West Virginia on the other side, will be built to feed a larger pipeline project from Mountaineer Gas called the Eastern Panhandle Expansion. The crazy anti-fossil fuel loons who run Maryland are trying to block the project. Columbia is asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for more time to get it built because of Maryland’s interference.
Yesterday Halliburton was the first of the big three oilfield services companies (Baker Hughes and Schlumberger being the other two) to release second-quarter numbers. While on paper the company lost $1.7 billion due to an impairment charge, Halliburton actually made $456 million in free cash flow–after axing workers and cutting dividend payments. But the big news (for us) from yesterday’s 2Q update was a comment by Halliburton CEO Jeff Miller that the company will look to markets outside the U.S. to grow in the future.
In December 2018 Williams announced a new project to increase capacity along the Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line (Transco) in PA by an extra 582,400 dekatherms (582 million cubic feet) per day. Williams officially filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build the “Leidy South Project” in August 2019 (see 
Energy Transfer’s subsidiary Sunoco Logistics is trying to finish up final construction of the Mariner East 2X pipeline in southeast Pennsylvania. ME2 and ME2X flow natural gas liquids including ethane and propane from eastern Ohio and western PA all the way to the Marcus Hook refinery near Philadelphia. As the pipe travels through Philly neighborhoods, some of the geography is limestone (porous) and when drilling to install pipes, it has led to sinkholes. Another seven such sinkholes have appeared since June and the state Public Utility Commission (PUC) is investigating.
NEXUS Pipeline, a $2.6 billion, 255-mile interstate pipeline that runs from Ohio into Michigan, has been fully online since October 2018 (see 
Multi-billionaire Warren Buffett (with more money than God) is a darling of the Democrat left because he’s a Democrat and often $upports leftist causes. Buffett has even praised crazy Bernie Sanders for championing the little guy. Yet Buffett isn’t ready to give up capitalism the way most of the rest of his party advocates. When it comes to investing and making money, Buffett is betting big on fossil fuels. Less than two weeks ago Buffett finalized a deal to buy all of Dominion Energy’s natural gas pipeline business, including major assets in the Marcellus/Utica (see 
Some 12 days ago Dominion Energy announced it is throwing in the towel and canceling the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project that would have stretched from West Virginia to North Carolina. The company also announced it is selling its pipeline business to Warren Buffett (see 
PTT Global Chemical yesterday issued a press release to say its major partner and financial backer for a planned $10 billion ethane cracker facility in Belmont County, OH–South Korea’s Daelim Chemical USA–has decided to pull out of the project. PTT said it remains committed to the project and will look for a new partner.
Whew. We can now breathe a sigh of relief. On July 7 TC Energy’s Columbia Gas Transmission subsidiary announced an unplanned outage (for maintenance work) for the Mountaineer XPress (MXP) pipeline in West Virginia–near Leach, Kentucky (see 
Yesterday Kinder Morgan asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for permission to bring Elba Island Train #8 online to produce and ship LNG. Train #8 will increase Elba’s active train count to seven (out of ten). One month ago KM asked FERC for permission to begin testing Train #9 (see 
