National Grid Threatens New Gas Hookup Moratorium for Downstate NY
As Yogi Berra once quipped, this feels like déjà vu all over again. In 2019 New York City and Long Island experienced an epic showdown with National Grid, which supplies natural gas to all of Long Island including Brooklyn and Queens. National Grid slapped a moratorium on new gas hookups due to short supplies and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s blocking of a pipeline to bring more supplies to the region. After extreme blowback from customers, Cuomo threatened to rip National Grid’s franchise away and give it to someone else unless they paid $30 million in bribes and started hooking up new customers again. National Grid caved and the bad guy, Cuomo, won (see Andrew “Don Corleone” Cuomo Extorts National Grid, Wins Pipe Battle). Once again National Grid is sounding the alarm that they likely will need to restrict new gas hookups. A new battle is brewing.
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According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), natural gas spot prices at Henry Hub averaged $3.91/MMBtu for 2021. Each month the EIA issues a Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO). In the latest STEO update for January, EIA predicts that the annual average HH price will average $3.79/MMBtu in 2022, down $0.12 from 2021. EIA further predicts the HH price in 2023 will go down yet more, to an average of $3.63.
In June 2020 the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), in coordination with the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), published final rules to allow LNG (liquefied natural gas) to be safely transported by special rail cars (see 
TC Energy Corp., the former TransCanada, held its annual investor day on Dec. 1. TC owns extensive liquids and natural gas pipelines across North America, including the Columbia Gas Transmission interstate pipeline network that blankets Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. If anyone has its ear to the ground and watching for/discerning longer-term trends, it is big pipeline companies like TC Energy. During the investor day update, one of TC’s executives, Tracy Robinson, said she expects natural gas demand in North America to grow 25% by 2030. That’s a remarkable amount of growth!
Speakers on a panel at the recent 23rd World Petroleum Congress, held in Houston, TX, made a strong case for natural gas as the only legitimate “green” alternative to power the world. At least for the next couple of decades. The panel was called “Can Natural Gas, Including LNG, Deliver on the Promise of a Clean & Affordable Transition Fuel?” Charif Souki, Chairman of Tellurian and founder of Cheniere Energy, along with Jim Teague, Chief Executive of Enterprise Products Partners, made some great points. Souki asked the question, why in the world would we “trade” dealing with OPEC for dealing with (subjugation to) China?
Even though U.S. LNG exports help the U.S. by providing more jobs and economic prosperity, and even though U.S. LNG exports help the world by providing a green alternative to coal and other forms of environmentally destructive fuels, some Democrats continue to bash away at natural gas and are actively trying to kill the industry in our country. Legislation introduced Dec. 7 by Representative Jan Schakowsky (Democrat-Illinois), and Nanette Diaz Barragán (Democrat-California), would bar the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) from approving new LNG terminals.
The odious leftists from the so-called Food & Water Watch (Big Green group, funded with foreign money) continue to pressure, cajole, woo, and hoodwink local municipalities in New Jersey to oppose building a new dock on the Delaware River–a dock that would allow LNG cargo carriers to come alongside and load up with yummy, safe, clean-burning LNG. The latest victim of FWW’s lies is Trenton, New Jersey.
The NYMEX “front month” futures contract for natural gas traded on the Henry Hub benchmark has crashed over the past three days, down more than 90 cents, closing at $4.26/MMBtu yesterday. Why? Because weather models predict relatively warm weather in the weeks ahead. Weather trumps all other factors in the price of natural gas. Which exposes the intentional lie (or stupidity, take your pick) of people like U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren who are spreading the false narrative that LNG exports are the cause of high natural gas prices here at home (see 
Earlier this week MDN told you about a nastygram written by U.S. Senator Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren (see 
