Williams Finally Wins Case Against ET Aborted Merger – $495 Million
In 2015, Kelsy Warren and his Energy Transfer Equity (now just Energy Transfer) company pursued Williams, wanting to merge Williams into its operation. Williams initially fought ET tooth and nail, but in the end, caved and cut a deal (see Williams Accepts ETE’s “Indecent Proposal” – Price Went Down $10B). Without recounting all the sordid details, ET got cold feet and left Williams at the altar. Williams sued to recoup a contractual breakup fee (see Merger Turns Sour: Williams Sues ETE/CEO Kelcy Warren). A number of lawsuits ensued, and finally, after more than six years, a Delaware Court of Chancery judge ruled last December that ET must pay Williams a $410 million breakup fee provided for in the signed deal (see Judge: Energy Transfer Must Pay Williams $410M for Aborted Merger). ET should have been happy with the decision…
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Penneco Environmental Solutions wants to site a second injection well in Plum Borough (Allegheny County), PA, next to an existing one. Penneco’s first wastewater injection well in Plum finally opened for business in mid-2021, overcoming all sorts of smears, slanders, and lawsuits by the enviro-left (see 
Last November, MDN told you about a lawsuit filed by a family in Washington County, PA, against Chevron (now EQT) for drilling and fracking done in 2011-2012 near the family’s home (see 
The so-called Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), backed with FOREIGN MONEY, is behind most of the lawsuits filed by municipalities around the country (cities, counties, states) against Big Oil & Gas companies, claiming fossil energy companies know and have known for years that using their products is toasting Mom Earth into oblivion. It is the most outrageous abuse of the justice system we know of. The lawsuits are instigated (and funded) by CCI and a litany of colluding tax-free nonprofits. In August, we told you all the signs are pointing to CCI targeting Pennsylvania (see 
Waco Oil & Gas Co., Inc., headquartered in Glenville (Gilmer County), WV, signed a proposed consent decree (settlement agreement) with the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to settle an “alleged” charge of violating the federal Clean Water Act and West Virginia state law for “unauthorized discharges of dredged or fill material into waters of the United States in Braxton County, West Virginia.” Waco will pay a $825,000 penalty — split evenly between the feds and WV. Waco will also pay big bucks to restore “the vast majority of the impacted waters” and to provide “compensatory mitigation for waters that cannot be restored.” No doubt the bill will far exceed $1 million in total.
New York State has become the North Korea of the United States. It is narrow and parochial and devoid of freedom. If you operate a business in New York and you are not in a protected or favored class, or if your business does not bribe someone in the Democrat Party, you are in danger of losing that business. New York is aggressively hostile to any business remotely connected to fossil fuels. A “bitcoin miner” operating in beautiful Upstate NY, near the shore of Seneca Lake, uses a small natural gas power plant to provide power for its 15,300 computer servers. The radical Democrats running the state, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, want it shut down and gone. They are close to achieving their objective. How did we fall this far?
In November 2021, the U.S. Senate confirmed regulatory lawyer Willie Phillips to serve as a commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), replacing Neil Chatterjee (see 
An important decision was recently issued in a federal court case (in Ohio) that has the potential to affect landowners and drillers with shale leases throughout the Marcellus/Utica. At least, we believe it has broader implications. The case is known as Grissoms et al. v. Antero Resources Corporation. The case revolves around the issue of a “market enhancement” royalty clause (MEC), which is common in many shale leases throughout the M-U. An MEC lease typically prohibits the deduction of any post-production costs incurred in transforming raw gas into a marketable product. The question is, when is the gas marketable? At the wellhead or later on, after it has been cleaned up? The judge in the Grissoms case ruled in favor of the landowner and said the gas is NOT “marketable” in its raw form at the wellhead.
In early August, MDN told you about trouble brewing along the Gulf Coast between Venture Global LNG and its biggest customers: BP, Shell, Edison International (an Italian utility company), Repsol, and GALP Energia (see 
There’s some major corruption going on in the world of the left, and it got exposed last Wednesday at a Congressional hearing on Capitol Hill. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform held the hearing, chaired by Rep. James Comer (Republican from Kentucky). It was a hearing about a distortion of the justice system called third-party litigation funding (TPLF). It is the practice of a party with no direct stake in a lawsuit funding the plaintiff and the plaintiff’s lawyers as they pursue litigation. Example: billionaires like Michael Bloomberg and Big Green groups (funded in part by foreign countries like China and Russia) paying for lawyers for smaller green groups and mom-and-pop plaintiffs to repeatedly sue the oil and gas industry to block drilling and pipelines, or to force a change in regulations. There are, believe it or not, investment funds set up to invest in lawsuits! And the investors (the people with the money) can control whether or not the plaintiffs they are backing can or cannot settle the lawsuit. It is no longer about justice but about money. It is a GROTESQUE bastardization of the entire justice system. And it MUST STOP.
Driftwood LNG, a 27.6 million tonnes of LNG per year facility that will cost on the order of $14.5 billion to build, has not made an official final investment decision (FID) to proceed with the FERC-approved project. However, construction began on the project in March 2022 (see 
New Jersey is a Communist state, controlled by Communists from the Governor on down to radical judges packing its courts. Yesterday, three Commie judges from the Superior Court of NJ ruled that the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) should not have issued an exemption to the Highlands Act to Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) to build a new compressor station in West Milford. The compressor is part of the TGP East 300 expansion project, an upgrade of TGP to deliver an extra 115 MMcf/d of natural gas to Consolidated Edison and its customers in New York City and surrounding suburbs. East 300 is a FERC-approved project (see 
Is there now a truce in the long-running dispute between Epsilon Energy and Chesapeake Energy over drilling new wells in Susquehanna County, PA? Perhaps! Yesterday, Epsilon, a small publicly-traded energy company that joint venture partners with (gives money to) other companies, like Chesapeake Energy, with the other company doing the drilling, announced that “the operator of our upstream assets in the Marcellus recently notified us of near-term drilling plans on our acreage.” While not named, the “operator” must be Chessy. Epsilon has an ongoing lawsuit against Chesapeake for refusing to drill new wells on its jv acreage.