Celebrating Fossil Fuels on Worship the Earth Day – April 22, 2025
Today is the annual day when environmental wackos demand fealty to Mother Earth. You WILL bow down and worship the creation (instead of the Creator) or risk being excommunicated from polite company. We thumb our noses at Earth Day worshipers and declare our love for the miracle of fossil energy on this Earth Day. We invite you to join us in celebrating the greatest invention of mankind–fossil fuels! Read More “Celebrating Fossil Fuels on Worship the Earth Day – April 22, 2025”
The Baker Hughes U.S. national rig count recovered somewhat last week, adding two rigs after losing seven rigs two weeks ago. The U.S. count now stands at 585 active rigs. There was big news for the Marcellus/Utica. The combined M-U rig count was 38 last week. That is the highest M-U combined count in almost one year—since May of 2024. The Marcellus added the one rig it lost the prior week and now stands at 25 rigs across the three M-U states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. Rigs focused on the Utica added two, and now stands at 13 rigs. PA was a big winner, adding two rigs, now with 18 active rigs — the highest number it has had since last August. However, OH also added two rigs and now operates 12, the most active rigs in the Buckeye State in over a year. 
The NYMEX natural gas price for May delivery (referred to as the “front month” contract) decreased by 28.20 cents per million British thermal units (MMBtu), or 8.0%, last week. Over the past three weeks, the NYMEX price has trended down, losing 82 cents or 20.2%. What the heck is going on? Analysts say it’s a mix of “shifting fundamentals, cash market weakness, and uncertainty caused by President Trump’s tariff campaign.” 
Local townships, whether governed by a majority of Republicans or Democrats, typically reject proposals to install massive, ugly, bird-killing (and filled with toxic chemicals) solar farms, no matter where they are tried (red or blue states). It’s a problem for the tone deaf environmental left. Solar farms are even rejected in blue New York! Another such installation tried to gain approval in Stark County, Ohio, recently. The Ohio Power Siting Board, citing local opposition, rejected a permit for a 150 megawatt solar farm that would have gobbled up 860 acres in Washington Township. 
U.S. marketed natural gas production remained “relatively flat in 2024,” according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Gas production last year grew “by less than 0.4 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) compared with 2023 to average 113 Bcf/d,” according to EIA’s latest Natural Gas Monthly report. Translated another way, production grew around 400 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) last year. Statistically, it’s about three-tenths of one percent, which rounds to zero. Still, it GREW. It did not shrink. And that’s what should be emphasized. 
Donald Trump’s new EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin (from Long Island), has been a smash hit in his new role. He continues to delight and surprise. Zeldin is aggressively rolling back many of the over-the-top regulations adopted during the evil Biden years, regulations that don’t improve the environment but only serve to destroy American businesses. In a recent interview with the New York Post, Zeldin did not hold back on the lunacy of New York’s climate law and how it hurts the most vulnerable in the state. He called NY’s policies “delusional” and a “catastrophe.” 
AI, artificial intelligence, has been in the news a lot lately, particularly in the Marcellus/Utica region. Most of the stories we’ve brought you deal with huge new AI data centers being built in the M-U region, requiring a big increase in electricity to power them. Most of the electricity comes from natural gas-fired power plants. But this post is not about AI data centers, it’s about how energy companies, like Encino Energy, are using AI to drill better, faster, cheaper, and smarter. It’s about how AI is helping our companies become better at what they do—extracting and flowing natural gas and oil. 
We have some exciting news to share from Kinder Morgan. As part of the company’s quarterly update, KM provided details about eight pipeline projects that are currently being planned or built. Four of the eight will flow Marcellus/Utica molecules. One of the four is brand new: A new greenfield expansion of the Elba Express pipeline into South Carolina to serve growing demand for natural gas in the state. The $431 million Elba Express Bridge project is designed to provide 325 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of firm transportation capacity. KM CEO Kim Dang said on a conference call that the project is “easily expandable to over a Bcf a day.” 
Yesterday, the Ohio Supreme Court issued a ruling dismissing a case that leaves in place a ruling from the Seventh District Court of Appeals. The case, Darrell Crozier et al. v. Pipe Creek Conservancy LLC et al., involves a decision on who owns the oil and gas rights underlying a property in rural Belmont County. The case revolves around the Ohio Marketable Title Act (MTA), something we’ve written about multiple times (
In early April, MDN brought you the exciting news that THE largest gas-fired power plant in the country, along with a MASSIVE data center complex, will be built at a former coal-fired power plant site in Indiana County, PA (see 
Et tu, Brute? We’ve poked fun at “peak oil” and “peak gas” quacks for years (over a decade). People like Art Berman who pronounce, on a regular basis, that we’ve finally hit peak oil (or gas) production and/or demand, and that from here on out, fossil fuels will decline. They’re wrong every single time. Yet now, none other than the number crunchers at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) are making their own “peak” predictions. In its latest Annual Energy Outlook (AEO) for 2025, the EIA says we will likely see U.S. crude oil output hit a peak of 14 million barrels per day by 2027. Natural gas has a longer fuse, hitting a high of 43.44 trillion cubic feet per annum in 2032. 
Net Power, backed by the Rice brothers (of Rice Energy and EQT fame), is on a mission to develop and deploy revolutionary new technology to capture every last molecule of carbon dioxide from natural gas-fired power plants (see 
It seems our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), was populated by a lot of swamp creatures. Multiple sources are whispering to Reuters that 100 or more of the agency’s 350 employees (somewhere between 25% and 40%) either already have or soon will leave their jobs at the agency. They have opted to accept President Trump’s offer to government workers to leave with generous benefits now or risk being fired later. Reuters, which is typically an unbiased news source (one of the few), is throwing shade that important reports produced by EIA will no longer be produced, given the lack of manpower. 
This is shameful. A Pennsylvania government agency, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), has aligned itself with an extreme leftwing organization to attack the PJM Interconnection electric grid in a bid to paper over the failed policies of PA Governor Josh Shapiro. In particular, so-called “Acting” Secretary of the DEP, Jessica Shirley, has proven she is no longer fit to lead the agency. The PA Senate should refuse to confirm her and bounce her out immediately. Shirley aligned herself with the radical left-wing organization called Evergreen Action to promote a sham/fake “report” by a well-known Democrat organization called Synapse Energy Economics (that works exclusively for left-wing groups) attacking PJM with false claims that it has a “broken” electric generation project approval process. 
In what appears to be a coordinated effort, the PJM Interconnect electric grid is under attack by leftists. As we point out in our lead story today, the Pennsylvania DEP has prostituted itself politically and joined with extremist left-wing organizations to attack PJM. At the same time, three deeply blue (economically failed) states, New Jersey, Maryland, and Illinois, filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) asking the agency to force PJM to rerun an electric capacity auction, claiming such a move would save ratepayers $5 billion. These states’ failed policies in FORCING unreliable solar and wind on the public caused the high-priced electricity problem in the first place. So now, the perpetrators are blaming the victim—PJM. 
Energy Transfer’s (ET) Lake Charles LNG project is in the news again. Last week we told you that ET had landed a new partner to help pay for the project, MidOcean Energy, which will cover 30% of the cost of building the plant (see