WV Chips in $10M to Attract $125M Hydrogen Project to Mason County
Last Friday, the West Virginia Economic Development Authority (EDA) approved spending up to $10 million in an economic incentive package for a project that Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) has proposed. B&W plans to invest $125 million in WV’s Mason County to build a hydrogen production facility. One of the inputs (feedstock) for the facility will be natural gas. Another is coal. The EDA said the project could potentially expand into a $1 billion investment employing 200 people. Exciting stuff! Read More “WV Chips in $10M to Attract $125M Hydrogen Project to Mason County”
UGI, a diversified energy company with midstream (pipeline) operations in the Marcellus and one of PA’s largest utility companies, wants to store trailers of LNG in the parking lot of a storage facility near Scranton, PA, and is seeking a zoning variance to do so. UGI needs extra supplies of natural gas to inject into its utility system during peak periods in the winter months. The company says it will be a temporary situation. 
Last Friday, former President Donald J. Trump held a rally in Johnstown (Cambria County), PA, in the southwestern part of the state. A key focus of the meeting was energy and Trump’s support of PA energy versus Kamala Harris’ position of being against fracking (contrary to her recent flip-flop on the issue). During the rally, Mark Caskey, founder of Steel Nation (builds many of the compress plants and other buildings for the Marcellus Shale industry), addressed the crowd, promoting the Marcellus and knocking Harris’ fracking flip-flop. Trump was so impressed he called Mark back to the stage. 
By now, you’ve read here on MDN and likely heard via mainstream news that Kamala Harris claims she’s had a change of heart and won’t (if she’s elected president, God perish the thought) ban fracking. How magnanimous of her. Praise Kamala. We don’t believe her for a New York minute, and neither should you. However, her recent remarks in attempting to rewrite history that she never did want to ban fracking (liar!) and that she won’t now is not sitting well with climate zealots in Pennsylvania. People like THE Delaware Riverkeeper and the co-founder of the Better Path Coalition. 
In August 2023, MDN told you about a Cambridge University study published in the journal Science exposing the sale of carbon credits as a scam (see 
On May 1, a section of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) ruptured during final pressure testing in Roanoke County, Virginia (see 
Earlier this month
Up/down, up/down, up/down, up/down… We can’t count how many times the Freeport LNG export facility has come online to go offline again, with the cycle repeating (
Venture Global is developing an LNG export facility in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, approximately 20 miles south of New Orleans. Phase One of the project is currently under construction. Venture Global recently asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for permission to unload a tanker full of LNG to be used for testing the facility. The LNG (from Norway, because the Jones Act prohibits American LNG) will be used to cool down parts of the Plaquemines facility as part of the plant’s testing and commissioning process. Our question: Why is Venture Global allowed to do *anything* with the Plaquemines facility when it continues to screw its contracted customers at its Calcasieu Pass facility?
Whoever would have thought both Facebook and Google would turn to fracking to feed the power beast that they are? Unicorn farts (wind and solar) alone don’t do the trick, it seems. Earlier this week, MDN brought you news about Facebook and Google signing agreements with companies that use a process “similar” to fracking (fracking under a different name) to drill geothermal wells that will help power electric plants to power some of the many (many) computers each company uses (see 
Here’s a lawsuit that flew under our radar — until now. Several landowners in West Virginia sued Jay-Bee Oil & Gas, alleging “improper royalty deductions” were made from royalty checks for post-production work from 2010 to 2023. The landowners (their lawyers) convinced a court to turn the lawsuit into a class action. Jay-Bee denies the claims in the lawsuit but has agreed to settle the dispute to avoid additional litigation by paying $42.6 million into a settlement fund established to disburse payments to participating class members.
In February, MDN told you about Dominion Energy’s filing to build a new 45-mile pipeline to connect Equitrans’ (now EQT’s) MVP Southgate pipeline project with Duke Energy’s planned new natural gas power plants on Hyco Lake’s southern shore (see 
Hats off to Pennsylvania State Senator Gene Yaw, who is floating yet another bill that will benefit the state, electric ratepayers, and the Marcellus industry — all at the same time. Yesterday, Yaw announced his intention to float a new bill that would create the Pennsylvania Baseload Energy Development Fund. What is it? It’s a fund that would set up a revolving loan program at a low interest rate to encourage private companies to build more baseload electric power generation in the state. That is, build more gas-fired power plants.
Yesterday, MDN brought you the news that two dozen states have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to place a temporary block on new EPA regulations that will put all coal plants out of business and block most (if not all) new gas-fired power plants from getting built (see 
The International Gas Union (IGU), Snam, and Rystad Energy partnered (as they have in the past) to produce and release the Global Gas Report 2024 (full copy below). The authors are sounding the alarm. According to the study, should gas demand continue to grow as it has in the last four years without additional production development, a 22% global natural gas supply shortfall is expected by 2030. If demand continues to strengthen, the shortfall will be even more pronounced. There is, say the authors, an urgent need to scale up investments. NOW. 
As we often point out when discussing the fugitive methane issue, the number one source of fugitive methane emissions, at 40%, is Mom Earth herself (i.e., “natural”). The number two source, at 24%, is agriculture. The number three source, at 21%, is oil and gas operations. Yet global warming nutjobs ONLY focus on emissions from O&G and ignore the other 79% of sources, including natural. Every now and again the nutters will mention other sources to try to protect their tattered reputations. Even then, they twist the science. Get this latest howler: Burning fossil fuels, which supposedly causes global warming, “may” be causing Mom Earth to emit even more fugitive methane that she otherwise would emit. So, we all must stop using fossil fuels right now or risk obliterating all life on earth. Or something like that.