Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Hydrogen | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Philadephia | Statewide PA
Bigoted Antis Label Hydrogen from PA NatGas as “Bad” and “Dirty”
When the Bidenistas announced a $750 million “investment” of taxpayer money would flow to the Philadelphia region (actually Delaware and New Jersey, and a little bit of Philly) for a “green” hydrogen hub, wackadoodle antis pitched a fit (see Mouthy Delaware Riverkeeper Disrupts PA Gov. at Hydrogen Rally). Antis, along with selfish companies (that would economically benefit from cutting off natural gas), continue the meme that PA’s “fracked” natural gas is “bad” and “dirty” and should be replaced with using other technologies to create hydrogen — technologies that cost 5X as much as natural gas.
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Greg Wrightstone, a Pennsylvania native, is a geologist, the executive director of the CO2 Coalition, and an author. Wrightstone recently published an article detailing how Pennsylvania’s environment is not in the state of crisis that alarmists say it is. He implores Gov. Josh Shapiro to get his head out of his…mental morass…and stop worrying about mythical catastrophic global warming. Overall, the weather has been getting better and agricultural production is up in Pennsylvania. Shapiro needs to drop the doom and gloom routine.
First, the radicals of the Biden administration came for your natural gas stoves (see 
A week (nay, a day!) doesn’t go by that the Biden administration and one of the many executive agencies it oversees (EPA, DOE, PHMSA, DOT, FERC, etc.) issues a new “environmental” regulation. As we write about in a companion story today, just yesterday, the Bidenistas of the Dept. of Energy released a new final regulation yesterday controlling your what type of water heater you can buy, hoping to force you to buy a heat pump water heater (see Bidenistas Regulate Gas Stoves Furnaces, and Now, Water Heaters). Why the sudden flurry of new regulations coming from the alphabet soup of federal agencies? Because, says a card-carrying leftist, to “safeguard” environmental policies against an eventual Trump takeover next year.
Permitting in Pennsylvania, especially permits overseen by the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), has been a hot mess for years. A Chapter 102 Erosion and Sedimentation permit sometimes takes two, three, or even six to eight months for approval — instead of the law-mandated 14 days. It got so bad that in the fall of 2019, PA State Sen. Gene Yaw introduced a bill to allow third-party reviews of these permits in an attempt to speed it up (see 
As we told you earlier this month, the radicals who run the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) are gearing up to block the Iroquois Gas Transmission system from completing its Enhancement by Compression (ExC) project (see 
When drilling for oil (or for natural gas), quite often, the hydrocarbon you’re not drilling for comes out of the ground along with the hydrocarbon you are drilling for. Natural gas coming out of the ground along with oil (in an oil play) is called “associated gas.” And in the Marcellus/Utica, other hydrocarbons (aside from methane) come out too, including ethane, propane, butane, and isobutane — called natural gas liquids (NGLs). Production of oil and NGLs are measured in barrels (Bbl), while methane is measured in thousand cubic feet (Mcf) or million Btus (MMBtu). Years ago, the oil and gas industry created a way to evaluate the total output for a given well or wells by converting all of the hydrocarbons into one unit, called barrels of oil equivalent (Boe). Not long after that came a comparison of how much each commodity sells for on an equivalent basis.
According to S&P Global and its crack statistics unit, U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG, mostly propane) exports both hit new all-time record highs for the period of Jan. 1 through April 29 this year. And that’s despite the fact that the Freeport LNG export facility has experienced a major outage since January. And speaking of the problem-plagued Freeport facility, one of its three trains, Train 3, received around 830 MMcf of natural gas yesterday. Meaning it’s back online. Finally. Up down, up down, up down. Now, up again.
Energy comes in many forms. Most energy produced and consumed in the world comes from fossil fuels. In the United States, fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) provided 79% of all the energy we used in 2022, according to the authoritative U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The false narrative that so-called renewables (which are unreliable) like solar and wind are about to take over is just that — completely false. The EIA published a post yesterday to note that U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions coming from the production of energy last year fell by 3% from the previous year, mainly due to the change from using coal to using natural gas to generate electricity.
The Bidenistas at the EPA attacked coal and gas-fired power plants last week, threatening to destabilize the existing electric power grid (see 
Last week, the Baker Hughes U.S. rig count lost six rigs, down to 613, the lowest the count has been since February of 2022. Since last October, the national count had gone as low as 616 and as high as 629, and that was it. No higher and no lower. That is, until last week when we crashed through the floor and went lower, down to 613. The Marcellus/Utica lost one rig last week and now runs 40 rigs. Pennsylvania lost one rig and now runs 21 rigs; Ohio (which lost one rig two weeks ago) remained static with 11 active rigs; and West Virginia remained the same with 8 rigs.
According to a Bloomberg article, Venture Global LNG Inc. expects to begin production at its second liquefied natural gas export facility in Louisiana in mid-2024. The new facility is called Plaquemines LNG, located in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, approximately 20 miles south of New Orleans. Venture Global has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for permission to import up to three LNG cargoes to test the facility before it’s ready to go. But then, will Venture Global claim it’s not ready for another 2+ years as they have with its first facility, the Calcasieu Pass LNG export facility in Cameron Parish, Louisiana?
One month ago, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost took legal action seeking to force Austin Master Services (AMS), a radiological waste management solutions company operating in Belmont County, OH, to correct “egregious violations of Ohio law” regarding the storage of oil and gas waste that he says threatens the Ohio River and Martins Ferry’s drinking water supply (see 
The Bidenistas attacked coal and gas-fired power plants yesterday, threatening to destabilize the existing electric power grid. Under 1,020 pages of new regulations, which will go into effect this year, all coal-fired plants that are slated to remain operational in the long term and all