PA Partisan Climate Initiative Launches for Mass Brainwashing ERA
The so-called Pennsylvania Bipartisan Climate Initiative officially launched last Friday. The group is made up of liberal Democrats — it is certainly NOT “bipartisan,” as it falsely claims. The aim and goal of the group is the mass brainwashing of the PA public, pushing the state’s poorly-written Environmental Rights Amendment (ERA) law. The group hopes it can turn local municipalities and residents into radicals who use the ERA as a blunt instrument to club the fossil fuel industry into extinction. This is a group of radicalized leftists pushing a hard-left agenda in the Keystone State. Be sure to push back.
Read More “PA Partisan Climate Initiative Launches for Mass Brainwashing ERA”
The Argonne National Laboratory, a U.S. Dept. of Energy lab, has tested the efficacy of blending hydrogen with natural gas in existing pipelines. Argonne found blending hydrogen with natgas lowers emissions due to hydrogen production and end-use combustion. However, injecting hydrogen into pipelines leads to higher transmission and distribution emissions and greater energy demand in compressor stations, wiping out the upstream and downstream benefits. In Argonne’s modeling, blending 30% hydrogen (by volume) into gas pipelines yielded a modest 6% decrease in lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions — but hydrogen blending at that level doubles leakage from transmission lines.
U.S. Department of Energy reviews for liquefied natural gas (LNG) export permits have lengthened under President Joe Biden’s administration to 11 months or more, from seven weeks, according to government data. The reason? According to one LNG analyst in the know, the DOE is “sitting on decisions because of politics.” Intentional political foot-dragging. The Bidenistas are feeling the heat from two groups: Big Chemical claims exporting more LNG will raise prices domestically for their feedstock. And shrill environmentalist wackos are being loud and obnoxious (what’s new?).
TransCanada Corporation, which renamed itself TC Energy in 2019, bought out and merged in U.S.-based Columbia Pipeline Group (now Columbia Gas Transmission) in 2016 (see 
The U.S. rig count rose last week for the third week in a row, albeit by just a single rig. The national rig count added one for 625 active rigs. We remain near the lowest point of active rigs running since February 2022. As we said last week when two rig were added, it feels like a dead cat bounce to us. We’ve reached the bottom, and the count may go up a tiny bit here and there, but overall, we’re at the bottom. The count in the Marcellus/Utica, after gaining one rig three weeks ago (in Pennsylvania), remained steady at 39 active rigs last week. However, the mix changed. PA picked up another rig last week, but WV lost one, so net-net, it stayed even at 39 rigs.
The mental gymnastics leftists go through to justify their anti-freedom, anti-capitalist views is truly a marvel to behold. Take the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon tax scheme aimed at shutting down coal- and natural gas-fired power plants. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf could not get the Republican legislature to agree to enroll the state in RGGI, so he seized dictatorial powers and tried to do it himself. Which hasn’t worked out (Republicans sued to block it, still tied up in court). Joseph Otis Minott, President of the Clean Air Action Fund (far-left Big Green group in Philadelphia), is trying to justify RGGI with a new argument: It reduces racism (otherwise called “environmental justice”).
Freeport LNG’s export terminal with three liquefaction “trains” shut down in June 2022 after an explosion and fire (see 
According to RBN Energy, the “responsibly sourced gas” (RSG) space is going through a transformation. It’s no longer OK to claim you have responsibly sourced gas; you now have to prove it is responsible via a certification. According to RBN, the two primary certifiers of natural gas are (so far) Project Canary and MiQ. We have covered both of these initiatives extensively over the past few years.
We finally have a list of the 15 proposed projects that are part of the the West Virginia-led Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2) project. Earlier this week, officials with the Dept. of Energy Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) and Battelle, the technology lab headquartered in Columbus Ohio that is quarterbacking the ARCH2 project, held an online briefing about ARCH2 (see 
Shrill antis have their answer from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (D.C. Circuit) in a request to (once again) shut down construction on the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP): NO! A small group of uppity Virginia landowners don’t want MVP crossing their horse pastures, leaving a mark. So they conspired with Big Green lawyers in a lawsuit challenging the right of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to use eminent domain to build pipelines across private land.
The Baker Hughes rig count has crashed this year compared to last year’s numbers. A few months ago, we began to chronicle the weekly rig count to keep track of this alarming situation (which we post about every Monday). U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) analysts have taken notice of the crashing rig count and asked themselves: Why? It may seem obvious, but EIA points out in a new post on its Today in Energy website that the crash in the natural gas rig count directly correlates to the crash in the price of natural gas.
On Sept. 1, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), part of the Biden Dept. of Transportation, issued a federal rule suspending a 2020 authorization of LNG transportation in rail tank cars granted under the Trump administration (see