PA DEP Secretary Negrin: Hydrogen… Rah, Rah, Sis Boom Bah
Last Friday in Philadelphia, President Joe Biden tried to sell the line that Pennsylvania was a big winner in the Hydrogen Hub Hunger Games (see Hydrogen Hub Winners Announced – WV Takes Prize in M-U Region). PA Gov. Josh Shapiro also tried to sell that same line, claiming PA is “the only state to secure projects for two regional hydrogen hubs. The future of clean energy will run through Pennsylvania.” And now, Shapiro’s Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection, Rich Negrin, has become a cheerleader for hydrogen energy, claiming Biden’s incoherent announcement on Friday is the “dawn of clean energy economy” in PA. Hydrogen… rah, rah sis boom bah!
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Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held an informational briefing on Project Canary, a company that measures, analyzes, and reports on methane emissions from natural gas production and distribution infrastructure. Many Marcellus/Utica drillers use Project Canary’s services in their programs to produce “responsibly sourced gas” (RSG). It appears the aim of the session was to bring PA State Senators up-to-speed on Project Canary and the larger issue of cutting back on fugitive methane emissions. Companies that track and reduce methane can charge more for their gas, so the theory goes. As for whether or not that is happening (are they getting more money for their gas?), it is an open question.
New York State has made no bones about the fact that it HATES fossil energy — particularly natural gas. The state has banned fracking, permanently (for all time), preventing abundant supplies of natgas from being extracted within the state, dooming counties in Upstate to economic poverty. The state has blocked multiple gas pipelines from Pennsylvania into NY. It has banned new residences and businesses across the state from connecting to and using natural gas beginning in 2025. And lately, the state has begun to force natural gas-fired power plants to close. Yet sitting on the stage in Morgantown, WV, on Monday with West Virginia and Ohio officials and politicians there to commemorate and brag about WV’s big win in attracting a grant for a hydrogen hub, was the CEO of a New York company — a company that will play a key role in (and get gobs of money from) the WV hydrogen hub.
On Monday, MDN alerted you that Shell’s new CEO, Wael Sawan, would address the entire company (yesterday) in an attempt to talk some of the Millennial snowflakes that work for him off the climate change ledge (see 
The radical left has successfully funneled foreign money (from Russia and China) to Big Green groups that hire lawyers to file a blizzard of lawsuits against oil and gas pipeline projects, blocking those projects. That strategy has worked so well that the radical left has turned its attention to a new target (same tactic but new target): LNG export facilities. The first stage in a new war is to “soften the target” with aerial bombing. In this case, the bombings are the lies coming from paid Big Green shills like Bill McKibben. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is expected to approve (soon) Venture Global’s CP2 LNG terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana. In a Tuesday conference call with reporters, McKibben (being paid by Big Green) let loose with a volley of lie bombs, calling the project an “enormous carbon and methane bomb” that will further drive climate change. He also called it “an inflation machine” because exporting gas will (goes the lie) raise prices here at home.
Yesterday, we brought you the great news that the Marcellus/Utica region scored one of seven major hydrogen hub project grants being dished out by the Bidenistas (see 
Last Friday in Philadelphia, President Joe Biden tried to sell the line that Pennsylvania was a big winner in the Hydrogen Hub Hunger Games (see 
Haters gonna hate (shake it off, shake it off). We learned that from philosophical genius and pop culture guru Taylor Swift. “Hate” perfectly describes the radicalized left in this country that refuses to admit the reality and truth that 95% of all hydrogen today comes from cracking natural gas. In the future, that percentage is likely to remain about the same. Of the seven projects the Bidenistas awarded $7 billion to last Friday in the Hydrogen Hub Hunger Games, four of the seven in whole or in part will use natural gas as their feedstock to create hydrogen (see 
Since work resumed in midsummer, 92 stream crossings had been completed through Oct. 1 for the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project, according to MVP spokeswoman Natalie Cox. About 330 crossings remain. Can the company realistically complete the rest of the work and get the pipeline operational by Dec. 31 (less than three months away)? That’s the multi-billion-dollar question. Some 4,200 construction workers are actively working on getting it done. It doesn’t help that highly organized “protests” are being inflicted on the project by Big Green-backed groups like Appalachians Against Pipeline.
As predicted by Reuters, on Friday, the Bidenistas announced the Hydrogen Hub Hunger Games winners. There were seven projects selected from 33 finalists. Among them was the West Virginia-led Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2), which is a project that will use Marcellus/Utica natural gas as the feedstock to produce “blue” hydrogen, which is hydrogen made from natgas where carbon dioxide from the process is captured and either used or stored underground. While there is no doubt the big winner is West Virginia, other neighboring states, including Ohio and (yes) even Pennsylvania, will benefit with several locations that will be part of the larger hub project. We’ll explain below.
Joe Biden traveled to Pennsylvania (campaign rally) on Friday to make the official announcement of the seven lucky winners of the Hydrogen Hub Hunger Games (see today’s lead story). Joe pitched Pennsylvania as the big winner, which is a joke. PA scored small pieces of two approved projects. The one big, main hydrogen hub project pitched by PA to the Bidenistas — the Decarbonization Network of Appalachia (DNA H2Hub) — didn’t make the cut. Joe needs to win PA in the next election, or he’s toast, hence his visit to Philly on Friday (with a complicit media) to try and paint PA as the big winner. It was not.
With all of the good news about WV (and OH, and PA) winning the Biden Hydrogen Hub Hunger Games contest by scoring $925 million for the WV-led Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2) (see today’s lead story), there is a potential black cloud on the horizon. Investments in ARCH2 might not actually come to pass unless the IRS resolves the 45V hydrogen tax credit. Yes, an obscure rule part of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has the potential to scuttle most of the planned investments in ARCH2 and other hydrogen hub projects.
The U.S. rig count actually rose last week, adding a piddly four rigs to 622 active rigs (regaining the four it lost the week before). We remain near the lowest point since February 2022. The count in the Marcellus/Utica, after falling by one three weeks ago and holding steady two weeks ago, gained one rig (in Pennsylvania) and now stands at 39 active rigs. The national rig count is down 147, or 19%, below this time last year. We’d classify it as limping along, but we’re happy to see this slight reversal.
Emily Satterwhite, who teaches Appalachian studies at Virginia Tech and has been engaged in illegal activities against the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) going back more than five years (