3 Out-of-State Protesters Arrested for Blocking MVP Construction
This is growing tiresome. Appalachians Against Pipelines, a group backed with big money from Big Green, continues to funnel paid “protesters” to construction sites for the 95% completed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), mainly in Montgomery County, Va., who chain themselves to equipment requiring state troopers to carefully remove them (requiring hours), slowing the already challenging work to complete the project. And then local county judges don’t do anything to stop it (see Va. County Judge Refuses to Stop Illegal Activities of MVP Protesters). About 25 protesters showed up at a Montgomery County construction site yet again yesterday. Three of them — every one of them from out of state — chained themselves to equipment (using “sleeping dragon” devices). All three were arrested and removed, but at the cost of yet another delay.
Read More “3 Out-of-State Protesters Arrested for Blocking MVP Construction”
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 (
Shell’s new CEO, Wael Sawan, is capable of rational thought, unlike his predecessor, Ben van Beurden. Previous CEO van Beurden had set the company on the suicidal path of reducing oil and gas drilling in favor of investing in renewable energy. It turns out that’s not making any money for the company. So at an investor meeting in June, Sawan unveiled a new strategy — back to more drilling for oil and gas and less dithering with renewables (see 
It’s becoming increasingly apparent that there’s a whole bunch of people in our energy-climate discussion who just won’t accept what can only be described as obvious and undeniable facts. What are those facts? Fossil fuels supply 80% of the world’s energy and about 80% of the energy consumed in the U.S. Without fossil fuels, it would be impossible to build and maintain so-called renewable energy and electric vehicles. This is an indisputable fact. Yet the uninformed insist that we can dump the production of fossil fuels now if we only had the will. They are WRONG.
Explosive news from the Pittsburgh Business Times about the ill-fated plan by Pennsylvania to try and attract one of 6-10 regional hydrogen hubs to the state. As we told you yesterday, according to Reuters, PA’s application to score a government grant for a hydrogen hub, called the Decarbonization Network of Appalachia (DNA H2Hub), was passed over in favor of West Virginia’s plan called the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub, or ARCH2 (see 
We finally have some good news to share concerning Columbia Gas’ project to build a tiny 3.37-mile, 8-inch pipeline under the Potomac River from Maryland to West Virginia. The project, called the Eastern Panhandle Expansion, has been blocked repeatedly by leftwing wackos in Maryland (see 
Amid the good news today of court and legislative victories for pipeline projects that will flow more Marcellus/Utica molecules, we have the sad news that Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) has, after more than five years of trying, pulled the plug on a project to build a second power plant next door to an existing power plant in Woodbridge, NJ. Eco-narcissists are rejoicing that NJ residents will go without power during extreme weather events and on the hottest and coldest days of the year. Nice folks, those people who “care” so much about the climate (but don’t give a fig about people).
In May, MDN brought you the sad news that New York State has fallen and is now under a Communist dictatorship, with the freedom to choose energy sources now gone (see 
In April 2022, MDN told you about Nopetro LNG’s plans to construct and operate as many as three liquefaction trains in Port St. Joe, Florida, that would liquefy up to 3.86 billion cubic feet (Bcf) per year of natural gas for export and delivery to markets in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America (see 
We have some exciting news to share! Yesterday, we told you that super secret sources whispering to Reuters say the Bidenistas will announce, on Friday, the winners of $7 billion in grant money to construct hydrogen hubs around the country (see