7 O&G Associations Join Lawsuit Against EPA’s Forced EV Rule
Earlier this month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced new proposed federal vehicle emissions standards that will force Americans to give up driving gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles and instead switch to electric vehicles (see Biden EPA Plan Forces People to Buy Expensive Electric Vehicles). The Biden EPA said the new standards will “accelerate the ongoing transition to a clean vehicles future and tackle the climate crisis.” The Bidenistas intentionally use inflammatory language, calling EVs “clean” vehicles, as opposed to fossil energy vehicles which, by inference, are “dirty.” They also claim the new standards will tackle the “climate crisis”–perpetuating an unproven theory that mankind is causing the earth to catastrophically warm. Seven major oil and gas associations from three states–Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana–have joined a lawsuit to fight this illegal move by the EPA and NHTSA.
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When we saw the headline “Environmental Bootleggers and Baptists Fleece Consumers,” we just couldn’t resist. An article in RealClearEnergy written by Gordon Tomb, a Senior Fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation, a Pennsylvania-based free-market think tank, compares an interesting time in our history with what is happening today. Once upon a time, Baptists advocated for a ban on alcohol sales Sundays. They were supported by…Bootleggers! Take about strange bedfellows! Today, the Baptists are environmentalists who insist we must dump fossil energy in order to save the planet (definite religious overtones in the environmental movement). And the Bootleggers are…
Despots and dictators the world over are the same, whether it’s Vladimir Putin relabeling his naked aggression of outright war against Ukraine as a “military operation,” or New York State’s so-called Climate Action Council relabeling natural gas as “fossil gas” (see 
On December 5, 2019, the PHMSA (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) granted a special permit to Energy Transport Solutions, LLC (i.e. New Fortress Energy) to transport LNG in DOT-113C120 rail tanker cars between Wyalusing, PA and Gibbstown, NJ (see 
Last night, Shell hosted a virtual community meeting to address air monitoring and recent problems experienced at the company’s ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, PA. Executives answered questions about the plant’s environmental record over the past six months, including a recent odor event earlier this month (see 
If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a thousand times–the claim that fracking causes earthquakes. We’ve talked about this issue almost from the beginning of writing the MDN blog site in 2009. A quick summary of our own observations is that frack wastewater disposed of via injection wells (not fracking itself) is the culprit in causing low-grade earthquakes in some areas. However, the wastewater doesn’t cause an earthquake unless the injection well is located on or near a natural underground fault in the rock layer. Rarely (we can count it on one hand) have we read of fracking itself causing an earthquake. Yet a researcher from Ohio’s University of Miami claims research shows fracking itself can cause an increase in earthquakes.
Disappointing news has been a constant this week–and it’s only Tuesday! Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court proved that sometimes it’s not so supreme. The high court breathed new life into a long-running lawsuit funded by Big Green groups using (abusing) a small group of uppity Virginia landowners who are arguing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had no right to delegate authority to Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to use eminent domain to cross land, including the land owned by the small group of uppity landowners in Virginia.
Last December, Rice Acquisition Corp II, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) started by the Rice brothers (Danny, Toby, and Derek), announced a deal to acquire NET Power–an electric power developer with revolutionary new technology to capture every last molecule of carbon dioxide from natural gas-fired power plants (see 
Energy Transfer’s (ET) Lake Charles LNG project, in Louisiana, has been plagued with trouble from the beginning. The project began life as a 50/50 joint venture with Shell. However, Shell pulled out in 2020 (see 
There is no question of a huge world appetite for U.S. LNG exports. Even so, the effort to bring new LNG projects online in the U.S. is problematic for several reasons. An extensive article in the Financial Times says “intense competition between developers” and “escalating costs” are making it hard to bring new projects online. Where do things stand? Over the next four years, six projects currently under construction will come online, delivering an extra 64.82 million tonnes per year (mn t/y) of LNG. However, there are another 11 projects that have not yet made a final investment decision (FID). Some may end up getting built, some won’t. If (by a small miracle) all of the 11 were to get built as planned, it would deliver another 110.37 mn t/y of LNG for the world to purchase and use.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a true extremist, is trying to ban natural gas hookups in every single new home and business across the “Empire” State (see 
Last August, Columbia Gas Transmission (a subsidiary of TC Energy) filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build the Virginia Reliability Project (VRP), which includes two new compressor units and the replacement of 49 miles of existing pipeline (see 
S&P Global Commodity Insights reports that natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica has fallen this month, in April, by some 400 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) from the average production seen during the first quarter. The most notable declines are in eastern Ohio and southwestern Pennsylvania. Why is production down? Falling demand (from mild weather) and high rates of storage (extra supply) are crashing the spot price for natural gas traded at the region’s defacto benchmark trading hub–Eastern Gas South.