Analysts Say New FERC Chair a Consensus Builder, Won’t Attack Pipes
As we told you last week, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has a new “acting” Chairman, Willie Phillips (see Willie Phillips Takes Over as Acting FERC Chairman, Dick Glick Gone). Phillips, a lawyer, is a D.C. apparatchik–growing up and getting his college education in the D.C. swamp. Prior to joining FERC in November 2021, Phillips was chairman of the Public Service Commission for the District of Columbia. Those who watch FERC and its commissioners say Phillips is not nearly as caustic and confrontational as Glick was–that he is more of a consensus builder.
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A group of landowners in Harrison and Doddridge counties (in West Virginia) sued Antero Resources, claiming the company had deducted post-production costs from royalties not allowed under the leases they had signed. Last year, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia ruled mostly in favor of the landowners. Antero appealed the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Circuit). Yesterday, the judges of the 4th Circuit issued their ruling (full copy below). Nobody got everything they wanted–we’d call it a split decision. However, Antero did win the right to make deductions in certain circumstances.
Antero Midstream hired Veolia Water Technologies to build and operate a state-of-the-art frack wastewater recycling facility in Doddridge County, WV, which began operations in 2017 (see 
The “front month” (Feb. 2023) NYMEX Henry Hub price for natural gas took another nosedive yesterday, hitting its lowest price ($3.72/MMBtu) since Jan. 4, 2022. Why the drop? Weather, or course. But also expectations. Natural gas commodities trading is a strange art. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported yesterday that withdrawal from underground gas inventories was 221 billion cubic feet (Bcf) over the past week. The five-year average for the same period is 98 Bcf. Holy smokes! That’s a HUGE drawdown. And yet the market went the other way and crashed the price–because traders expected the drawdown to be even bigger–around 240 Bcf.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the U.S. TVA’s service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. TVA is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the country. In December 2021, MDN told you that TVA is spending over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines (see 
Most of the public and many of the private companies that drill in the Marcellus and Utica for natural gas either already have been, or are pursuing, certification of their operations as being “responsible.” Three primary standards authorities currently exist–MiQ, Project Canary, and Equitable Origin–to certify that a company’s natural gas was extracted and pipelined with low methane emissions. There’s even a fourth certification scheme underway by Williams, Coterra Energy, and Dominion Energy (see 
Last September, EQT Corporation announced it is buying privately-owned Tug Hill Operating’s West Virginia shale assets for $5.2 billion (see 
Yesterday MDN brought you the news that the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) held a hearing in December to explain new regulations coming from the PUC, based on directives from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), to begin regulating previously unregulated natural gas gathering pipelines (see 
S&P Global Commodity Insights published an analysis article speculating on the overall level of natural gas production we can expect to see in the U.S. in 2023. According to S&P’s analysts, weaker prices for the NYMEX Henry Hub futures price expected this year, along with recent weakness in the internal rate of return (IRR) for companies, are combining to lower the amount of growth in natgas production we might otherwise have experienced. S&P isn’t saying we’ll go backward–with less production. It’s saying production won’t grow as much as it could have if not for these negative factors.
Finally! Richard “Dick” Glick is no longer a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) commissioner. He is also no longer Chairman of this key agency that has the power to block new pipeline projects. We’ve complained about Glick, a former wind lobbyist, for years–pretty much since Donald Trump nominated him to serve at the behest of Chuck Schumer (see 
Kentucky is joining a number of other states, including Texas, West Virginia, and Florida, in putting Big Banks (and Big Investment Firms) on notice that those companies are about to lose the business of the State of Kentucky. On Tuesday, State Treasurer Allison Ball released a list of 11 financial companies that are engaged in energy company boycotts–refusing to invest in, or loan money to, fossil energy companies. The list includes BlackRock, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase, among others.
Here we go again. On Dec. 22, the U.S. Forest Service published a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (DSEIS, full copy below) that allows the nearly-completed Mountain Valley Pipeline to finish up construction through 3.5 miles of Jefferson National Forest straddling West Virginia and Virginia. This is the THIRD time the Forest Service has issued this permit. Two previous attempts at the same permit were overturned by the three clown judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (i.e. 4th Circus). The public has until Feb. 6 to file official comments on this latest plan.
James Daly, vice president for energy supply at New England’s largest electric utility, Eversource, recently delivered some blunt truth to regulators in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Daly told them if they want to lower the insanely high price of electricity in the region right now, in the short term, they need to import more foreign LNG, which is high-priced too. But not as high as burning oil (see 
The NYMEX Henry Hub price for natural gas is once again in freefall. Over the four previous trading sessions, the price has crashed $1.29/MMBtu (down 25%) to settle yesterday at $3.99. We haven’t seen prices this low since February 2022. Weather is the culprit. Baby, it’s warm outside! So, where is the price heading in 2023? Let’s try to answer that question.