Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Statewide NY
Left is Terrified Lee Zeldin Will Win NY Gov & Lift Frack Ban
With each passing day, hope grows for those of us who live behind enemy lines in the People’s Republic of New York, where fracking is banned. It appears that the Republican candidate for Governor, Lee Zeldin, may actually win next Tuesday’s election. If he does win, it directly threatens climate jihadists’ plans to ban fossil energy in New York, and that has them VERY nervous. According to an article appearing in the POLITICO-owned E&E News, New York Democrats openly admit there IS a way a new Republican governor can overturn the current signed-into-law ban on fracking. Is our long nightmare in the Empire State about to be over?
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Rumors are circulating on Capitol Hill that the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is eyeing Nov. 15 for Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chairman Richard “Dick” Glick’s confirmation hearing for a second five-year term. We sincerely hope those rumors are wrong. Glick, a Democrat and former wind lobbyist who is an extreme anti-pipeline radical, was first appointed to FERC under Donald Trump. He was nominated by Joe Biden for reappointment to a second five-year term last May (see 
Last December, Columbia Gas Transmission pre-filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build the Virginia Reliability Project that will add 100 MMcf/d of incremental capacity on Columbia’s system to serve delivery points in southeast Virginia, namely Virginia Natural Gas (see 
Spanish-owed Repsol owns 214,000 net acres of leases in the Marcellus Shale, primarily located in northeastern Pennsylvania in Bradford, Susquehanna, and Tioga counties. Earlier this year, Repsol said it was working with certification authority MiQ to have all of its Marcellus production certified as “responsibly produced” (see 
Yesterday Equitrans Midstream, the builder and majority owner of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project, issued its third quarter 2022 update. The big news (for us) was that Thomas F. Karam, CEO of Equitrans, said that if the 95% complete MVP is going to get finished, it’s probably going to take an act of Congress to do it. The same three clown judges (our words) of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals are signaling they will continue to block MVP, says Karam. In contrast to the clouds over MVP, yesterday’s update shared a bit of good news for a second Equitrans project.
Unfortunately, EQT, the largest natural gas producer in the U.S., has succumbed to the siren song of seeking approval from the United Nations (U.N.), an organization dedicated to destroying fossil energy on the planet in the name of saving the planet. Yesterday EQT announced it has received the UN’s Oil & Gas Methane Partnership 2.0 (OGMP 2.0) “Gold Standard” rating, the highest reporting level under the initiative. Support for OGMP 2.0 is growing in the natgas marketplace in the U.S. We previously told you that Cheniere Energy’s LNG export plants are seeking certification under OGMP 2.0 (see 
Fortuitously, following our rant on EQT joining the United Nations Oil & Gas Methane Partnership 2.0 (see EQT Receives United Nations “Gold Standard” Stamp of Approval), we happened across a summary of a newly published report by O&G consulting giant Wood Mackenzie on so-called Scope 3 emissions and how oil and gas companies are struggling to plan for tracking (and to reduce) Scope 3. This report confirms exactly what we are saying: Programs like the U.N.’s OGMP 2.0 will eventually (sooner rather than later) begin to put the squeeze on oil and gas to track and reduce Scope 3. The obvious conclusion is that our O&G companies will be forced to exit the oil and gas business altogether to remain compliant.
National Grid is desperately trying not to run out of natural gas for its customers in Brooklyn and Queens (on Long Island). For several years the company has fought a battle to run a tiny pipeline to its Greenpoint, Brooklyn facility to provide extra natural gas. That project is being investigated by the Biden administration on charges of racism (see 
The Freeport LNG export facility experienced an explosion and fire in early June (see 
In June, MDN told you about this year’s distribution of last year’s (2021) Pennsylvania impact fee revenue (PA’s version of a severance tax) to local municipalities and to the black hole of Harrisburg politicians (see 
Politics is fascinating for us (in case you couldn’t tell when reading MDN). This site often features articles about the intersection of politics and energy. Living in New York State, editor Jim Willis has long advocated for shale drilling. Fracking in NY was the reason Jim started this blog/news site! MDN began in 2009 when shale drilling in NY seemed about to take off. And then, a series of unfortunate events led to the profoundly corrupt Andrew Cuomo becoming governor, seizing power in the Empire State. Cuomo not only temporarily blocked fracking in NY, he ultimately signed a bill into law permanently banning it (see 
The U.S. Energy Information Administration says natural gas consumption in all sectors in the United States was effectively flat between 2020 and 2021, down by only 0.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d). The pandemic was to blame. Natgas usage hit a record high in 2019, just prior to the pandemic, but has decreased since that time. In 2021, natural gas used in the electric power sector (which is the largest U.S. natural gas-consuming sector) decreased by 3%. However, and this is the good news, the EIA predicts natural gas-fired generation will increase by 5% this year.