2 Swamp-Dwelling Dems Join PA PUC – Republicans Cave to Wolf
Republicans in the Pennsylvania Senate have, since April 2021, refused to appoint new members to the five-member Public Utility Commission (PUC) in response to Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf’s unilateral push to force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax scheme (see Ultimatum to PA Gov: Withdraw RGGI Carbon Tax or No New PUC Appts). With the upcoming election and political “horse trading,” Republicans caved. On Oct. 19, the full Senate approved reappointing one sitting Republican and appointed two new Democrat members–both swamp-dwelling political insiders–to fill three open seats on the PUC.
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Excuse our rather blunt headline that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is about to get an anal exam, but that’s about the best way we can describe what is coming to this completely out-of-control federal agency. According to an article appearing on the left-leaning E&E News (owned by POLITICO), if Republicans regain control of the House and the Senate, what awaits the EPA is, “Senior political appointees facing multiple, hourslong hearings. Piles of letters demanding documents from every corner of the agency. And perhaps even subpoenas for text messages.” It’s not pleasant, but somebody needs to muck about in the sewer that is called Joe Biden’s EPA, and bring it to account for its shady actions.
In September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that the state senators who represent Pennsylvania landowners living in the Delaware River Basin, primarily in Wayne and Pike counties in the northeastern corner of Pennsylvania, don’t have “standing” to sue the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to overturn its ban on fracking (see 
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA) held its annual Marcellus to Market conference at Hollywood Casino at The Meadows in Washington, PA. The event explored efforts to promote manufacturing in Pennsylvania, natural gas as a transportation fuel, the future of the long-rumored Appalachian Storage Hub, and the latest regarding pipelines and other means of delivering natural gas to market. A key focus for the event and topic for a panel discussion in the morning was workforce recruiting, development, and retention. MDN friend Charlie Schliebs, Chairman of the Energy Innovation Center Institute and Managing Director of Stone Pier Capital Advisors, moderated this lively panel.
In early August, a coalition of 19 state attorneys general fired a warning shot across the bow of BlackRock (largest investment firm with $10 trillion in assets under management), telling the company its pressure on investors to divest from fossil energy companies based on so-called ESG (environmental, social, governance) criteria may, in fact, be illegal (see 
We pointed out last week that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), the agency charged with overseeing the safety of some 3.3 million miles of pipelines across the country, is currently leaderless (see 
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” New Jersey is attempting to abridge the freedom of speech for Exxon Mobil, Shell Oil, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and the American Petroleum Institute (API). NJ has sued those entities claiming they knew that the products they manufacture and promote (oil and gas) have caused global warming and that these entities have lied, and continue to lie, about knowing. NJ wants to muzzle the right of the API and Exxon, et al., to freely defend themselves and stick up for fossil energy, claiming to do so endangers the public and harms the residents of NJ. It’s the most outlandish thing you’ve ever heard.
For some time, we’ve been sounding the alarm about a coming change at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that will force publicly traded companies to disclose mythical greenhouse gas emissions data (see 
Rupert Darwall, a senior fellow at RealClearFoundation, was recently interviewed by NTD News (associated with The Epoch Times newspaper). It was an outstanding interview (watch it below). Darwall said environmentalists use a version of McCarthyism to stifle opposition–a form of “moral blackmail.” If anyone deigns to disagree with the accepted catastrophic global warming party line, that person is hounded until they shut up. And if they don’t shut up, their job (and social standing) is threatened. Free speech is dead in the environmental movement. Free thought is too.
Although there are multiple (and complex) factors that work together to drive the price of natural gas up or down, there is one factor that typically stands head and shoulders above the rest: weather. Even though Europe is still in a pickle with lack of natgas supplies and bidding against Asia to attract said supplies from the U.S., and even though domestic demand from sectors like power generation and even home heating is on the increase, and even though domestic natgas in storage is way below the five-year average, all of which would normally indicate higher demand and therefore higher prices–the weather trumps everything. Warm weather predictions (meaning less demand) have caused a drop in the price of the NYMEX front month contract by 71 cents in the past two days. The price is now at a three-month low.
The Pennsylvania Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee was busy yesterday. In a companion post today, we told you about opposition to a bill by Sen. Carolyn Comitta that would do nothing more than study the concept of exporting LNG from the Philadelphia region (see PA Sen. Carolyn Comitta, Anti from Philly, Confuses LNG and NGL). A second bill that Comitta and her pal on the Environmental Committee, Sen. Katie Muth (also a left-wing Democrat), opposed yesterday is a bill that withholds impact fee (tax) revenue from counties that ban fracking on or under public lands, like parks.
There are eight so-called Ivy League institutions: Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University. At this point, most of them have made moves to divest their massive endowments from any company that is even remotely connected to the fossil energy industry. One of them has not, yet: the University of Pennsylvania. A group of brainwashed children at UPenn are behaving like spoiled rotten brats, demanding UPenn divest from any company with a whiff of oil or natural gas about it. They even want the school to ban fossil energy companies from recruiting on campus (no free speech at UPenn).