Energy Services | Equitrans/EQT Midstream | Industrywide Issues | Pipelines | Regulation | Statewide WV | West Virginia
Equitrans Likes Traitor Joe’s Sellout of Country for MVP Pipeline
As we previously stated and continue to state: West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s sellout of the entire country (and the entire fossil energy industry) in return for a vote on separate legislation that supposedly will ensure Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) gets completed (no guarantee a vote will be taken), is not worth the price. Unsurprisingly, Equitrans Midstream, the company building MVP, is delighted to learn of Manchin’s plan to sacrifice the country in return for completing its pipeline. Extremely short-sighted.
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New Jersey Resources’ Adelphia Gateway project converts an old oil pipeline stretching from Northampton County, PA through Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester counties, terminating in Delaware County at Marcus Hook, into a natural gas pipeline. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued final approval for the project in December 2019 (see 
In addition to issuing its second quarter update yesterday, Williams made a second announcement of interest. The company has invested an unspecified amount of money in Aurora Hydrogen, a company developing technology that converts natural gas to hydrogen with zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Several other companies, including Chevron and Shell, invested too.
In June 2017, MDN reported that EmberClear, based in Houston, TX, wants to build a $1 billion, 1,100 megawatt combined-cycle natural gas-fired plant about 15 miles from Springfield, Illinois, in Pawnee (see 
One of the criticisms MDN has levied against the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, is that each state is attempting to “go it alone” with respect to attracting a $2 billion investment from the federal government for a hydrogen and CCUS (carbon capture, utilization and storage) hub in our region (see 
It finally seems as if economic activity is picking up once again in the Marcellus/Utica. And we don’t mean just shale drillers and pipeline companies. The companies that supply those companies–the supply chain–is seeing an uptick in business, according to an article appearing in the Pittsburgh Business Times. Companies like U.S. Steel, MSA, and Steel Nation are reporting strong increases in sales in 2022.
Not all that long ago, the spot (physically traded) price of natural gas around the Marcellus/Utica region, and the regions it feeds, including the Southeastern U.S., had some of the lowest spot prices for natural gas in the U.S. We recall being excited to see the price per Mcf (or MMBtu) get above $1 in northeastern PA. That all changed over the past year or so. According to RBN Energy, “cash and forward prices in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast have rocketed, becoming the highest gas prices in the land, and in some cases are at never-before-seen levels for this time of year.” What happened? Why is the price so high now, in a region flooded with natural gas, where once we couldn’t get the price to go over a dollar?
One of the questions MDN editor Jim Willis (who lives in New York State) often gets at family gatherings and the occasional conference (when folks find out he writes about “fracking” and “shale energy”) is this: “Will New York ever get fracking?” Jim’s tongue-in-cheek answer is, “When pigs fly!” The slightly longer answer is that the ignominious politician Andrew Cuomo, while he was governor, slipped a permanent ban on fracking into law as part of the 2020 state budget bill (see 
Most of the time, when we write about LNG (liquefied natural gas), we write about exports. In particular, U.S. exports. The International Group of Liquefied Natural Gas Importers (GIIGNL) advocates for the other end of the deal–those importing LNG. GIIGNL recently issued its 2022 annual report (full copy below). It really is quite fascinating. The report includes a list of long- and medium-term contracts (>4 years) signed in 2021–who the buyer is, who the seller is, and which countries the gas is going from and to.
Boom! The hammer has dropped on five of six companies identified by West Virginia as engaging in “boycotts of fossil fuel companies.” In June, WV State Treasurer Riley Moore sent a letter to six big banks/investment firms alerting them they are about to be added to the state’s “blacklist” for violating policies by not investing or doing business with fossil fuel companies (see 
Two weeks ago, Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 2644 was passed into law, becoming Act 96 of 2022. The new law requires the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to use a portion of new federal funding to create a grant program to support experienced well-plugging companies that work to maximize the volume of orphan wells being plugged in the Commonwealth. It also keeps the right to raise bonding amounts for conventional wells with the legislature rather than allowing PA’s unelected Democrat bureaucrats in the bowels of the DEP’s Environmental Quality Board (EQB) from doing it–which has the left screaming bloody murder.
