Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | Regulation | Statewide WV | Taxation | West Virginia
Detailed Look at Manchin-Schumer Big Green Energy Inflation Bill
We have spit and sputtered daily since Traitor Joe Manchin announced his treachery last week–that he will sacrifice the entire country and its economic future in return for finishing one pipeline (see Tragedy: Joe Manchin Caves & Agrees to Big Green Build Back Better). What was called Build Back Better has been renamed to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Which is a joke. The bill won’t actually reduce inflation at all (and that assessment comes from sources on the left). There’s a huge new methane tax in the bill (see Joe Manchin’s Green New Deal Cave Slaps O&G with Big Methane Tax). What else is in the bill?
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Here’s some of the best news we’ve heard in a month! Freeport LNG, offline due to an explosion and fire in June, issued an announcement yesterday to say it has signed a deal with the Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) that will allow the export facility to restart in October–at or near full strength of exporting 2 Bcf/d of natural gas.
In July 2018, a group of 100+ southwestern Pennsylvania landowners sued EQT for failure to pay them rental fees for storing natural gas under their properties (see 
Two days ago, MDN mused over the issue of whether or not there will EVER be fracking in New York State (see 
What makes an oil and gas company (specifically a driller) a “bad actor”? Anti-fossil fuel zealots believe they’ve found a clever way of smearing Marcellus drillers and painting them as “bad actors” by citing how many notices of violation (NOVs) the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has issued to a driller. The problem is, those notices are highly inconsistent and many times are for relatively minor (quickly fixable) “infractions” against regulations. Citing a high number of NOVs sounds impressive and scares people, which is the important thing for antis.
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.
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