Gov. Wolf Promotes Ban on Using PA NatGas by Private Property Owners
Last week MDN reported that Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, in a final act of thumbing his nose at the prolific Marcellus industry in his own state, vetoed a bill, Senate Bill (SB) 275, that would have prohibited municipalities from banning the use of natural gas (see Parting Swipe at Marcellus – Gov. Wolf Vetoes Bill Blocking Gas Bans). Wolf spun the veto as the protection of towns and their right to self-determination, establishing “local control.” It is, in fact, the opposite. Wolf is promoting the ability of elites and bureaucrats to deny the rights of individual property owners to choose their own forms of energy. Wolf didn’t protect rights, he took them away.
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The number crunchers at the U.S. Energy Information Administration once again overestimated natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica in the agency’s monthly Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). Last month the EIA predicted total production in the Marcellus/Utica region (which they call Appalachia in the report) would be 35.39 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) during July. In the monthly DPR issued yesterday, EIA revised the July number down to 35.12 Bcf/d. Not a huge difference. It translates to 270 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) less in production–roughly 1/4 Bcf/d.
Trying to follow the ups and downs of natural gas prices–predicting where prices will go–will drive you crazy. A little over one month ago, the NYMEX front-month futures price for natgas was hitting new modern highs, closing in on $10/MMBtu (see 
Natural gas-fired power plants have become a very important customer and user for Marcellus/Utica (and other shale play) natural gas. This week may set a new record for power plant usage of natgas. Temperatures across the south and Midwest (and northeast) are set to break records. Consecutive days of 100+ degrees Fahrenheit are forecast for Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, and others. According to S&P, this Thursday (July 21), U.S. power burn is forecast to use an average of 48.6 Bcf/d of natgas in what would be a new single-day demand record.
If you monitor the oil and gas industry long enough, you’ll come to discover cycles, trends, and the old saying, “Everything old is new again.” That’s what is happening with the LNG market. For years (several decades), LNG was sold on long-term contracts of 10 to 20 years. Buyers would agree to purchase X amount of LNG for Y amount of cash for long periods of time. Long-term contracts offer price stability and guaranteed availability. But then came shale…
The crazies are getting crazier–if such a thing is possible. The Kool-Aid drinkers–those who are so brainwashed into the climate cult they refuse to think for themselves–are now demanding “real zero” carbon emissions. They say companies like Amazon and Google and Apple and other Big Green leftist idols who have pledged to be “net zero” carbon emissions by such and such a date are hiding. Those companies are actually still belching out CO2 by the megaton but claim they’re “green” by using nonsensical net zero pledges. Companies that pretend to be net zero use carbon offsets “over there” in order to keep belching out carbon “over here.” Now the crackpots are demanding total, worldwide “real zero” carbon emissions–the end of society as we know it.
Joe Manchin was “this close” to selling out the country by voting for the Democrat Build Back Better (BBB) nonsense that does nothing to actually save the planet but does hand out large gobs of money to favored political cronies (and stokes inflation even more). Manchin STILL may sell out his country and vote for such madness, but he hit the pause button to say he wants to see July’s inflation numbers (reported in August) first before he commits to jumping off the political cliff with the rest of the Democrats. Manchin’s simple act of hitting the pause button caused the left to become unhinged, savaging Manchin in mainstream media. Unfortunately, BBB is not dead. Far from it.
This is one of those more bizarre court cases we’ve heard about. In April 2021, MDN reported that a group of West Virginia landowners/rights owners filed a claim against EQT, alleging the company had allowed leases to lapse, then at a later date, reentered their property and drilled new wells without permission (see 
Bitcoin mining is becoming an important customer for Marcellus/Utica natural gas. Gigantic computer server farms run complex mathematical computations and the result of those computations is a blockchain. When a blockchain is formed, the server farm doing the computations gets compensated with bitcoins, a form of digital money. Bitcoin (the generic term is cryptocurrency) mining uses huge amounts of electricity to run all of those computers. That’s where natural gas comes in. Natgas is used to generate the electricity used to power the computers. A bitcoin “miner” in Clearfield County, PA, recently paused operations at the facility. Why?
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s foolish plan to force PA’s coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to begin paying an obscenely high tax on carbon dioxide emissions as part of the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) got blocked on July 1 by PA Commonwealth Court (see 
A portion of Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) running through Clermont, PA (in McKean County) exploded and caused a fire in a remote part of the town (wooded area) last Tuesday evening (see 
According to Bloomberg, natural gas is “the hottest commodity in the world” right now. Since the start of last year, the price natural gas fetches in Europe has risen a staggering 700 percent! In a separate article from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the EIA points out the Henry Hub NYMEX price of natgas has doubled over the past 12 months. Natural gas, says Bloomberg, now rivals oil as the fuel that shapes geopolitics. And there isn’t enough of it to go around. This is a golden opportunity for the U.S. to produce and export more of it.
As he promised to do, Allegheny County, PA County Executive Rich Fitzgerald vetoed a horrible bill passed by County Council that would prohibit drilling and fracking *under* county-owned parks (see 
Sometimes it’s hard not to despair when you see big investment firms aggressively trying to defund oil and gas companies (see 
Last November, Congressional Democrats (and a few RINO Republicans) passed the $1.2 trillion boondoggle referred to as the Biden infrastructure bill (see 
You know we’re not big fans of the American Petroleum Institute (API), an organization run by Big Oil companies (like Exxon and Chevron) that actively works against the best interests of smaller independent shale energy producers. API supports an oil and gas-killing carbon tax, as just one example of its fossil fuel heresy. Yet the API has suddenly grown a spine and is attacking President Biden’s pathetic begging trip to Saudi Arabia to ask OPEC to increase oil production. API even released a new video inviting Biden to visit American energy sites following his failed Middle East visit to learn how American energy companies can solve the problem of high gasoline prices.