4th Circus Rejects MVP Request to Appoint New 3-Judge Panel
The clowns who occupy the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Circus) have rejected a request by Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to appoint a new panel of three judges to hear cases involving the 94% completed pipeline (see MVP Asks 4th Circus to Appoint New 3-Judge Panel to Hear Appeals). Three judges from the 4th Circus were appointed back in 2017 to hear appeals against the project. All three are profoundly bigoted and prejudiced against natural gas pipeline projects. We’re talking about Judge Stephanie Thacker, appointed by Barack Hussein Obama; Judge James Wynn, appointed by Barack Hussein Obama; and Chief Judge Roger Gregory, appointed by William Jefferson Clinton. These three leftwing judges find the smallest, nitpicky things to use as an excuse to block completion of the 94% completed, 303-mile MVP project.
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According to James West, a senior managing director at Evercore ISI (investment bank), an era of heavy investment in “all of the above” energy from fossil fuels to renewables to carbon mitigation technologies is now unfolding. The world is short on hydrocarbons and electrons, and energy/power companies are responding. We are, says West, on the cusp of a new era of investing in oil, natural gas, and renewables. This new era of energy investment will be “on a scale never witnessed before.” We like the sound of that!
Coretrax describes itself as a global well integrity and production optimization expert. Last week the company announced it had completed a world record-breaking project in the Utica Basin. Coretrax successfully deployed its ReLineMNS system across three wells and expanded a total of more than 27,000 feet of tubulars (pipelines) across the campaign. With one of the expandable liners reaching 9,000 feet in its expansion, all installations smashed the previously held record of 7,243 feet by at least 1,000 feet.
Last Thursday U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm (not the brightest bulb in the pack) led an in-person meeting with CEOs and executives of seven major U.S. oil companies at the U.S. Dept. of Energy headquarters in Washington, D.C. Granholm kicked off the meeting by spouting the same lie the rest of the Biden administration repeats ad naseum: Putin is to blame for high gasoline prices. That is a complete fabrication. While Putin’s actions have led to something of an increase in worldwide oil and gasoline prices, the main reason for high prices here at home is Granholm and other Bidenistas who have trashed talked fossil energy from DAY ONE. They are the ones to blame and at fault.
Each quarter the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas conducts an energy survey of exploration and production (E&P) and oilfield services (OFS) firms across the Federal Reserve’s three-state Eleventh District, including Texas, New Mexico, and Louisiana. The latest survey, for 2Q22, included 85 E&P firms and 52 OFS companies. Respondents said they expect a Henry Hub natural gas price of $7.55/MMBtu and a West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil price of $108/bbl by the end of 2022. The wisdom of this particular crowd is probably about as reliable a prediction as you can get with respect to O&G prices.
Strap in–the roller coaster ride continues. Yesterday the NYMEX Henry Hub front-month (July) futures contract for natural gas plunged 10%, by $0.62, following news that more gas was stored (“injected”) than previously anticipated by analysts and traders. Storage inventories rose to 2.169 Tcf (trillion cubic feet) for the week ended June 17 following a 74 Bcf (billion cubic feet) injection. Most people thought the injection would be no more than 60 Bcf. No doubt the ongoing outage at Freeport LNG pushing an extra 2 Bcf/d on the domestic market had something to do with the extra storage build. Models predict cooler weather is coming in the next few weeks. Throw it all into the pot–higher storage, Freeport offline, and cooler weather–and traders got spooked.
The Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board (EHB) is a special court set up in PA to hear appeals of decisions made by the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). In February 2021, a landowner (three people living at the same address) in Susquehanna County, PA, filed a lawsuit with the EHB against the DEP and Coterra Energy (formerly known as Cabot Oil & Gas) alleging Coterra’s drilling program nearby had led to polluting their water well. As of last week, the case was dismissed and the Pittsburgh attorney for the landowner (for the first time ever) was sanctioned by the EHB.
PennEnergy Resources recently reapplied (for a second time) for a permit to draw water from Big Sewickley Creek–but this time the request is cut in half, to just 1.5 million gallons of water a day (see 
The province of Quebec, Canada, with a huge supply of Utica Shale gas sitting beneath it, passed a new law in April–Bill 21–outlawing all oil and natural gas production throughout the province (see 
Next month President Biden is heading to the Middle East and is scheduled to meet with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)–the man who allegedly ordered the murder of Saudi Jamal Khashoggi, a reporter for the Washington Post. Biden previously called MBS a “pariah” following the Khashoggi episode. Why is Biden now meeting with him? To beg for more oil production. A group of 27 energy associations, including the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Marcellus Shale Coalition, sent a letter to Biden inviting him to tour American energy infrastructure before he boards the plane to meet with MBS.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the U.S. TVA’s service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. TVA is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the country. One year ago MDN told you that TVA is spending over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines (see 
According to S&P Global’s Platts Analytics service, U.S. natural gas production in June increased slightly to an average 94.5 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day), up nearly 1.9 Bcf/d (roughly 2%) compared with a first-quarter average at 92.6 Bcf/d. The increase was led by more output in the Haynesville which has grown by 600 MMcf/d (million cubic feet per day) since March, and in the Marcellus/Utica, which has grown by 420 MMcf/d since March.