5th Circuit Restores Biden Order to Use Global CO2 Cost Estimates
In his first two days in office, Joe Biden declared war on the oil and gas industry. One of the first things he did was to revive an interagency working group on the “social cost” of greenhouse gas emissions and directed the issuance of an “interim” cost (see What Biden’s First Two Days on the Job Mean for the O&G Industry). The social cost of carbon dioxide emissions is a metric that regulators use to assess the monetary impact of emissions increases. On his very first day in office, Biden restored the so-called climate cost estimate to about $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions after the Trump administration had reduced the figure to about $7 or less per ton. In February a federal judge overturned Biden’s order (see Fed Judge Overturns Biden Order to Use Global CO2 Cost Estimates), but yesterday a panel of judges overturned that judge and reinstated Biden’s crazy-high carbon cost.
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Exactly three weeks ago MDN brought you the big news that Equitrans Midstream was considering an appeal of two recent rulings by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that overturned a permit and FERC decision to allow Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), now 94% complete, to finish construction (see 
Our advice to landowners who own land in the path of a pipeline has always been to negotiate with the pipeline builder. It may seem as if the builder holds all the cards, especially if they have eminent domain authority (the power to condemn and “take” the land for use in constructing the pipeline). Our observation has been that most pipeline companies are reasonable and willing to accommodate requests to tweak routes. What is not reasonable is to refuse to negotiate in hopes you can block the pipeline from crossing your property. In those cases, the property is taken anyway and you then go through a protracted, years-long process of a court case to determine the value of the taking. Such a case has just begun in Roanoke, Virginia federal court over property taken for Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP).
We’ve heard of “supermajors”–those six to seven integrated oil and gas companies that have a market capitalization of $100 billion or more (including ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Total). We’ve heard of “majors”–integrated oil and gas companies defined as having a market capitalization of $10 billion to $100 billion. And we’ve heard of “independents”–smaller companies that focus just on drilling (not integrated, meaning no downstream and possibly no midstream operations). A Reuters article introduces to a new concept–mini-majors. Among that group is EQT Corporation.
We spotted an article about scarcity for “super-spec rigs” affecting the shale marketplace. Super-spec rigs are high-end rigs with lots of bells and whistles. They drill better and faster than standard rigs. With inventories of super-spec rigs running low, prices to lease them are running high. The “day rate” to lease a rig with lots of bells and whistles is running over $30,000 per day. Base rigs, according to rig company Patterson-UTI, have days rates starting “in the mid-$20,000s.”
On Monday, Jan. 31, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced PA had been awarded its initial allocation of $25 million, and will receive a total of $104 million, from Biden’s so-called Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to plug orphaned and abandoned wells in the state (see 
An updated report issued by the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) shows that PA exports far more electricity out of state than any other state in the entire country. In 2021 PA generated 241.6 million megawatt-hours (MWH) of electricity. The state itself used 156.2 million MWH, and exported 85.5 million MWH to other states. The number one source (by far) of fuel used to generate that much electricity? Marcellus natural gas. PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s insane Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax threatens to shut down that gas-fired production.
It must be sad to live your life focusing all your energy on something you hate. You live in a prison of someone else’s making. You hand the keys of your happiness to someone else, rather than being the captain of your own destiny. Such must be the life of the Pennsylvania “Green” Party’s candidate for governor, Christina “PK Ditty” Digiulio, whose mission in life is to defeat new pipelines, like the now-completed Mariner East 2 pipeline.
The mighty BP (formerly British Petroleum) admits they were wrong in the company’s latest Annual Energy Outlook for 2022 (full copy below). In BP’s Energy Outlook for 2020, BP (wrongly) predicted the world had hit so-called “peak oil” demand for crude oil and other liquid fuels, topping out at around 100 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2019. Whoops. That was wrong. BP now says oil/liquids demand will rise to 101 million bpd by 2025 and stay there for another five years, to around 2030. As for natural gas, the LNG trade “grows strongly over the first 10 years of the outlook” and then tapers off. By 2050 LNG production, claims BP, will only be 10% higher than it was in 2019.
Two weeks ago U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, from West Virginia, unloaded on the five commissioners of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) during a hearing before the committee he chairs, the Senate Energy Committee (see 
How many times must we say this before it sinks in: FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) is an economic agency, NOT an environmental agency. FERC’s role is to ensure pipelines, electric transmission lines, etc. are able to get built and are economic and not an undue burden for ratepayers. FERC’s role is NOT to worry about so-called global warming. Yet the liberal Democrats inside FERC, and now the liberal Democrats on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, insist FERC reopen already-approved projects, like a tiny pipeline expansion in Massachusetts, and re-do long-completed evaluations in light of global warming considerations. It’s INSANE.