The Smaller the Utica Frac Sand Size, the Bigger the Profits
We spotted an interesting article on the Forbes website about microproppants–really really tiny particles of sand or ceramic beads–and how the smaller the size of the proppant, the more likely it is to keep cracks in shale rock open and flowing natural gas and oil. In the Utica Shale, for example, a special kind of microproppant called DEEPROP will yield an additional revenue of $315,000 – $585,000 per thousand feet drilled. Show me the money!
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In March 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to enter the public consciousness, some 500 people from labor unions and industry met in Pittsburgh to launch an organization called Pittsburgh Works Together (PWT), dedicated to fighting back against those who want to end southwest PA industries including steel, natural gas, and petrochemicals (see 
No doubt you heard about the ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline, a pipeline that flows a significant amount of refined products (gasoline and diesel fuel) from the Gulf Coast where it’s refined as far north as New Jersey. Most of the gasoline supply for states like North and South Carolina comes from the Colonial Pipeline. When the pipeline went offline for over a week, most gas stations in NC ran out of gas. It was panic city across the state. The outage pointed out the weakness of having most of a state’s supply of fuel provided by a single pipeline. Top officials in NC are equally (perhaps more) concerned that most of the state’s natural gas supply comes from a single interstate pipeline: the mighty Williams Transco pipeline.
New York State has become outright hostile to any business remotely connected to fossil fuels. NY is prejudiced and discriminates against oil and natural gas. The latest example is a “bitcoin miner” that uses natural gas to produce electricity to power some serious computers. Even though the company is doing its best to atone for its “sin” of using natural gas via buying indulgences (aka carbon offsets), environmentalist wackos still oppose the facility located in Dresden, near beautiful Seneca Lake (one of New York’s Finger Lakes) in the central part of the state.
Ohio’s House Bill (HB) 6 law granted billions (plural) of dollars to FirstEnergy in an attempt to prop up the company’s economically failing nuclear power plants. FirstEnergy bribed state legislators to pass, and keep passed, HB 6 by paying out $61 million to a small group of insiders, including the now-former Speaker of the House (see 
The International Energy Agency (IEA) is in somebody’s back pocket–like Saudi Arabia, or maybe some of the other OPEC members. How do we know? The IEA has just published a nonsensical “report” called “Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector” (full copy below). In the report, IEA makes the preposterous claim that if the world (i.e. the U.S.) doesn’t stop all new drilling for oil and gas right now, today, the earth will toast itself into oblivion by 2050. As we so often say, follow the money.
Our friend Mark Mathis at the Clear Energy Alliance has done it again. Mark has produced another fantastic, short video (4 1/2 minutes long) that superbly explains the modern “climate crisis” panic that we see being forced on the public day after day by a compliant media. We are told by very stupid people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Occasional-Cortex) that we have just 10-12 years and then it’s all over. We’re done. We’re toasted. Because we continue to burn fossil fuels. She’s a certifiable idiot. Why do large multi-national corporations, Big Green groups, and others continue to promote her wildly wrong theories and Green New Deal? As Mark so eloquently summarizes: panic = profit. People are making money from this gigantic global warming hoax.
With the Biden administration relentlessly attacking American fossil fuels with bans and over-regulation, and with foreign-backed Big Green groups relentlessly attacking American fossil fuels via lawsuits, sometimes it’s hard not to be pessimistic about our beloved industry. Every now and again we happen across a feel-good fossil fuel story with a happy ending. This is one such story. A long-fought-over wastewater injection well in Plum Boro (Allegheny County, Pittsburgh suburb) is finally open for business, having overcome all sorts of smears and slanders and lawsuits by the enviro-left. Here’s a story where the good guys win!
One of the ways the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania State Legislature is attempting to block Gov. Tom Wolf from unilaterally forcing the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon tax scheme, is by voting against any new members to the state’s Public Utility Commission (see 
The Democrats who run some of the largest cities in the United States thought it would be easy to target, attack, and bring down Big Oil the same way they did Big Tobacco a generation ago–with neverending, huge lawsuits. Big Mistake. Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a lawsuit brought by the leftist Dems from the City of Baltimore, Maryland against BP, Chevron, Shell, Exxon and other Big Oil companies, alleging the use of oil and gas is causing catastrophic, man-made global warming. Based on a technicality, the Supremes ruled 7-1 against Baltimore, rejecting the lawsuit and making it much harder for other cities to try the same sleazy tactic.
Powerhouse consulting firm Deloitte has just published a series of studies addressing the question of whether oil and gas (and chemicals) companies should optimize and capture the remaining value from hydrocarbons (keep drilling for oil and gas), or should they “embrace the broader energy scope” and begin investing in so-called green energy? Deloitte says, “There is no easy answer to this conundrum.”
Two weeks ago we brought you the sad news that completion and startup for Equitrans’ 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) and the company’s 75-mile extension to it called MVP Southgate will now be delayed until 2022 and 2023 respectively (see