MDN Interview: CEO of Plastics Industry Assoc. LOVES Shale Energy
The 8th Annual Utica Downstream Conference will be held on Feb. 25 in Canton, OH. MDN editor Jim Willis had the opportunity to interview one of the keynote speakers, Tony Radoszewski, President & CEO of the Plastics Industry Association, in December. Tony assumed the role of president & CEO in early 2020, just prior to the pandemic. Jim spoke to Tony about his upcoming talk, to get some insights into the state of the plastics industry in America in general, and in the Appalachian Basin in particular. It was a fascinating discussion.
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Two weeks ago CNX Resources issued its 4Q and full-year 2020 update, except at the time they didn’t issue the usual press release with a summary overview (see 
As we reported two weeks ago, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (Democrat) has, for the seventh year in a row, introduced a Marcellus-killing severance tax proposal as part of his annual budget proposal (see 
Last year the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) fined the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project $265,972 for erosion and sediment issues related to constructing the 303-mile pipeline (see 
Life is full of unsung heroes. The West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey (WVGES) is one such hero in the Mountain State. WVGES plays a vital role in the state’s shale gas/oil industry. How WVGES determines where and how much natural gas, oil, and NGLs are located under the crust of WV. They also determine how best to take advantage of those natural resources.
Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), is a sub-unit of the Dept. of Energy. The DOE, as you know, is now part of the Evil Empire (aka the Biden Administration). As you also know, old dementia Joe has been bashing away at fossil fuels since he took office, promising to “transition away” from fossil fuels during his tenure of occupying the White House. Yet the EIA is out with a projection that shows “renewables” (includes not just wind and solar but hydro and “other”) will still make up less than half (42%) of electric power production 30 years from now! Fossil fuels (natural gas and coal) will still have a larger share of electric production than renewables 30 years from now. How’s that for a “transition away” from fossil fuels?
Reuters is reporting natural gas prices across North America have “soared” over the past few days as homes and businesses cranked up their heaters to escape a blast of arctic air and snow moving from Canada to the U.S. Midwest and northeast. The price of natgas trading at the Waha Hub in the Texas Permian Basin is at its highest since December 2018. Here in the northeast prices in Boston and New York City hit fresh one-year highs over the past few days. And it’s the same in Pittsburgh and northeastern PA.
Last Friday National Fuel Gas Company (NFG), the parent company for Seneca Resources and Empire Pipeline, issued its latest quarterly update for the quarter ending Dec. 31 (NFG’s first quarter 2021, everyone else’s fourth quarter 2020). Among the pearls of good news for NFG is that the company is adding a rig back in Tioga County, PA to drill on acreage NFG purchased from Shell.
Analysts at S&P Global Platts say that with the current cold snap underway in the northeast, already decreasing natural gas production from the Marcellus/Utica may accelerate with wellhead freeze-offs. Sometimes in colder temps (hey, it was 2 degrees at MDN HQ this morning) water and other liquids in the gas can freeze and block the flow of gas, called a wellhead freeze-off.
In January MDN told you that after five loooong years, a federal judge in Scranton, PA had finally ruled the Wayne Land and Mineral Group (WLMG) v. Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) lawsuit will go to trial this year (see 
The West Virginia Office of Oil and Gas (part of the Dept. of Environmental Protection) reports there are some 60,000 active and 15,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in the state. Staffers at Oil and Gas respond to complaints and do the inspection for all those wells. Currently, there are just 14 field staffers with three moving to other positions leaving just 11 staffers who are in the field to monitor all those wells.
On Friday, representatives of a “dark money” political action committee called Generation Now signed a guilty plea admitting their part in the biggest bribery scandal to ever hit Ohio. Generation Now was set up as a social welfare nonprofit but in reality was a shell organization that received “tens of millions of dollars” from FirstEnergy as part of a $61 million bribery scandal to pass and keep passed House Bill (HB) 6 which funnels over $1 billion from Ohio ratepayers to FirstEnergy in order to keep the company’s unprofitable nuclear power plants running.
Early last week MDN shared the great news that Enbridge’s Weymouth, Mass. compressor station finally, after years of government delays in building it, went online (see 
Earlier this week MDN brought you the big news that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear the PennEast Pipeline vs. New Jersey eminent domain case (see