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Northeast Natural Energy Settles $7.9M Lawsuit with PA Landowners
Last November MDN told you that Northeast Natural Energy, a small-to-midsized driller headquartered in Morgantown, WV, had lost an arbitration battle and owed a group of landowners in central Pennsylvania $7.9 million in payments for NOT drilling on their land (see Fed Judge: Northeast Natural Energy Owes $7.9M to PA Landowners). NNE continued to fight the arbitrated settlement–until Monday. Apparently both sides have agreed on a new settlement.
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Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issued its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) yesterday. We’re interested mainly in the natural gas numbers. The expert number crunchers at EIA predict the price of Henry Hub traded gas will average $1.93 for all of 2020 (although EIA predicts the price will rise in Q420 to $2.46). The report also says U.S. LNG exports are taking a nosedive this summer. From June through August at least 110 LNG cargoes have been canceled–meaning a decrease in 75% of our LNG exports. That will have a big impact on gas drillers.
Environmentalist groups don’t get a pass here on MDN for their so-called good intentions. Groups like the Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch, Environmental Defense Fund, National Resources Defense Council, and others are actually *harming* the environment with their actions to block natural gas and oil pipelines. They are demonstrably making the environment worse! Why does mainstream “media” allow them to get away with harming the very thing they profess to love and want to protect?
In May a Montana federal judge appointed by Barack Obama capriciously blocked the use of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Nationwide Permit (NP) 12 for all pipeline projects across the country (see 
Are you surprised that Pennsylvania’s big money nuclear power lobby loves PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to tax nuke plants’ biggest competitor, natural gas-fired plants, out of existence? We aren’t surprised. Nuclear Powers Pennsylvania, lobbying group for PA’s nuclear power plants, is urging PA legislators to drop a bill that will block Wolf’s insane attempt at forcing the state to join a group of liberal northeastern states in something called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). RGGI forces its members to slap high taxes on energy that produces carbon dioxide–the stuff you breathe out with every single breath you take. Ludicrous.
Brian Lego, research assistant professor in the West Virginia University (WVU) Bureau of Business and Economic Research, says while canceling the $8 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project is a blow to WV because of lost jobs, the even bigger impact will be less new markets for Marcellus/Utica gas, meaning growth in M-U drilling will be stunted.
On Sunday, June 28, Chesapeake Energy, with major operations in the northeast Pennsylvania Marcellus, filed for bankruptcy (see 
We’ve had enough of activist leftist judges attempting to shut down the will of the people by using obscure legal loopholes as their justification–when the real reason for the action is to block President Trump and fossil fuels. A U.S. District Court judge appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, Judge James Boasberg (D.C. Circuit) has ordered the Dakota Access oil pipeline in the Midwest to stop flowing oil because he doesn’t like it.
Dominion Energy has decided to exit the natural gas pipeline and storage business, selling off its vast network of pipelines in the Marcellus/Utica (and beyond) to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway for $9.7 billion ($4 billion in cash, the rest in assumed debt). In a related announcement, Dominion said it is throwing in the towel and canceling the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project that would have stretched from West Virginia to North Carolina. We are in grieving. This is a tremendously sad day–not only for Marcellus/Utica drillers and landowners, but for the families of pipeline workers who will now remain out of high-paying jobs. You have the Sierra Club and other radicalized green groups to thank.
On Sunday a week ago (June 28) Chesapeake Energy filed for bankruptcy (see 
In 2016 MDN told you about the Holleran family who didn’t want the much-needed Constitution Pipeline to cross their land in Susquehanna County, PA (see 
It’s such a breath of fresh air (and so rare) when we spot actual, in-the-field, real science being done. So many times the “studies” we see published are nothing more than rehashed interpretations, speculation, and outright fabrications parading as scientific inquiry. We spotted a new study published just yesterday in the journal MDPI Atmosphere by researchers with the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Pittsburgh. In 2019 researchers flew specially outfitted drones with methane sniffers over 73 kilometers (45 miles) of Utica Shale gathering pipelines and associated infrastructure. Know what they found? There were ZERO methane leaks from the pipelines.
Radical greens continue to agitate and protest against a tiny 140-megawatt natural gas-fired electric plant for NJ Transit in Kearny, NJ. A group of radical greens (along with leftist politicians they have coopted) will stage a “rally” this afternoon to try and pressure NJ’s lefty governor, Phil Murphy, into finding a way to block the project.
Just prior to the 4th of July anniversary last week, a group of patriotic Americans signed what is being billed the Declaration of Energy Independence. Top federal, state, and local political leaders lent their signatures to a document that sticks up for fossil fuels and opposes the nuttery and flummery vomited out by the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.