Trump Nominates 2 New FERC Members – One an NRDC Lemon
Yesterday the White House announced its intent to nominate the final two members needed to comprise a full five-member Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. One of them, Mark Christie, is the Chairman of the Virginia State Corporation Commission. He is one of the country’s longest-serving state utility regulators, having served for 16 years. Great credentials. Smart guy. The other nominee, Allison Clements, spent 10 years as a rabid radical working for the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). She is uniquely UNQUALIFIED for the job. A lemon.
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Who would win a fight between Thor and Superman? Could Wonder Woman defeat Spider-Man? Does it even matter? Of course not! We just know we love watching superhero movies. But there would be no superhero flicks without oil, natural gas, and coal. You wouldn’t know it to listen to the news media, activists, and many politicians, but these essential energy resources are the REAL LIFE superheroes of our daily lives. Without fossil fuels, we would all be living in an unending horror show with no popcorn, no drink, no comfortable seat, no air conditioning, and… not much else for that matter.
On Friday the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced it has fined CNX Resources and its subsidiary CNX Midstream $310,000 for two incidents in which 65 barrels (2,730 gallons) of non-toxic brine (salty water) leaked into the ground and 43 gallons of non-toxic drilling mud leaked into a creek. The DEP says CNX did “not adequately maintain erosion and sedimentation best management practices.”
In May the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) held a virtual public hearing on the issue of the DRBC’s prior decision to approve construction of a dock in the Delaware River that will allow New Fortress Energy to load LNG tanker ships with LNG transported to the dock from a new liquefaction plant being built in northeastern Pennsylvania (see 
We love a good supply chain story. Crozier Welding, founded in 1980, started by servicing coal mining operations. Eventually, the company, located in Coshocton County, transitioned from coal to welding pipelines for the oil and gas industry. Today the focus of the company is on welding pressure vessels (holding tanks) for the shale industry. The company is moving and expanding, thanks to an abundance of work coming from the M-U.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has a number of committees under its umbrella. Volunteers from business, non-profit groups and other sectors sit on these committees in an effort to provide helpful feedback to the department from the people who must live under the regulations (sometimes onerous) the DEP cooks up. The Small Business Compliance Advisory Committee (SBCAC) is one such committee. SBCAC has just voted against Gov. Wolf’s cockamamie plan to tax “carbon” from gas-fired electric plants.
The price of natural gas and what it fetches (by geography) is always a top concern for both drillers and landowners. Recently the price of natgas nationwide has been trading at a 25-year low (see 
It’s time for a victory lap. Pennsylvania Republicans, with the help of some brave Democrats (and former Democrats), passed and convinced Gov. Wolf to sign a bill into law that will grant tax breaks to companies willing to build brand new petrochemical plants in the Keystone State–plants that use huge quantities of Marcellus Shale gas. Wolf signed the bill yesterday, after vetoing a similar bill earlier this year. The normally chatty Wolf press operation barely mentioned his signature on the bill.
We’re pretty certain Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (RINO) doesn’t read MDN, but we’re glad to see he took our advice from yesterday when we said he’s “stupid if he vetoes the bill to repeal House Bill (HB) 6. Does he not realize he will be given the political equivalent of an anal exam to see if his palms were greased by FirstEnergy too?! The only reason the bill passed was bribery. It’s poisoned. It must be overturned.” A day after DeWine expressed support for the bribe-ridden HB 6 that became law when he signed it last year, DeWine reversed course and now says he supports repeal of that terrible law.
In March 2016, MDN reported that 47 dumpsters full of concentrated frack waste from OH, PA and WV was illegally dumped in a Kentucky landfill in Estill County, KY (see 
Earlier this week Kinder Morgan, one of (perhaps THE) largest pipeline company in the U.S., issued its second-quarter update. While most headlines blare that the company “lost” $637 million during 2Q, what they don’t say (until you read a few paragraphs in) is that it was a paper loss. Yes, revenue was down. But if you take the impairment (writedown) charge away, KM actually made $363 million in profit during 2Q. It was not, however, KM’s financial performance that caught our attention. It was the update on Marcellus/Utica projects like the Elba Island LNG export facility and a new project to expand Tennessee Gas Pipeline to provide more gas into New York City that caught our eye.
New Fortress Energy, which likes to build and own as much of the LNG supply chain as possible, built and recently finished an LNG import terminal in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently dinged the company, asking for an explanation as to why they built it without FERC permission (see 
Once again the Enverus onshore rig count added more active rigs over the past week. Last week at this time the rig count stood at 279. This week, as of yesterday, the count stood at 290, a gain of 11 rigs! However, the Marcellus/Utica counts remain pretty anemic. The Marcellus lost a rig from the dry gas area of northeastern PA. The total Marcellus count is 27. The Ohio Utica remains steady at a paltry 7 active rigs.
This absolutely must stop. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is completely out of control and abusing his power as AG. He has charged a third Marcellus/Utica company, National Fuel Gas Company, with crimes because of a few minor cases of erosion runoff during the installation of a pipeline in Washington County, PA. Since when is erosion a CRIME?
“Be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23). That phrase needs to be tattooed on the side of FirstEnergy’s headquarters because their sin of (allegedly) bribing Ohio lawmakers to pass a highly unpopular bailout of the company’s economically failing nuclear power plants has certainly found them out (see