Competitive Power Ventures’ (CPV) Fairview Energy Center, a 1,050-megawatt natural gas and ethane-fueled two-by-one combined-cycle electric generating plant in Cambria County, PA, is now online generating electricity. Ahead of schedule!
Read More “CPV Marcellus-Fired Electric Plant in Cambria Goes Online Early”
There is a double standard in existence in New York. A CORRUPT double standard. And the corruption comes from Andrew Cuomo. In 2014 judges on NY’s highest court, the Court of Appeals (all them appointed by the governor) voted to uphold a disastrous energy policy that grants town boards of local municipalities the right to ban fracking, should the state ever allow it, in an entire community (see Shale Drilling in NY is Over – High Court Upholds Town Bans). BUT, when a local town baned wind farms in Western NY, Cuomo stepped in and like the tin horn dictator he is, he overruled them (see NY’s Grotesque Energy Double Standard re “Home Rule”). CORRUPT! It’s happening again–this time in MDN’s own back yard.
Read More “NY Corruption: Home Rule OK to Ban Fracking, but Not Ban Windmills”
MDN editor Jim Willis had the pleasure of attending yesterday’s S&P Global Platts “Global Energy Outlook Forum” yesterday in New York City. Each year Platts hosts this event, assembling some of the best thinkers and industry participants from across all energy sectors to discuss what happened during the previous year, and what’s on the way next year and down the road with respect to energy. All kinds of energy.
Read More “S&P Global Platts Releases 2020 Energy Outlook”
If there is one defining characteristic of a truly conservative Republican, it is that he or she does not like higher taxes. On anything. Conservatives know that higher taxes equal less freedom of individual choice. And higher taxes feed (and perpetuate) the bureaucratic Big Government machine. A lower taxes philosophy is baked into the true conservative’s DNA. Yet a group of brainwashed college students professing to be Republican and conservative (they’re neither) has just launched a group called Young Conservatives for Carbon Dividends to lobby for an insane carbon tax.
Read More “Misnamed Young “Conservatives” for Carbon Dividends Wants CO2 Tax”
As it turns out, Exxon didn’t know. You may recall the hue and cry from radical anti-fossil fuelers that #ExxonKnew–knew they were toasting mom earth by extracting and encouraging the burning of oil and natural gas. The New Attorney General’s office launched an investigation, and then a lawsuit, charging the same thing. The NY AG claimed Exxon had defrauded shareholders by covering up knowledge of global warming. The first lawsuit to go to trial against Exxon for causing global warming was in NY, where the AG (Letitia “Tish” James) headed up a disaster of a lawsuit. She (and her office) was thoroughly and completely humiliated by a NY judge who said she never proved anything. Her team’s performance was worse than that of a first-year law student.
Read More “Judge Finds Exxon Not Guilty in Fraud Case – NY AG Humiliated”
In a new report titled “Getting Greener: Cost-Effective Options for Achieving New York State’s Greenhouse Gas Goals,” the Citizens Budget Commission (of New York) attributes the 13% greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions drop New York State saw between 1990 and 2016 to an increased usage of natural gas and nuclear power. According to the nonpartisan Commission, New York is “already green” and if it wants to stay that way, it needs MORE natural gas, not less!
Read More “NY Budget Commission Says More NatGas, Nukes Needed to Lower GHG”
The National Whistleblower Center (NWC), a corrupt and partisan (Democrat) nonprofit group, has laughingly launched what it calls a “Climate Corruption Campaign” to “enlist whistleblowers in the fight against fraud and other crimes in the three industry sectors responsible for the vast majority of the world’s carbon pollution: oil and gas, coal, and industrial logging.” What a sick joke.
Read More “Blowing the Whistle on Natl Whistleblower Center’s Climate Campaign”
The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday refused to hear a case that challenged a ruling in the Hoopa Valley Indian Tribe case–a ruling/case that has HUGE implications for Williams’ Constitution Pipeline running through New York State. The Supreme Court rejection is a crushing defeat for Big Green groups Trout Unlimited and California Trout, and very good news for the Constitution project.
Read More “Ruling Stands: States have 1 Calendar Yr to Review Water Permits”
Williams, the pipeline giant, held its annual analyst day in New York City last Friday. The company’s top brass was there to wow and woo investors with the company’s plans for 2020 and beyond. In reading about the session, we picked up on some startling statistics. Stats like Williams now provides 30% of all LNG feed gas in the U.S. And most of that (all of it?) comes from the Marcellus/Utica.
Read More “Williams Currently Sends 1.5 Bcf/d of M-U Gas to Gulf Coast LNG”
The rig count in the Marcellus/Utica region is crashing–down to its lowest level for a December since the M-U became a “thing.” It’s now lower than the levels reached in 2014, which was the advent of the first “crash” in rig counts. BUT (and this is a big BUT), lower rig counts do not necessarily mean less drilling or less production. How can that be?
Read More “Marcellus/Utica Active Drilling Rig Count Crashes to 24”
Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) previously filed a request with the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that judicially creates a new law stipulating pipelines can’t cross under the Appalachian Trail without (no kidding) an Act of Congress. The clown judges of the Fourth Circus (our name for that court) revoked a permit issued by the U.S. Forest Service. A list of 21 business and oil/gas industry groups filed a “friend of the court” brief yesterday supporting ACP, asking the Supremes to reinstate the Forest Service permit for the project.
Read More “21 Industry Groups Ask US Supreme Court to Restore Pipeline Permit”
For a number of years MDN has tracked an LNG export plant planned for the eastern shore of Nova Scotia–the Bear Head LNG project (see our Bear Head LNG stories here). In 2017, an official from the project said it was “shovel-ready” and could begin at any time (see Nova Scotia’s Bear Head LNG Sees Surge of Interest). However, not one shovelful of dirt has been turned. The project recently asked for and was granted permission to extend permits set to expire at the end of this year.
Read More “Nova Scotia Bear Head LNG Gets Lifeline – App. Extended to 2022”
In what is at least the second (maybe third or fourth) serious attempt, radical Democrats in the New York State legislature have floated a bill that would force NY’s public employee pension fund to completely divest any stock holdings in fossil fuel companies. Are NY retirees ready to take a $1 TRILLION hit in their wallets if it happens?
Read More “Radical Dems Make Another Run at Forcing NY to Divest Fossil Fuels”
Once upon a time in BSE (before shale era) if you were to chart the price of oil and the price of natural gas together on the same graph, the path/track was almost identical. When the price of oil went up (or down), so too did the price of gas. With the advent of shale in 2008/2009, tracking between the two has changed. It’s gone. The value of natural gas compared to the value of oil is now *much lower* than it was in BSE.
Read More “Oil and NatGas Prices No Longer Linked – Because of Shale”
As far as we can tell, MDN is exclusively breaking the following news: On December 5 (last Thursday), the PHMSA (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) granted a special permit to Energy Transport Solutions, LLC (i.e. New Fortress Energy) to transport LNG in DOT-113C120 rail tanker cars between Wyalusing, PA and Gibbstown, NJ. This is huge! There still is not a new regulation/law to allow shipment of LNG by rail across the country, but somehow New Fortress has gotten a special permit to do so anyway. Huge!
Read More “U.S. Gov’t Grants New Fortress Permit to Ship NEPA LNG by Rail!”
“Peaker plants” are small electric generating plants that produce electricity for brief periods during high demand. Older peakers were often powered by oil. Newer peakers are powered by natural gas. In early November Dominion Energy floated an RFP (request for proposal) for companies to build a series of peakers (no smaller than 50 megawatts) totaling a combined 1,500 MW to come online beginning 2022 in Virginia. A month later, following criticism from a competitor, Dominion has canceled the RFP…at least for now.
Read More “Dominion Issues RFP to Build Gas-Fired Peaker, Cancels Mo. Later”