North Carolina DEQ Goes Wackadoodle with New Anti-NatGas Plan
North Carolina is going bonkers. The state Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ), under the direction of Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper, released a plan last week to tax carbon dioxide (get ready to hold your breath because you breathe out CO2!). The plan ultimately takes direct aim at limiting the use of natural gas by taxing it to death–Democrats’ favorite play to cater to the leftists in their base. The DEQ plan is certifiably nuts, but less nuts than that of NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo. If that’s any consolation.
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On those occasions when we engage in conversation with friends and family about what we do, and drop the little factoid that the U.S. (because of shale) is now the #1 producer of both natural gas (surpassing Russia) and oil (producing more oil than Saudi Arabia)–our friends and family look at us like we have two heads. Why does the general population not know this? Because mainstream (biased) media doesn’t want them to. Yet it’s the truth. We flew by Russia back in 2011 to produce the most natgas of any country on the planet, and we flew by the Saudis last year to produce the most oil. We also set another world record last year–the biggest one-year increase in energy production of any country on Mom Earth. Thanks to shale.
Kinder Morgan, the largest pipeline company in the U.S., has left a string of broken promises about the date for which the first Elba Island LNG export plant “mini-train” would begin producing and shipping LNG. We’ve chronicled the journey extensively. According to an official update from KM in July, Elba was “in advanced stages of the commissioning and start up process, including LNG production” (see 
Last Thursday morning at 6:30 am Blue Racer Midstream’s Natrium (Marshall County, WV) natural gas processing plant received a phoned-in bomb threat. Plant personnel immediately contacted law enforcement (local, state and federal) who swept the plant with bomb-sniffing dogs. Nothing was found.
For years MDN has observed that Cabot Oil & Gas is one of the few Marcellus/Utica drilling companies that can “spin straw into gold”–meaning it makes money on selling natural gas even when the price of that gas is in the basement (see 
Some 77 miles of PennEast Pipeline’s $1 billion, 120-mile primarily 36-inch underground pipeline is slated to run through Pennsylvania. The rest runs through New Jersey. In February of this year the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) published draft versions of Erosion and Sediment Control Permits for the project. Just one teeny tiny problem: The DEP screwed up the application number in their official posting in the PA Bulletin. So the DEP has just republished their intent to issue the permits–very soon–in the latest PA Bulletin.
Last November Encino Acquisition Partners (i.e. Encino Energy) completed its purchase of all of Chesapeake Energy’s Ohio Utica Shale assets for $2 billion (see 
There’s an issue that has been building up steam for the past year or two. We’ve commented on it peripherally on a number of occasions. There’s no mistaking the newest “in thing” for young (and old) liberals is to trash the production of plastic. Plastic straws are killing little fishies in the deep blue sea. Plastic bags are filling up our landfills and endangering Mom Earth. California (land of the strange) now has its sights set on banning all plastic bottles. Radical environmentalists are now advocating that we ban the production and manufacture of all plastic products!
In 2017 a group of Ohio landowners did what others had previously done in Pennsylvania, Texas and elsewhere–they filed a proposed class action lawsuit against Chesapeake Energy claiming Chessy had screwed them and about 1,000 other Ohio landowners out of a collective $30 million in royalty payments (see 
Equitrans, builder of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline project, has voluntarily stopped construction on certain portions of the 85% completed project. According to an MVP spokesperson, “The voluntary suspension pertains to areas along the route that may potentially have an impact related to the Endangered Species Act; however, MVP expects to continue with construction, where permitted, in other areas along the route.”