Manchin Goes Soft and Wobbly on High-Inflation “Energy” Bill
At the end of the day, Joe Manchin, U.S. Senator from West Virginia, is still a Democrat and beholden to his party’s radical leftwing. We had hoped he was a different kind of Democrat, but alas, perhaps not. Bloomberg (often a fake news source) is reporting that Manchin is reaching out to Republicans in the Senate to gauge interest in spending a half-trillion dollars ($550 billion to be exact) on “climate and energy spending”–resurrected pieces of what had been Biden’s failed Build Back Better Act. The aim is to salvage something of Joe Biden’s tattered reputation ahead of the 2022 elections in November, so Dems are not completely obliterated (as we hope they are and deserve to be) this fall. No thanks, Sen. Manchin. We’re not interested in tacking on another 4-5% to the inflation numbers that are already at historic highs, which is exactly what such a bill would do.
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Three Democrat Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) commissioners voted to adopt and immediately begin using new guidelines for approving pipeline projects by taking into account mythical global warming factors back in February (see 
Pennsylvania has already received the first $25 million payment from the so-called infrastructure bill, a down payment on what will eventually be ~$400 million over the next 15 years to plug abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells across the state (see 
Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s (TGP) plan to flow more Marcellus gas to Westchester County, NY and New York City for Consolidated Edison customers, called the East 300 Upgrade Project, took a giant leap forward last Thursday when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued permits that allow TGP to upgrade two existing compressor stations (in PA), and build a brand new compressor station in West Milford (Passaic County, NJ), just across the border and not far from Westchester County. This is a major victory and a sign this project will now get completed.
Pennsylvania State Rep. Marina White (Republican from Philadelphia, a true rarity) sponsored a bill that’s getting traction in Harrisburg. House Bill (HB) 2458, which passed with a vote by the full House on April 13, creates a task force to study how to establish Philadelphia LNG exports to international markets, particularly those in Europe. The bill creates a task force to study the economic feasibility, financial impact, and the security needed to turn the Port of Philly into an LNG export terminal, exporting PA’s abundant and clean Marcellus Shale gas.
It’s a sad day in Pennsylvania. Gov. Tom Wolf and his patsy at the Dept. of Environmental Protection, Sec. Pat McDonnell, have finally prevailed and will publish a final version of new regulations forcing the state to join the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)–a carbon tax that is about to unleash economic hell on PA. The final step before RGGI, a $2.6 billion tax on PA’s electric ratepayers over the next ten years, becomes a defacto new law is for the final version of the regulation to be published in the Pennsylvania Register. Tomorrow’s edition will carry the RGGI regulation (full preview copy below).
Has there been a more dysfunctional White House than the Biden White House…ever? No, there hasn’t. While Joe Biden mouths words (that someone has written for him, appearing on a teleprompter) supporting natural gas and encouraging more natgas exports to help Europe, the Biden EPA and others in the administration (see today’s story about the haughty John Kerry) attack natural gas, calling for programs to phase out its use here in the United States. We’ve given up trying to understand psychotic leftists. There is no understanding and reconciling “drill more to help our allies” with “but we’re going to ban its use here at home.”
In a new attack from the Bidenistas, the haughty John F. Kerry (the definition of a D.C. swamp dweller) threatened the entire natural gas industry in an interview yesterday with his fellow lefties at Bloomberg. The uber-arrogant Kerry put the natural gas industry “on notice” that it has a maximum of 10 years to figure out how to trap every last molecule of escaping methane and every last molecule of carbon dioxide post-combustion–or the industry will suffer a total and sudden death. The political intelligentsia will demand the execution of natgas (maybe even those who extract and flow it) no later than 10 years from now. According to Kerry, this is how it works in Amerika, land of the enslaved and home of the coward.
In January 2020, President Trump announced a list of proposed changes to the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in an effort to strip away some of the governmental red tape that has built up over the years like plaque in an artery, preventing important infrastructure projects like pipelines, dams, bridges, and roads from getting built (see 
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, has (for months) forcefully pushed the issue of completing the 94% done-and-in-the-ground Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project, a 303-mile pipeline from WV into Virginia. In early March Manchin let all five Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) commissioners know of his displeasure that MVP, along with other pipeline projects, is delayed (see 
A story out of Port St. Joe, Florida, involving LNG, caught our attention for a couple of reasons. Nopetro LNG plans to construct and operate as many as three liquefaction trains that will liquefy up to 3.86 billion cubic feet per year of natural gas for export and delivery to markets in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. That’s 3.86 Bcf for an entire year, not per day. Modern facilities that export LNG from the Gulf Coast, like Sabine Pass, export close to 4 Bcf per day. The facility proposed by Nopetro is minuscule in comparison. It will receive natural gas from St. Joe Natural Gas Company Inc. Nopetro recently asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to declare that it (FERC) does not have jurisdiction and regulation over such a tiny facility. FERC agreed!