WV Bill Targeting Anti-Fossil Fuel Banks, Investors Becomes Law
In January a new bill was introduced in the West Virginia Senate requiring the entire state government, all of the various state agencies and governmental departments, to stop doing business with any bank or investment firm that refuses to support coal, oil, and natural gas companies (see WV Bill Bans Using Banks, Investment Cos that Divest Fossil Fuels). We are delighted to report that Senate Bill (SB) 262, which passed both the WV Senate and the House in March, was signed into law by WV Gov. Jim Justice last week. It’s now time to start defunding the defunders! The next step: Creating a list of companies WV will no longer do business with. They’re makin’ a list, checkin’ it twice. Gonna find out who’s naughty or nice.
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In July 2020 Dominion Energy announced it was canceling the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP)–a 600-mile Marcellus/Utica pipeline project from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina (see 
On Wednesday, Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 637, which would block the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) authority to limit carbon dioxide emissions (thereby blocking PA’s entrance into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI) passed by a vote of 126 to 72. Some 10 Democrats crossed the aisle to vote in favor of the bill. HB 637 now goes to the PA Senate for a vote. What then?
It’s about to get a lot harder to drill a well or build any kind of pipeline in Pennsylvania, if the swamp dwellers at the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) get their way. The DEP recently released a draft Environmental Justice Policy set of regulations that will empower the radical left to block new drilling and new pipelines by using claims of racism.
Radical green groups, including the Sierra Club (
There is a practice called “sue and settle” used by swamp dwellers in the federal government, financed by taxpayers (you) that will make your blood boil. It’s not new. It’s been going on for years. Sue and settle was frequently used during the bad Obama years. When Donald J. Trump took over at the White House he brought in Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) where sue and settle was the normal routine. Scott drained the swamp and stopped the practice. Guess what? Like a bad yeast infection, the swamp dwellers are back and they’re bringing back sue and settle to the EPA. Surprised? We aren’t.
Because of constant court challenges, the Trump administration completed a redo of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Nationwide Permit 12 (NWP12), a general permit used in constructing pipelines, just prior to leaving office. From the beginning of the Biden administration, anti-fossil fuel fanatics have attacked NWP12, hoping they can cancel it or otherwise make it so onerous nobody will use it (see 
The ongoing tiff between the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and Energy Transfer (ET) over a drilling mud spill in Ohio back in 2017 (five years ago!) has become a steamy, cheesy plotline for an episode of the TV series Dallas. We’re talking about the original Dallas series from the 1980s with Larry Hagman and storylines of “who’s jumping into bed with whom.” FERC is faulting ET for creating a company culture of drill and build fast that led to a contract worker adding diesel fuel to a stuck drill bit in an effort to work it free, fining the company a staggering $40 million for the presence of diesel in a drilling mud spill. ET says the diesel situation was the result of a rogue contract worker (a foreman) under pressure and distracted by rumors of another foreman sleeping with the wife of one of his workers. No, we’re not kidding. You can’t make this stuff up.
In what one industry watcher calls an “abrupt about-face,” yesterday all five Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) commissioners voted to pull back onerous new regulations to use global warming considerations when approving pipelines. Three Democrat FERC commissioners voted to adopt the new guidelines just one month ago (see 
The Iroquois Gas Transmission pipeline project called the Enhancement by Compression (ExC) increases horsepower at three compression stations–two in New York and one in Connecticut–by an extra 125 MMcf/d, flowing more Marcellus/Utica gas into New York City and New England (see 
While yesterday’s news that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), under the thumb of the Biden administration, has made a major about-face with respect to using global warming factors when evaluating pipeline projects (at least for now) is good, there is much more than can and should happen. On Wednesday four of the largest trade groups representing natural gas–the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, the Natural Gas Supply Association, the American Gas Association, and the Independent Petroleum Association of America–sent a letter to President Biden requesting that he push his various agencies (like FERC) to go ahead and approve more LNG export plants and more pipelines.
Bitcoin “mining” is a rapidly expanding new customer for natural gas across the country, including in Pennsylvania. Gigantic computer server farms run complex mathematical computations and the result of those computations is a blockchain. When a blockchain is formed, the server farm doing the computations gets compensated with bitcoins, a form of digital money. Bitcoin (the generic term is cryptocurrency) mining uses huge amounts of electricity to run all of those computers. That’s where natural gas comes in. In PA the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has applied different standards to different requests from bitcoin miners to set up shop. A new bill aims to fix the problem of inconsistent treatment of these requests.
If an upstream (drilling) company with a long-term pipeline contract files for bankruptcy, does that give the company the right to break its pipeline contract? A major shipper on the Rockies Express (REX) pipeline, Ultra Resources, filed for bankruptcy with the express plan to skip out on its obligations to REX (see