Senate Confirms D.C. Swamp-Dwelling Democrat Lawyer to FERC
In September we told you that President “sleepy” Joe Biden announced he will nominate regulatory lawyer Willie Phillips, a swamp-dwelling D.C. apparatchik, to serve as the fifth (and final) commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), replacing a fellow swamp-dweller, Neil Chatterjee (see Biden Nominates D.C. Swamp-Dwelling Lawyer to FERC). Phillips was, until yesterday, chairman of the Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia. Now he’s a full-fledged member of FERC thanks to a unanimous U.S. Senate confirmation vote.
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The Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board (EQB) is a division of the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). The EQB is one of the most powerful governmental agencies in the state, consisting of 20 members with the power to create new regulations. Some 11 of the EQB members are appointed by the governor, Tom Wolf in this case. The EQB yesterday voted 16-3 in favor of considering a petition to boost required bonds to drill new conventional wells by 1,500%, and bonds to drill new shale wells by 830%. The new bonds were proposed by virulent anti-fossil fuel groups with the aim to make it too costly to drill new wells. Wolf’s EQB-stacked board is cooperating with the antis.
The so-called International Group of LNG Importers (GIIGNL) yesterday released a framework for transparent emissions reporting and neutrality declarations. The GIIGNL, whose members handle more than 90% of LNG imports worldwide, doesn’t like the patchwork system in place now where companies can on their own claim net-zero carbon emissions for their LNG. So GIIGNL is horning in and claiming *theirs* is the best way to measure low or no “greenhouse gas” emissions. GIIGNL demands Scope 3 emissions be included in the definition of net-zero carbon LNG, something that isn’t a part of most net-zero claims today.
You know it’s the end of the world when (in this case) the far-left editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who universally hate shale drilling, support shale drilling under public parks in Allegheny County (Greater Pittsburgh). Last week MDN told you that anti-drilling zealots in Allegheny County were making yet another play, as they did eight years ago, to get County Council to pass a permanent ban on fracking under (not on) county parks (see 
Last week the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched what we consider a full-on attack against the oil and gas industry when it unveiled new methane regulations (see 
What do you think of this one? The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) is launching a “favorites” list for Marcellus drilling and pipeline companies. You can earn yourself onto the list to get special treatment if you go to the extraordinary (and very expensive) lengths to do things the DEP wants you to do–things *not* required under current law, like “plugging abandoned oil wells, powering equipment with renewable energy, improving water quality in historically polluted streams and planting trees to offset greenhouse gas emissions.” Your reward for landing on the attaboy list? Your application for building a well pad or pipeline corridor will move to the top of the stack for review, leapfrogging those in line for a standard review. In other words, you’ll get the treatment the law guarantees (14 days for an erosion permit review) instead of the months and months of delays (in violation of the law) you get now. What a deal.
We have some exciting, and exclusive, news to share with the MDN audience. We previously told you that the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) was behaving like a child, dragging its collective heels to prevent two side-by-side injection wells in Belmont County developed by Omni Energy from beginning operation (see 
In January 2016, Invenergy announced its intention to build a natgas-powered electric plant in Elizabeth Township, in Allegheny County (see 
We were encouraged in September when the Connecticut State Supreme Court upheld the Connecticut Siting Council’s approval for NTE Energy’s proposed project to build a 650-megawatt natural gas-fired electric plant in Killingly, CT (see 
What the heck is going on? First, the EPA under Biden is making a massive power grab to control oil and gas drilling (in contravention to the U.S. Constitution) by issuing methane regulations and the oil and gas industry is just laying down and taking it, after opposing the very same thing under Obama in 2016 (see 
Conservatives (including MDN) eagerly watch election results as they came in this past Tuesday night. Conservatives rightly anticipated the Virginia governor’s race would go to the Republican, Glenn Youngkin. Conservatives had hoped for a good showing in deeply blue New Jersey, with 1.1 million more registered Democrats than Republicans. We got much more than that! The odious leftist Democrat Phil Murphy ran for reelection for another four years in the Garden State. The unknown Republican running against him, Jack Ciattarelli, came within (under) 1% of the same number of votes as Murphy. Hopefully, Ciattarelli will demand a recount. The question is, did energy have anything to do with NJ’s vote, and if Ciattarelli pulls off an upset, what might that mean for pipeline projects canceled under Murphy?
It is obvious MDN is out of step with the industry it supports and promotes. We think the federal EPA’s announcement on Tuesday that it will draft and adopt new emissions regulations aimed at reducing methane (i.e. natural gas) emissions is clearly unconstitutional (see