Biden Announces 3 New FERC Commissioner Nominees, Finally
Yesterday, the Biden White House announced it is nominating three new members to join the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). There are supposed to be five commissioners, although the commission can still function with as few as three. Currently, there are three (two Democrats, one Republican), with one of the Dems, radical Allison Clements, leaving at the end of her term in June. Two active commissioners are not enough for a quorum to vote on important matters. So finally, after months and months of stalling, Joementia got around to nominating some new blood — two Dems and one Republican.
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Earlier this month, MDN told you about Pennsylvania’s two U.S. Senators, John Fetterman and Bob Casey, and their wishy-washy, mild criticism of Joe Biden’s decision to “pause” any new LNG export permits (see 
The American Petroleum Institute (API), which is no friend of independent shale drillers, together with six other O&G groups, filed an application for rehearing on the Dept. of Energy’s (DOE) indefinite pause on new and pending liquefied natural gas (LNG) permit approvals for non-FTA countries. The application for rehearing is a legal filing, the first stop on the way to a full-blown court case. The filing asks the DOE to reconsider and stop its pause on advancing requests to export LNG. If the DOE denies the rehearing request, the Bidenistas can expect to be sued in federal court to overturn the pause.
Swampy leftists in the Democrat Party view the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as their own personal playground — a birthright. If a Republican takes the White House, as Donald Trump did in 2017, and sets about to scale back some of the extremist policies implemented by previous presidents like Lord Obama, the lefties go berserk (see 
Yesterday, the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) met to award contracts to drill under (not on) several Ohio state parks, including the 20,000-acre Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County. Anti-fossil fuel nutters didn’t disappoint. They showed up and dressed up in burlap bags and silly hats, standing along a wall to protest against the proceeding. Fortunately, the protesters didn’t disrupt or stop the proceeding (they had been threatened with arrest if they did). The big news (for us) is that Encino Energy, which has long coveted the Salt Fork State Park property, did NOT win the contract for it! At some point, Encino pulled its proposal for Salt Fork and instead concentrated on several other parcels. The contract for Salt Fork was awarded to Infinity Natural Resources. We have the complete list of who won which contracts and how much they are paying in signing bonuses and royalties.
In December, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro issued a press release and rang the bell to announce his administration had (at that point) plugged 132 orphaned and abandoned wells in just 11 months, surpassing the total over the previous eight years combined, with big plans to expand the program (see 
Sometimes, we get a miracle. A liberal Democrat judge from Franklin County, OH, ruled on Friday that anti-fossil fuel fanatics don’t have the right to appeal a decision by the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) to meet and award contracts to drill under (not on) several Ohio state parks, including the 20,000-acre Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County. The OGLMC is scheduled to meet today to make announcements awarding contracts for several tracts, including Salt Fork State Park. We expect antis will try to derail the proceedings illegally. Grab the popcorn…
Members of the Wet Virginia State Senate voted on Friday to permanently retain a flawed oil and gas well valuation formula. The Senate vote comes after the House had previously voted to do the same thing (see 
On Feb. 15, members of the South Carolina Public Service Commission approved a proposed project to build a 1,020-megawatt (MW) gas-fired power plant in the state’s Lowcountry, in Colleton County. The project is a 50/50 partnership between Dominion Energy (formerly South Carolina Electric & Gas) and Santee Cooper (South Carolina’s state-owned electric and water utility). In a typical knee-jerk reaction, several Big Green groups are opposing the plan, in particular because of a pipeline that will need to be built to deliver Marcellus/Utica gas to the plant.
Although Shell maintains flaring and accidental emissions from its new multi-billion-dollar ethane cracker in Beaver County, PA, have not violated state and federal air standards, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) says they have — on numerous occasions. Shell didn’t argue the point, and last May, the company agreed to pay nearly $10 million in fines and “contributions” to benefit the local community (see 
While drilling in Chester County, PA, in August 2020 in the Marsh Creek State Park area, Energy Transfer’s (ET) Mariner East 2X pipeline experienced an “inadvertent return” — nontoxic drilling mud coming up out of the ground where it’s not supposed to (see 
If this doesn’t take the cake. Venture Global has been screwing its contracted customers for more than two years by not officially christening its Calcasieu Pass LNG export facility in Louisiana as officially open for business (denying customers cargoes under contracted prices), yet during that time, Venture Global has exported (on the spot market) more than 250 LNG cargoes! It’s a sham, and everybody knows it! Venture Global got the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to extend the “must officially be open by date” for an extra year last year (expired Feb 21st of this year). And now, unbelievably, Venture Global wants FERC to extend it for ANOTHER year!
Democrats will never be satisfied until they tax you for breathing and even existing, which was perfectly illustrated by a proposal submitted by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to its so-called Climate Change Advisory Committee on Tuesday. Not satisfied to try and force a Marcellus-killing carbon tax (called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI) on gas- and coal-fired power plants, the DEP now wants to grow RGGI or some facsimile thereof to “all sectors” of the PA economy. Are they TOTALLY INSANE? We have to say the answer to that rhetorical question is YES!
Last summer, MDN told you that a new system to assess valuations of shale wells in West Virginia had turned into a royal mess (see 
Earlier this month, MDN told you that several New York Democrat legislators were introducing a new bill to ban the use of carbon dioxide (CO2) in any process to extract natural gas or oil in the Empire State (see