OH Gov. Signs Law for Utilities to Charge $1.50/Mo. for New Pipes
The left in Ohio is up in arms again. It’s always up in arms. Everything is a crisis. Everything is a climate tragedy. Everything is a conspiracy — so says the environmental left. Last Thursday, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed House Bill (HB) 201 into law. A provision was tacked onto HB 201 late in the legislative process, several weeks before it was passed, that allows natural gas utility companies to charge customers a piddly $1.50 per month ($18 per year) to help fund new pipelines that will get built in rural areas to industrial sites — areas without existing natgas pipes. The aim is to attract new businesses to locate in the Buckeye State. Many companies won’t consider a potential site without cheap, easy access to natural gas already installed. HB 201 helps make it much more likely a business will consider a site in Ohio, given access to cheap Utica Shale gas. Cue the enviro left’s shrill response.
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Friday afternoon, CNX Resources issued a press release to announce it is officially pulling out of the previously announced multi-billion-dollar clean ammonia manufacturing facility in southern West Virginia, part of the ARCH2 (Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub) project. Adams Fork Energy, Haldor Topsoe, and CNX announced the project in April with much fanfare (see 
Pennsylvania assesses an impact fee (PA’s version of a severance tax) on shale drillers, raising revenues that are paid to local municipalities and to the black hole of Harrisburg politicians. Yesterday, the PA Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) issued an estimate for how much the impact tax will raise this year, to be distributed next year. The IFO says it thinks, based on the price of low natural gas and number of new and existing wells, that PA will generate $174.0 million from the impact tax in 2023, a decrease of $104.8 million (38%) from 2022. What the heck happened?
Last Wednesday, before heading out the door for the Thanksgiving holiday, MDN brought you the sad (but not unsurprising) news that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro had decided to appeal a Commonwealth Court decision striking down his predecessor’s attempt to force the state to implement a multi-billion-dollar carbon tax, called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (see 
We’ll say it right up front: We told you so. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced yesterday that he will appeal a decision by the Commonwealth Court that blocks PA’s entrance into the obscene Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax scheme. Are you surprised? Shocked? We certainly aren’t. Shapiro has just revived a huge threat to the future of the Marcellus Shale industry in the Keystone State. Still happy you voted for Shapiro? No, we didn’t think so.
Yesterday, the Intermediate Court of Appeals for West Virginia issued an opinion in a case that had (until now) escaped our radar. Equinor, Norway’s state-owned oil and gas company (previously known as Statoil), said it had overpaid its severance tax bill in West Virginia for the years 2014 and 2016. Equinor said WV miscalculated the value of propane, butane, ethane, and methane produced by the company. A WV judge agreed, also granting Equinor a further 15% safe harbor deduction for transportation and transmission costs.
In 2019, when then-Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced he would unilaterally force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon tax scheme aimed at forcing coal- and gas-fired plants out of business, he claimed the tax would only amount to a few dollars per short ton of CO2 (see 
In a court case that stretches back to 2019, Antero Resources, the biggest driller in West Virginia, challenged how its wells had been valued for tax purposes in Doddridge and Richie counties for 2016 and 2017. Antero said the combined value of its wells for those years should have been $1.488 billion. The state tax commissioner reckoned the value to be $1.513 billion. The controversy over well valuations, not only for Antero but other drillers, led to a reworking of how the state law values shale wells (see 
With all of the good news about WV (and OH, and PA) winning the Biden Hydrogen Hub Hunger Games contest by scoring $925 million for the WV-led Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2) (see today’s lead story), there is a potential black cloud on the horizon. Investments in ARCH2 might not actually come to pass unless the IRS resolves the 45V hydrogen tax credit. Yes, an obscure rule part of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has the potential to scuttle most of the planned investments in ARCH2 and other hydrogen hub projects.
We remember (years ago) hearing Rush Limbaugh postulate this observation about liberals: “Liberalism is spreading misery equally.” Instead of cutting taxes, which boosts economic prosperity for everyone, including those at the bottom of the economic ladder, liberals seek to make more people pay more taxes. Spread the misery. Instead of allowing people to choose their form of energy, force them to use only certain (very expensive) forms, or force them to cut back on the energy they use (Jimmy Carter’s “throw a sweater on in the winter” comment in the late 1970s). Spread the misery. We now see this truism playing out with liberal Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro concerning the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) — a clever name for an obscene carbon tax.
In an administration full of destructive regulatory actions and legislation targeting fossil energy for extinction, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) stands out as one of the worst. The IRA was made possible by a traitorous vote by West Virginia Democrat U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (see 
The transient workers in the Ohio Utica Shale field must stay somewhere. That somewhere is typically a hotel or motel. Belmont County, one of the hotbeds of Utica drilling, has many such transient workers. Their overnight stays at area hotels and motels create a big pile of lodging tax revenue, which is used to help fund the Belmont County Tourism Council. And the Council is thankful for it!
Last Friday, MDN told you about a new Cambridge University study published in the journal Science exposing the sale of carbon credits as a scam (see