Another Radical Anti Tapped to Head Radical PennFuture
How many times can we fit the word “radical” into a story? We’re not sure, but we may break the record today. We can’t stress enough just how radical the so-called environmental organization PennFuture really is. Let’s define terms. According to Google, “radical” is defined as, “Advocating…complete political or social change; representing or supporting an extreme or progressive section of a political party.” Perhaps we could summarize it this way: a radical is someone who is far outside the mainstream, someone who wants to fundamentally change the way you live. That’s PennFuture. The organization is dedicated to ending the use of fossil fuels, period. That’s extreme. That’s not normal. That’s lunatic, in our humble opinion. PennFuture has spawned a number of far-left political types who have populated the Tom Wolf administration in Pennsylvania. Former employees of PennFuture who have worked in high level positions in liberal Democrat Tom Wolf’s administration include: John Quigley, Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (now gone); John Hanger, Secretary of Policy and Planning (now gone); and Cindy Dunn, Secretary of the Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (still there). The current CEO of PennFuture, Larry Schweiger, is retiring. So it’s time to appoint a new radical to replace him. That enviro radical would be Jacquelyn Bonomo, a Penn State English major whose credentials to lead PA’s “leading environmental organization” seem to be bird watching and hiking…
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Several weeks ago U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry sent a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) directing the agency to complete action on a “grid resiliency” pricing rule within 60 days. The proposed rule Perry proffered to FERC would put in place regulations that favor electric generating plants powered by coal and nuclear. That is, it would allow unprofitable ventures to pass along new costs, making them profitable–in the name of protecting the electric grid. The theory Perry (and by extension President Trump) subscribe to is that if the free market drives out coal and nuke plants, the electric grid would be “vulnerable” to far fewer sources to power it. If coal and nukes are all but gone, and all of sudden there’s a natural gas shortage, or prices spike for natural gas, it would endanger the electric supply in this country. On one side of the argument are those who believe the free market sometimes needs a helping hand (via regulation), and on the other those who believe the free market will sort it all out and we are not vulnerable. It’s no surprise that the coal and nuclear lobbies are celebrating Perry’s action, and the oil & gas lobby along with electric grid operators, are not (see 
Events related (or of interest) to the Marcellus and Utica Shale, primarily pro-drilling events.
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Plant manager hired for Tenaska SWPA electric plant; FirstEnergy dumping coal & nukes regardless of what govt does; latest CNG station opens in Beaver County, PA; PA House hearing on DRBC frack ban tomorrow; Haynesville production through the roof; the Clean Power Plan is irrelevant; US gas exporters rush to sell LNG to China; and more!
The U.S. District Court in Akron, OH has just made a major ruling that affects all Utica landowners and drillers. In 2015, the Ohio Supreme Court accepted a case that will sound familiar to readers of MDN. The case, known as Lutz v. Chesapeake Appalachia, is about whether or not drillers (Chesapeake in this case) are allowed to deduct certain post-production costs from landowner royalty checks. The Ohio Supremes were asked to decide whether Ohio follows the “at the well” rule, which permits the deduction of post-production costs, or if the state follows the “marketable product” rule, which limits the deduction of post-production costs under certain circumstances. The Supremes came down off Mount Olympus in November 2016 to render their verdict (see 
Yesterday one of the biggest Marcellus/Utica drillers, EQT, issued their third quarter 2017 update. EQT will soon be THE biggest Marcellus/Utica driller, indeed the biggest shale gas producer in the United States (surpassing Chesapeake Energy), once a deal to buy Rice Energy consummates later this year. But what about just EQT in 3Q17? The company reports making a profit of $23.3 million during the quarter, versus losing $8 million in the same quarter last year. EQT produced 205.1 billion cubic feet equivalent (Bcfe) of natural gas during the quarter–which works out to be 2.3 Bcfe per day. Here are some interesting stats from the update: Since EQT began drilling shale wells, they have drilled (called “spud” in the industry) 1,288 shale wells. Of those wells drilled, 1,060 are online, making the company money. Below we have the full update, a copy of the transcript from the analyst phone call, the latest slide deck loaded with charts and graphs, and a bit of amusing analysis about the update/phone call…
Yesterday EQT provided an update for both its drilling and midstream operations. On the midstream side, EQT had an interesting comment about it’s biggest project on the books–the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). MVP is a $3.5 billion, 303-mile natural gas pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a final approval for the project two weeks ago (see 
Mountaineer NGL Storage wants to build a new underground NGL storage facility in Monroe County, Ohio, near Clarington, along the Ohio River (see 
Yesterday MDN brought you the exciting news that Marcellus shale gas molecules have been/are finding their way all the way to Nova Scotia, Canada (see 
This is the perfect illustration of how parts of state government, like the so-called Environmental Justice division of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), get co-opted by Big Green groups. In 2015 then-Secretary of the DEP, John Quigley, “reactivated” the Office of Environmental Justice at the DEP to give poor folks and minorities an important new weapon to oppose shale drilling (see 
The Pennsylvania legislature has spoken. The PA Senate and House have now sent all three budget-related bills to liberal Gov. Tom Wolf for his signature. In the end, severance tax proponents, including traitorous Republicans in the Senate (and House), could not ramrod through a new, punishing tax on the Marcellus industry–on top of the many taxes the industry already pays. RINOsaur Gene DiGirolamo could not get his 3.2% severance tax bill passed in time for this year’s budget–but it hangs out there like a zombie, not quite ready to die, just yet (see 
It’s not supposed to work this way. Wednesday evening a “public meeting” was held in Albany, NY to share details about construction of a “state-of-the-art, locally-sourced mini-power grid” that will connect to the statewide electric grid but will also be able to operate independently, to power the Empire State Plaza in Albany–a complex of buildings in downtown Albany housing much of New York State government (see 
In late September MDN connected the dots and was the first to tell you that Blue Ridge Mountain Resources, the renamed Magnum Hunter Resources, had sold its ownership stake in Eureka Midstream (formerly Eureka Resources) to South Korean conglomerate SK Group (see 
Last week NEXUS Pipeline notified the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) they had begun construction on the $2 billion, 255-mile interstate pipeline that will run from Ohio through Michigan and eventually to the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada. We purposely held off on sharing this exciting news until we could tell you where construction has begun. Each week NEXUS, like other interstate pipelines answering to FERC, provides a weekly update on construction and other project activities. We have a copy of that report (below). What does it show? Preliminary activities are taking place to move equipment, put up signage, and begin to work in “Spread 1”–meaning somewhere within Columbia, Stark, Summit, and Wayne counties in Ohio. Similar work is happening in “Spread 4”–meaning counties in Michigan. Initial site preparation is already happening at three of the four planned compressor stations. Here’s what we have been able to piece together about the initial construction work done on NEXUS…