Disappointing: PA Senate Confirms Jessica Shirley as DEP Secretary
Every last Republican in the Pennsylvania Senate and all but one Democrat voted to confirm a group of officials nominated by Governor Josh Shapiro to serve in his administration. Among them was the extremely partisan (we would argue grossly unqualified) Jessica Shirley to be the Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). She can now drop the “Acting” prefix from her title. We know, it’s how politics is played, to give the Governor his choice of cabinet officials. Which is why we stay out of political office—we can’t play the games. We like calling balls and strikes. This was a complete whiff by Republicans in Harrisburg. Read More “Disappointing: PA Senate Confirms Jessica Shirley as DEP Secretary”
Just as the pandemic began to unfold in early 2020, Shell pulled out of a 50/50 joint venture partnership with Energy Transfer (ET) to build a new LNG export facility in Lake Charles, Louisiana (see 
Freeport LNG, located near Galveston, Texas, currently exports roughly 15 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of LNG from three trains—when it’s actually up and running. The Freeport facility has been plagued with outages, the most spectacular of which happened in June 2022, taking the facility offline for 10 months (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Decreasing Act 13 natural gas impact fee money squeezing municipal budgets; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: NJ Gov pleased to announce state’s transition to primitive climate cult campground complete; NATIONAL: Oil rebounds after steep two-day plunge; Breaking heat, rising storage keep natural gas futures on downward trajectory; Electricity use for commercial computing could surpass space cooling, ventilation; Senate versus House version of the IRA provisions in the “Big Beautiful Bill”; E&Ps, faced with a ‘final reckoning,’ helped save themselves with dividends; Critical minerals and LNG bills are a wake-up call for U.S. competitiveness; The left’s climate hysteria is crumbling as energy reality sets in; INTERNATIONAL: Alberta premier warns Carney he must act to quell separatist threat; Shell says no plan to make offer for BP; How Japan and Alaska pioneered the global market for LNG; Tokyo Gas in talks to seal long-term US LNG purchase deals. 
A Boston-based company, Gradiant, issued a press release to make a really big, really important announcement: The company’s lithium business, called alkaLi, will design, build, own, and operate a commercial lithium production facility in the Marcellus Shale Formation of Pennsylvania beginning in early 2026. The 
Infinity Natural Resources (INR), headquartered in Morgantown, WV, focuses 100% on the Marcellus/Utica. The company went public earlier this year with a $265 million ($20/share) initial public offering, giving INR a $1.18 billion market capitalization (see 
Ever so gradually, pipeline capacity to transport Marcellus/Utica molecules to other markets, particularly the Deep South, has been increasing. And it continues to grow, gradually. Two projects from Kinder Morgan aim to help that effort. The 2.1-Bcf/d Mississippi Crossing (MSX) and 1.3-Bcf/d South System Expansion 4 (SSE4) projects will move more Marcellus/Utica gas into Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. RBN Energy connects the dots. 
Environment-related permitting in Pennsylvania, overseen by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), has been a hot mess for years. A Chapter 102 Erosion and Sedimentation permit sometimes takes two, three, or even six months for approval, instead of the policy-mandated 14 days. According to a DEP press release from last November, the problem was fixed (see 
Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) announced the distribution of $164,592,500 in natural gas impact fees collected from producers for the 2024 reporting year. The bad news is that the impact fee raised $15 million less than it did in 2023, the prior year. The good news is that the state Independent Fiscal Office predicts the impact fee for 2025 will soar by $70 million to roughly $235 million (see 
Diversified Energy and global investment firm Carlyle have formed a strategic partnership to invest up to $2 billion in proved developed producing (PDP) natural gas and oil assets across the U.S. Diversified will operate and manage the assets, while Carlyle brings the money and financial expertise, aiming to “securitize” these investments for long-term funding. Diversified owns significant assets in the Marcellus/Utica region (and other regions, too). The company owns approximately 8 million acres of leases with close to 70,000 (mostly) conventional oil and gas wells. The company’s business model is to buy already-drilled, lower-producing wells on the cheap and find ways to make them more productive. 
The West Virginia Supreme Court recently issued two 3-2 decisions reinforcing that oil and gas producers generally cannot deduct post-production costs from royalty payments to mineral owners unless lease agreements explicitly permit such deductions. We previously reported on both decisions. On June 6, the Supremes ruled in Kaess v. BB Land LLC on “in-kind” royalty leases (see 
Talk about shotgun weddings! WhiteHawk Energy has been smitten with PHX Minerals for two years. WhiteHawk repeatedly proposed marriage (M&A), yet PHX repeatedly gave WhiteHawk the cold shoulder (