Woodside Lands Turkey’s BOTAS as Customer for Former Driftwood LNG
MDN chronicled the rise and fall of Tellurian, founded by Charif Souki (who also founded Cheniere Energy), and Tellurian’s LNG export project, Driftwood. Tellurian’s primary focus was to build Driftwood LNG, a 27.6 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) facility that would cost $14.5 billion. Construction began on the project in March 2022, even without a final investment decision (see Tellurian Begins Construction of Driftwood LNG with No FID). The company spent more than $1 billion building Driftwood before its financial wheels came off. In July 2024, Australian LNG giant Woodside announced a deal to buy Tellurian and Driftwood for $1.2 billion, renaming it Louisiana LNG (see Australia’s Woodside Buying Tellurian & Driftwood LNG for $1.2B). Woodside pulled the trigger on an FID earlier this year and, as of last week, reports the plant is now 22% built and on track to start up in 2029 (see Former Driftwood LNG Plant Already 22% Built, On Track to Start 2029). Read More “Woodside Lands Turkey’s BOTAS as Customer for Former Driftwood LNG”
The annual 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Pa. Democrats call on EPA to preserve climate regulations; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: 40+ groups call out Gov. Newsom for backsliding on climate promises; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas ticks higher ahead of storage data; U.S. total distillate inventories forecast to end 2025 and 2026 at multiyear lows; IER comment on reconsideration of 2009 Endangerment Finding and GHG vehicle standards; Don’t blame data centers for rising electric bills; INTERNATIONAL: Oil surges past key level; Iraq sees resumption of Kurdish oil exports this week; India says it wants to buy more USA energy; Macquarie expands LNG business; Norway gas output up for 2nd consecutive month; Panama Canal starts major NGL pipeline to bypass drought impact. 
Not quite a month ago, EQT Corporation, the largest Marcellus/Utica-only natural gas producer (second largest natural gas producer in the country) signed a deal with Sempra’s Port Arthur LNG Phase 2 project in Jefferson County, Texas, to buy (not sell) LNG from the plant to resell it to other countries (see 
We must confess that we’re disappointed in Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (Republican). After such a promising term as governor (term limited to a single, four-year term, ending this year), Youngkin joined a gang of Democrat governors, headed by the biggest bully of them all, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, in bashing PJM at a “bash PJM” event hosted by Shapiro in Philadelphia earlier this week. Youngkin and various Dem governors, including Maryland’s Wes Moore and New Jersey’s Phil Murphy, made threats against PJM via speeches delivered remotely (they couldn’t even be bothered to travel a few hours to Philly to be there in person). We say fine, take your marbles and go home. Leave PJM and see how that works out for you when your residents are sitting in the dark 50% of the time and you’ve ended your political careers overnight. 
This story is funny. At least, we find it amusing. An extremely radical organization (essentially a Communist organization) calling itself New York Communities for Change (NYCC), launched a petition for signers to say that if New York Governor Kathy Hochul approves the plan to build the Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project, they pledge to vote against her in the upcoming primary in 2026. The petition “quickly garnered supporters” with over 1,000 signatures. There are 5.9 million registered Democrats in the state, so 0.00017 of the Dems (assuming only registered Dems signed), or seventeen hundred-thousandths of the Dem primary voting population, will vote against her. Which is ZERO percent. But that’s not even the funniest part of this story. The funniest part is that she’s already approved it! 
We’ll begin this post with this statement: We’re not surprised. At the end of last December, Venture Global’s Plaquemines LNG export facility officially shipped its first cargo to Germany. Unfortunately for Venture Global’s contracted customers, they will have to wait to receive their legally contracted shipments. Venture Global said that it would (as it did with the Calcasieu Pass facility) pretend the Plaquemines LNG is not “commercially ready” while shipping all sorts of LNG cargoes around the world. The practice allows the company to cream the market and make more money for the first couple of years (see 
President Trump delivered a speech to the United Nations yesterday, and wow! It was a speech for the ages. The teleprompter was broken, but he delivered his speech “off the cuff” anyway! He told the assembled world leaders, and we quote: “Your countries are going to hell,” particularly Europe. Why? Primarily because they’re pursuing the climate hoax of green energy, what he calls a “green scam,” and because they refuse to block illegal invaders (euphemistically called “immigrants”) from moving in and sucking up the country’s public resources. He left it all at the podium, not holding back anything. 
Yesterday, the NYMEX “front month” futures contract for natural gas declined once again, marking four consecutive days of losses. The NYMEX price fell 8.20 cents per million British thermal units (MMBtus) to $2.806 per MMBtus. Why the slide? The best thinking we could find says (a) the weather isn’t warm or cold enough to draw down stocks, and (b) we have more than enough extra gas sitting in inventory. Classic economics 101 states that a surplus of supply over demand results in falling prices. How much longer will the price continue to decline? Gas traders speculate that the short-term outlook is “bearish,” meaning the price will continue to decline. However, in the not-too-distant future, they predict a turnaround and higher prices. 
In the closing hours of the 2014 West Virginia legislative session, the legislature passed Senate Bill (SB) 373, the Aboveground Storage Tank Act (see 
PJM Interconnection is the electrical grid operator serving Pennsylvania, as well as parts of 12 other states and the District of Columbia. For months, the Democrat governors of PJM states have been criticizing PJM, blaming the grid operator for higher electricity prices, even though their own policies are driving electricity prices higher (see 
One of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s big beefs with the PJM grid is that it doesn’t allow new sources of electric generation to be added quickly enough (see Gov. Shapiro Convenes Group to Blame PJM Grid for His Policies). Nationally, a potential solution is on the way. Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed Congressman Troy Balderson’s (OH-12) bill to expedite the construction of new power plants, thereby ensuring the long-term reliability of the American electric grid. H.R. 1047, the Guaranteeing Reliability through the Interconnection of Dispatchable (GRID) Power Act, makes a key improvement to the interconnection queue, where power generation projects wait in line before being reviewed by regulators. Time to cut the red tape for “dispatchable” power.