Ohio U. Scores $1.5 Million DOE Grant to Study Produced Water
We’ve discussed shale wastewater, sometimes called brine or “produced water,” many times over the years. When drilling an oil or gas well deep in the earth, the hole releases naturally occurring water from the depths (far, far below the surface water table) for years after the well is drilled. The water coming out has a LOT of minerals, sometimes mildly radioactive, and is usually called either brine (meaning salty) or produced water. Traditionally, there are two ways to handle all of that water coming out of the ground: (1) recycle it and reuse it for more oil and gas drilling, or (2) pump it back down into the ground from whence it came via an injection well. Ohio University (in Athens, OH) has just won a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study how produced water can be cleaned up and used outside the oil and gas sector. Read More “Ohio U. Scores $1.5 Million DOE Grant to Study Produced Water”
Earlier this week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) issued its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook. As part of our coverage, we highlighted the news that the EIA is predicting natural gas prices this winter and for all of 2025 will be roughly 40% higher than the Henry Hub price for gas in November (see 
According to a Reuters report, Venture Global’s Plaquemines LNG export facility (Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana) could start to liquefy natural gas as early as today. It will mark the first new U.S. LNG export plant to come online in two years. The 20 million metric tons per annum (MTPA) export plant was set to draw over 100 million cubic feet (MMcf/d) of natural gas for the first time yesterday. When fully online, it will use 2.6 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas. We suspect some (much?) of the gas comes from the Marcellus/Utica as the plant has an interconnection with the Texas Eastern Transmission Company (TETCO) pipeline—a pipeline that flows M-U gas southwest. However, we’re not elated with the news of Plaquemines’ startup. 
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Eagle Mountain considers allowing nuclear reactors, natgas power plants in city; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures gain on big inventory draw; No winners seen in Trump’s ‘hugely destructive’ energy tariffs; Investigation ties fashion to fracking in the USA; Trump’s choice to run Energy says fossil fuels are virtuous; ExxonMobil eyes data centre energy with carbon capture & natural gas; Five ways Trump could dismantle Biden’s climate agenda; INTERNATIONAL: Could China’s slowing diesel demand boost U.S. LNG as transportation fuel? 
In something of a surprise (for us), the Ohio State Senate passed House Bill (HB) 308 yesterday, a bill that extends the standard lease terms for drillers who want to drill under (not on) state-owned land from three years to five years. The bill also extends the total amount of time fracking operations can last from six years to eight years. Sensible increases in both cases. The Ohio House previously passed the bill. The Senate version is slightly different from the House version, so it heads back to the House to reconcile the two versions, and then it heads to the desk of RINO Gov. Mike DeWine for his signature. No telling whether he will sign it or not. 
For those unlucky enough to live in New York City and its sprawling suburbs, get ready for blackouts due to the lack of electricity. The state of New York and developers of the 175-mile Clean Path NY transmission line have “mutually agreed to terminate” contracts underpinning the project, which was planned to come online in 2027. Clean Path was supposed to bring 5 gigawatts (GW) of electricity from windmills and solar farms in Upstate New York to liberal elites living in and around NYC. The project was billed as “critical” to achieving New York’s climate goals, including 70% renewable electricity consumption by 2030 and developing a zero-emission electric grid by 2040. That’s all down the toilet now. Get ready to sit in the dark. 
In July, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (West Virginia), the Democrat chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Senator John Barrasso (from Wyoming), the ranking Republican member of the same committee, drafted and released the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 (see 
You can’t fix stupid. You can only vote it out of office. From the outskirts of New York to the Delaware River shoreline across from Philadelphia, New Jersey is home to numerous oil and natural gas facilities. A New Jersey Senate committee is seriously discussing (planning) an insane new tax on those facilities as a way of creating a slush fund supposedly to help the state fight the effects of climate change. It would be just another pile of money for corrupt politicians to line their own (and friends’) pockets with. Hello, Tony Soprano! 
Yesterday, the analysts at S&P Global Commodity Insights, the leading independent provider of information, data, analysis, benchmark prices, and workflow solutions for the commodities and energy markets, released their 2025 energy outlook. S&P published the top 10 “key themes” from the report. Key theme #2 was this: “Total energy demand growth to outstrip clean energy supply growth.” The concomitant conclusion is that *something* has to meet that new energy demand, and since unreliable renewables can’t and won’t, fossil fuels will ride in to save the day—as they always have. 
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could fundamentally change how the federal government conducts environmental reviews. We first told you about the case last week (see 
PennEnergy Resources, LLC, the 11th largest shale driller in Pennsylvania, agreed to a “deal” with the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ), the Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Josh Shapiro Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to pay a $2 million fine and spend another $3.6 million on “upgrades” related to air emissions at its well pads. Based on inspections done in 2018 (six years ago!), the EPA accused PennEnergy of illegal air emissions at five “facilities” (well pads) in Butler County, PA. Yet PennEnergy is being forced to “fix” 17 of its oil and gas production facilities and implement “partial measures” at an additional 32 facilities in Butler County and neighboring Lawrence County. 
Yesterday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported five states produced more than 70% of the record 113.1 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of U.S. marketed natural gas production in 2023. Two of the five were in the Marcellus/Utica: Pennsylvania (18% of the country’s gas) and West Virginia (8% of the country’s gas). We did some digging and found that when adding the production from PA, WV, and OH, the three together represented 31.5% of all the natural gas produced in the U.S. in 2023. It is an astonishing fact! 
The environmental left is hellbent on regulating fossil fuels, including oil and natural gas, out of existence. One of their favorite (false) memes is to claim methane is a bazillion times more “potent” in causing global warming than other things, like carbon dioxide. The false narrative continues that shale drilling is causing a stratospheric increase in fugitive methane leaks into Mom Earth’s atmosphere. Except….it isn’t true. According to data from the Environmental Protection Agency, methane emissions from the country’s top oil and gas-producing basins have fallen 44 percent since 2011. Methane emissions right here in the Marcellus/Utica have fallen 52% from 2019 to 2023! 
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) issued its latest monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook yesterday, the agency’s monthly best guess about where energy prices and production will go in the next 12 months. In October, the EIA predicted the average spot price for natural gas would be $3.10/MMBtu in 2025 (see