U.S. Banks Step Up to Finance Oil & Gas as Euro Banks Refuse
So often, we bring you news of Big Banks (and investment firms like the odious BlackRock) screwing fossil fuel companies either by refusing to lend to them or by pressuring other companies to “reduce” emissions (i.e., stop using fossil fuels). Last month, the State of Texas pulled $8.5 billion out of BlackRock over that company’s use of ESG (environment, social, governance) litmus tests for the companies it invests in and controls (see Texas Yanks $8.5 BILLION Out of BlackRock re ESG). What you don’t often hear about are the Big Banks that are stepping up to make MORE investments in oil and gas. Today, we have such a list, and we’re proud to say they are American banks.
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In 2015, greedy lawyers, using a group of 21 Oregonian children, filed a lawsuit against the United States (President Obama at the time) for not doing enough about mythical man-made global warming. The lawsuit eventually made its way to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2019 (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Federal grant to help replace natural gas pipeline in Welch; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Why Texas has too much natural gas; Natgas filled in most of the drop in solar gen in Texas during April 8 eclipse; INTERNATIONAL: Markets brace for oil to hit $100 as Saudi slashes production; Macquarie strategists warn of large oil price correction; Why solar and wind are not winning in energy race.
The new permits report for two weeks ago showed just four new permits, which we called “below dismal” (see 
We think our headline about says it all. We’ve seen this type of thing many times before — out-of-town (actually, out-of-state) “protesters” show up and disrupt legal construction activity because, well, because they’re looney tunes. They’ve drunk the global warming Kool-Aid and are convinced, against all reason and rationality, that using natural gas and oil is going to destroy Mom Earth. This time around, it was a married couple well past their prime, a couple of old hippies making silly asses of themselves. They sat inside a huge plywood structure made to look like an opposum, blocking access to a Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) construction site in Virginia for several hours.
Last November, CNX Resources CEO Nick DeIuliis signed a voluntary deal with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to expand drilling setbacks and several other regulatory steps not mandated for shale drillers under PA law (see 
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, has hired environmental company Verdantas LLC to fly drones over Bowling Green (Wood County), OH, to try and identify any hidden orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells. Residents of Bowling Green received a letter from ODNR alerting them to the upcoming drone flights.
Here’s a story that caught our attention. Empire Energy, which drills for oil and gas in Australia’s Beetaloo/McArthur basin, owns producing oil and gas assets in New York State and Pennsylvania, which cover more than 270,000 net acres. Empire’s U.S. assets have output totaling some 4.5 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of gas plus small amounts of associated liquids from approximately 2,400 conventional wells. Empire is selling their U.S. assets for $9.1 million to a privately owned conventional producer — PPP Future Development. The intriguing part of this story is that Empire also owns drilling rights in the Marcellus and Utica shale layers underlying the conventional wells in New York State.
The problem-plagued Freeport LNG export plant is once again completely out of order. The plant had been mostly offline following an episode of cold temps in January (see 
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), working natural gas inventories in the U.S. ended the winter heating season (November 1–March 31) at 2,290 billion cubic feet (Bcf), which is 39% more than the previous five-year (2019–23) average. Why is there so much in inventory? Warm weather all winter led to less usage of natural gas. Couple that with high production and it’s a prescription for too much gas in inventory, which leads to (you guessed it), low prices.
Once a month, the analysts at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) issue the agency’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), their best guess about where energy prices and production will go in the next 12 months or so. We sometimes poke good-natured fun at the EIA because their predictions go up in one month, and in the next month, they go down, etc. What about the latest STEO dart board, published on Tuesday? EIA predicts the average spot price for natural gas will be $2.20/MMBtu in 2024. That’s down significantly (17%) from the $2.65 it predicted just two months ago in February’s report (see 
With the rapid increase in carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects around the country, including right here in the Marcellus/Utica region, a key issue has arisen. Where does one store (sequester) all that carbon dioxide (CO2)? The answer is underground in a Class VI injection well. Class VI wells are a relatively new classification for injection wells, created by the federal EPA in 2010. Earlier this week, the Pennsylvania State Senate took the first step in establishing a framework that allows for the underground storage of CO2 in the Keystone State.
A large swath of rational-thinking people on Planet Earth reject the apocalyptic pronouncements of the left that the planet is burning to a cinder due to human activity. It’s a problem for leftist thugs who aim to control us. They try to use fear, but the threat that the planet is doomed if we don’t end the use of fossil fuels by 2050 (26 years away) is just too nebulous for most folks. That’s half a lifetime for some! So, the lefties become more shrill over time. And now, the United Nations Climate Chief, Simon Stiell, has taken it to its logical extreme. In a speech at the Chatham House think tank in London delivered yesterday, Stiell said, “We have exactly two years to save the world.”