Other Stories of Interest: Mon, Apr 22, 2024
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Marcellus Shale Coalition chief touts virtues of natgas production in area; Dems, like Bob Casey, who backed Biden’s war on energy will pay; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Biden limits oil drilling across Alaska’s petroleum reserve; NATIONAL: Left-wing group with shady backing takes prominent role against gas stoves; Biden has taken over 200 actions against US oil; Federal agencies target ExxonMobil and Chevron acquisitions; The U.S. Supreme Court should shut down energy lawfare chaos; INTERNATIONAL: Saudi Arabia needs oil price near $100, IMF says; Why Israel Iran skirmish failed to move oil price above 6-month highs.
Read More “Other Stories of Interest: Mon, Apr 22, 2024”
Two weeks ago, for April 1 – 7, there were eight new permits issued (see 
Over the past seven-plus years, BKV Corporation (Banpu Kalnin Ventures), the American arm of Banpu (96% owned by Banpu, Thailand’s largest coal mining company), has become one of the top 20 gas-weighted natural gas producers in the U.S. BKV originally entered the American shale sector by investing $500 million in 2016-2017 to buy existing Marcellus wells and acreage in northeast Pennsylvania. Then the company went wandering into other shale plays (see 
Exactly a year ago, MDN brought you the good news that a company based in Houston, Texas called Encina (not to be confused with Encino Energy, which drills for natural gas and oil in Ohio) was proposing to build a $1.1 billion plastics recycling plant along the Susquehanna River in Northumberland County, PA — about 60 miles north of Harrisburg (see 
LS Power, headquartered in New York City, has developed or acquired 47,000 megawatts (MW) of power generation, including utility-scale solar, wind, hydro, battery energy storage, and natural gas-fired facilities. We’ve previously mentioned LS Power in a number of MDN articles (
According to S&P Global Commodity Insights, U.S. power sector natural gas demand set another record high in the first quarter and has remained higher year over year into April. Demand from the power sector for natural gas totaled 32.7 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) in the first quarter of 2024, up 2 Bcf/d from the first quarter of 2023. The trend has continued into April. Gas demand from power plants averaged 30.8 Bcf/d from April 1-18, which is 2.1 Bcf/d higher than the same period of 2023. However, whether the trend will continue through the rest of the year is an open question.
A local community receiving a federal grant of $14 million (arranged by a local Congressman) to improve natural gas infrastructure, like replacing worn-out gas pipes, is a fairly common occurrence across most of the country. But it’s not a common occurrence when the community receiving the grant and doing the work is located in New York State — a state that is utterly hostile to even a single square inch of new natural gas infrastructure. That’s what makes this story so unusual, so “man-bites-dog” in nature. Bath and Woodhull (both in Steuben County, NY) are receiving a combined $14 million to replace nearly 18 miles of natural gas pipelines.
Bloomberg is reporting that White House officials have restarted discussions about potentially declaring a national “climate emergency” in order to unlock sweeping federal powers in order “to stifle oil development.” Yeah, you read that right. The Bidenistas want to destroy the U.S. oil industry. Declaring an emergency would grant the president sweeping powers that “could be used to curtail crude exports, suspend offshore drilling, and curb greenhouse gas emissions.” These radicals are over-the-top drunk on power. They are authoritarian (Communist) to their core. They are the opposite of what this country was founded on — freedom.
In January 2023, Pennsylvania State Senator Scott Martin (from Lancaster, PA) hosted a reelection fundraiser at an Italian restaurant in nearby Harrisburg. A pretty swanky fundraiser, too, at $1,000 a plate. Like it or not, this is how it works in the world of politics. Martin happens to be a Republican and a supporter of fossil energy. Those two things send leftists into orbit. A small group of far-left (professional) protesters showed up at the entrance of the restaurant to make a lot of noise and to make silly asses of themselves (which they excel at doing). One of them tilted over into criminality. He obstructed the doorway to the restaurant and would not let anyone enter or leave — a fire hazard at a minimum. Justice was finally rendered on Wednesday in a Dauphin County courtroom.
In October 2019, Eureka Resources, which operates three frack wastewater treatment facilities in the Marcellus Shale (and is building a fourth facility in Dimock, PA), began extracting lithium from Marcellus wastewater at one of its plants in Bradford County, PA (see 
Berkeley Research Group (BRG) published a very important new study yesterday that has Big Green tied up in knots. The study, “Comparative GHG Footprint Analysis for European and Asian Supplies of USLNG, Pipeline Gas, and Coal” (full copy below), analyzes methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions across leading fuel supply chains for power generation in 13 European and Asian end markets. The study has been under development since 2021. It uses a “bottom-up methodology” to arrive at a comprehensive comparison of the emissions intensity of the primary fuel sources, as well as continuously updated data from numerous sources. It’s far more rigorous and reliable than the typical Big Green propaganda that relies on aggregated emissions information to develop general theoretical conclusions. This is real science.
The EIA says the U.S. natural gas trade will continue to grow with the startup of new LNG export projects. In a Today in Energy post, the EIA says (based on its recent Short-Term Energy Outlook report) that it expects U.S. LNG exports will increase just 2% this year over last year. However, in 2025, LNG exports will soar by 18% due to three new LNG export facilities currently under construction that will come online next year.
The devious left is at it again. In their hatred of fossil energy, the Democrat Party is targeting a little-known portion of the Clean Water Act (CWA), called a Nationwide Permit 12 (NWP12), that is often used to streamline the construction of new oil and gas pipelines. NWP12 was used, in part, to construct the Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia. The Dems are leaning on the Bidenistas to “review” the NWP12 and to revise the regulation to exempt its use to build oil and gas pipelines. Yet another attack from the Democrats on oil and gas.
Hydrogen has been hyped as a carbon-free fuel that will magically fix the nonexistent climate crisis. It will supposedly clean up “dirty” industries like Big Chemical and Big Steel. It will power our cars and trucks, farting out water instead of CO2. And, it will help the U.S. hit mythical net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 — the artificial date by which Mom Earth will toast if we do nothing. Billions of dollars have been and are being poured into hydrogen, and whoops! Nothing is happening because (a) the Bidenistas refuse to allow tax credits for hydrogen made from natural gas, and (b) hydrogen is too expensive to create apart from natural gas.