Flood Waters Get Close to Shuttered Austin Master Frack Waste
Last week, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost took legal action seeking to force Austin Master Services (AMS) in Martins Ferry (Belmont County), OH, to correct “egregious violations of Ohio law” regarding the storage of oil and gas waste that he says threatens the Ohio River and Martins Ferry’s drinking water supply (see Ohio AG Sues Austin Master Services for Unsafe Storage of Wastewater). As the story began to unfold, we learned that AMS had stored at least 10,000 tons of fracking waste beyond its rating at the facility. Last weekend, the Ohio River, which is located 500 feet from the facility, reached flood stage and approached (but didn’t reach) the AMS facility.
Read More “Flood Waters Get Close to Shuttered Austin Master Frack Waste”
Last week, MDN reported on new (to us) information shared at a Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee hearing that the state’s program to plug orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells is, quite frankly, a hot mess (see 
In September 2022, MDN told you about a relatively modest-sized gas-fired power plant planned for Superior, Wisconsin, called the Nemadji Trail Energy Center (see 
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), corrupted by the Bidenistas, voted 3-2 (three Democrats vs. two Republicans) in March to issue a final regulation that will force all publicly traded companies to disclose their so-called greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the imaginary climate risks their businesses face (see 
Ahead of the Easter weekend, multiple media outlets reported that chocolate prices were soaring, and according to the coverage, the main culprit driving the inflating costs is so-called climate change. Across multiple platforms, the reports followed a similar message, using similar language to describe the problem and its causes — and the reports all came out the same week. The media reports can be traced back to a single source, an organization called Covering Climate Now. This is a story of how entire populations are being brainwashed with false narratives about the climate.
NATIONAL: House GOP considers requiring LNG approvals in Ukraine aid; RFK, Jr.’s a ‘devout, radical environmentalist’; Natural gas storage surplus drops, but still very high; INTERNATIONAL: TC Energy appoints new CFO.
While you wouldn’t know it from looking at the NYMEX Henry Hub futures price, the cuts in production from Marcellus/Utica producers, including Chesapeake Energy, ETQ, Antero Resources, Coterra Energy, CNX Resources, and others, IS having an effect on prices — on the spot prices of physically-traded natural gas in the M-U region. Over the past eight weeks, gas production from the Marcellus and Utica shale has fallen sharply.
The government screws up just about everything it touches — ever notice that? A perfect example is a water testing program set up by then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro in December 2022. In August 2022, Shapiro, who AG at the time, announced that he had finally bullied Energy Transfer into pleading “no contest” (meaning they don’t admit to a darned thing) in a so-called criminal case against the company for a series of accidents affecting construction for both the Revolution and Mariner East pipelines (see 
The production of ethane in the U.S. — one of several natural gas liquids (NGLs) that come out of the ground when drilling both oil and gas wells — rose 9% in 2023 to a new record high of 2.6 million barrels per day (b/d), according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Record ethane production was a result of the boom in natural gas production and the addition of two new ethane cracker plants coming online, one in Texas and the other in Pennsylvania.
In January, Joe Biden announced a “pause” for any approvals of new LNG export plants (currently 17 requests in the pipeline) for at least one year (see 
Mountain V Oil & Gas, headquartered in Buckhannon, WV, is a privately owned independent energy company with both conventional and shale assets in the Appalachian Basin. The company acquires and drills wells on over 300,000 leased acres, mainly focused on gas wells. Mountain V is now expanding its focus to include oil. Last fall, the company signed an agreement to buy the oil and gas assets of AXP Energy — assets located in Tennessee, Eastern Kentucky, Virginia, and the Illinois Basins — for $4 million. The AXP purchase with its oil-heavy assets closed earlier today.
A royalty case that took nearly four years and hundreds of filings by both sides was finally decided by an Ohio jury in March (see