PA Gov Shapiro Puffs His Chest to Announce Plugging 200 Old Wells
The blowhard Democrat Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, took a bow last year to tout that “his” administration (as opposed to the Democrat who preceded him, Tom Wolf) had plugged more than 130 abandoned old oil and gas wells in the state, more than “the previous eight years combined” (see PA DEP Spending $44M This Yr, $76M Next Yr to Plug Orphaned Wells). The blowhard is back, puffing his chest out to announce the number is now 200.
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Last month, MDN told you that several New York Democrat legislators introduced a new bill to ban the use of carbon dioxide (CO2) in any process to extract natural gas or oil in the Empire State (see 
Venture Global has been defrauding its contracted customers for more than two years by not officially christening its Calcasieu Pass LNG export facility in Louisiana as officially open for business, denying customers cargoes under contracted prices. Yet during that time, Venture Global has exported (on the spot market) more than 250 LNG cargoes! It’s a sham, and everybody knows it. Venture Global got the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to extend the “must officially be open by date” for an extra year last year (expired Feb 21st of this year). Unbelievably, Venture Global wants FERC to extend it for ANOTHER year (see 
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: AES files to convert last coal units to natural gas; NATIONAL: U.S. propane exports established a new record in December 2023; Analysts see US gas storage surplus widening as mild weather persists; SEC’s destructive climate gambit; INTERNATIONAL: Shell considers slowing its carbon emissions cuts; Europe’s secret weapon in its energy war with Russia; Rystad says OPEC+ production rose month on month; Climate bureaucrats give China a free pass.
HG Energy drills for natural gas and oil in the Marcellus/Utica. The company, headquartered in Parkersburg, WV, is backed with private equity money managed by Quantum Capital Group (formerly Quantum Energy Partners). One of the companies co-investing in HG is Elliott Management, a so-called activist investor. The Wall Street Journal reports Elliott has just ponied up an additional $500 million (half a BILLION dollars!) to a fund managed by Quantum aimed at “retiring previous vehicles” that fund HG. In other words, retire older IOUs with newer IOUs. Elliott wants to grow its share of ownership in HG.
Yesterday, the big news broke that driller EQT Corporation is reuniting with pipeline company Equitrans Midstream (see 
Yesterday, EQT Corporation announced a deal to buy its former midstream division, now called Equitrans Midstream, for roughly $5.46 billion (see 
On February 8, 2024, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued a notice of violation (NOV) to Blackhill Energy for failing to prevent the migration of shale gas into groundwater that contaminated three nearby private water wells in Springfield Township (Bradford County) in June of 2022. Yes, the NOV took nearly two years to get issued. We’re not sure why it takes so long to issue an NOV (perhaps a full investigation takes that long?), but it does. Blackhill self-reported the issue back in 2022 and presumably has already corrected it.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan used a considerable amount of fossil energy and emitted tons of carbon dioxide to jet over to Dubai in December to participate in the COP28 confab, where he released a final rule that was “two years in the making” to force the U.S. oil and gas industry to cut methane emissions by using budget-busting new technologies and onerous (frequent) inspections (see 
In February, MDN brought readers the news that Tenaska, one of the largest privately operated companies in the U.S., is building a carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) hub spanning tens of thousands of acres in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia (see 
Last week, the Baker Hughes rig count lost seven rigs after gaining three rigs the week before. The count went from 629 active rigs two weeks ago to 622 last week. The national count has consistently stayed between 620 and 625 (or one or two above or below that range) since last October until recently, when it went higher for a few weeks. But now it’s back in the same long-term range. The Marcellus/Utica remained the same last week with Pennsylvania at 24 rigs (the most since last June), Ohio with 12 rigs, and West Virginia with 8 rigs. The M-U combined is running 44 rigs, which it has run in four of the last five weeks.