PA Sen. Yaw Intros Bill to Kill RGGI Carbon Tax Once and For All
Pennsylvania State Senator Gene Yaw recently announced the introduction of legislation to repeal the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax enacted through an executive order by the Wolf Administration in 2019. RGGI, a multi-state compact, would increase electricity rates for PA consumers, cut energy and manufacturing jobs, and lead to the closure of Pennsylvania power plants. It would be an unmitigated disaster for the Marcellus industry. PA Republican Senators sued to block the measure and won in Commonwealth Court. Current Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro then appealed the lawsuit to the PA Supreme Court, where it still sits (see PA Gov. Shapiro Proves He’s Radical Left – Appeals RGGI Decision). Yaw’s bill would make the Supreme Court case moot.
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Last November, Northern Oil and Gas, Inc. (NOG), a company that invests in non-operated oil and gas assets (they let others do the drilling), announced a deal to enter the Utica Shale (see 
TC Energy, formerly TransCanada, is a huge pipeline company headquartered in Canada. TC owns and operates the Columbia Gas Transmission and Columbia Gulf Transmission pipeline systems in the Marcellus/Utica region. Yesterday, TC announced that it plans to move its regional headquarters from Kanawha City (a neighborhood in Charleston, WV) to downtown Charleston and build a new $60 million building in the process. TC said the existing 110,000-square-foot former CASCI building will be demolished and replaced with a new building, with construction expected to be complete in 2025 and employees moving in by 2026.
The pressure on Joe Biden to renounce his so-called pause on approving new LNG export projects is growing white-hot intense. On Friday, Jan. 26, Biden announced he has put “a temporary pause on pending decisions of Liquefied Natural Gas exports” (see 
There is a mountain of controversy over Biden’s pause on approving new LNG export permits to non-free-trade countries (see our story today, Intense Pressure on Biden from All Sides to End LNG Approval Pause). Even though the Dept. of Energy (DOE) has said it will not issue any new export permits for the next year for the 17 projects currently in the pipeline that have requested such permits (while it conducts a so-called review), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will likely continue to work on those projects.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Utica Shale Academy purchases building for $500K; NATIONAL: Two cry babies quit U.S. Export-Import Bank over fossil fuel plans; Buffett-backed Occidental CEO says oil shortage by 2025; An NGI primer for understanding the LNG export pause; Exploring the drivers of burgeoning upstream consolidation; INTERNATIONAL: Could the Red Sea remain a no go route for years?; Germany paves way for major expansion of gas power plants.
In late 2015, MPLX (i.e., Marathon Petroleum) bought out and merged in the Utica Shale’s premier midstream company, MarkWest Energy, for $15 billion (see 
In January, MDN told you about a long-closed landfill that seeks to reopen in Liberty and Pine Townships, in Mercer County, PA (see 
On Friday, MDN told you that several New York Democrat legislators were introducing 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 
Last Thursday, members of the Pennsylvania Senate, including PA State Sen. Gene Yaw, and members of the Ohio General Assembly met in Columbus for a hearing on energy reliability, sustainability, and affordability. The hearing consisted of two panels, one focused on state and national energy impacts and another on consumer and generational impacts. PJM, the organization that manages the mid-Atlantic power grid consisting of 13 states and the District of Columbia, testified. Indeed, the main thrust of the meeting seemed to be how to keep the growing PJM grid from crashing into blackouts because of an overreliance on unreliable renewables like solar and wind.
Natural gas-fired power plants in the Garden State of New Jersey provide roughly half of the electricity used by NJ residents. Yet NJ’s Democrat politicians are proposing to put a measure on the fall ballot to amend the state’s constitution to make it illegal to build any new gas-fired power plants in the state. Can you believe it? Are they stark…raving…mad? They might as well say they’re going to ban electricity!
Last week, MDN told you about a “clerical error” by a third-party vendor in calculating the new formula for natural gas property tax valuations in West Virginia that caused newly producing natural gas wells to be undervalued, leading to the loss of millions of dollars for the counties that see the most shale drilling (see 
In line with our theory that we have hit the bottom of the rig count and now bounce up a few and down a few, last week, the Baker Hughes rig count lost rigs. The count went from 621 active rigs two weeks ago to 619 last week — down two rigs. It went up a single rig the week prior. We’re just sitting and bouncing, staying roughly even at around 620 active rigs. The Marcellus/Utica remained constant last week with 42 active rigs. However, our rival, the Haynesville, lost two rigs and now sits at 40 active rigs. Yes! We have two more rigs than our competition!
There were 27 new permits issued to drill in the Marcellus/Utica during the week of Jan. 22 – 28, versus 20 permits issued during the prior week. Pennsylvania issued 19 new permits last week. Ohio issued 5 new permits. West Virginia issued 3 new permits last week. Olympus Energy scored the most new permits with 7, all of them in Westmoreland County, PA. Apex Energy came in second with 6 new permits, also in Westmoreland. In fact, Westmoreland County, in southwestern PA, received 15 new permits last week, by far the most of any county.