Dominion Tests Hydrogen in Appliances in Ohio Mini-Village
Behind the Dominion Energy building in Hudson, Ohio, sits what’s being dubbed Hydrogen Heights. It’s a mini-village. The sign at the entrance says, “Welcome to Hydrogen Heights.” Dominion is testing the blending of hydrogen and methane on gas appliances there. We have nothing against using hydrogen as an energy source, other than it will never be able to power your home (see Why 100% Hydrogen Will Never Power Your Home; Why Antis Hate H2). But that’s not stopping utility companies like Dominion from experimenting to see how much of a blend they can get away with using in existing pipelines and appliances.
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Dominion Energy wants to build a liquified natural gas (LNG) storage facility in Person County, North Carolina, to enhance natural gas service reliability for residential and business customers in the growing region (see 
The Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) is a group of natural gas exporting countries, including Qatar, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela — terrorist-supporting countries led by thugs and dictators. Whoops! A little too much honesty there? We don’t normally track the actions and statements of the GECF. However, the group holds more than two-thirds of the world’s gas supplies (so they say). So you can’t totally ignore them. The GECF is predicting a “tight” LNG market worldwide until at least 2026.
One of the most important “fathers of fracking” you’ve likely never heard of before, Claude Cooke, passed away on Jan. 17 at the ripe old age of 94. Cooke is best known as the guy who invented ceramic proppant (beads) used in fracking. He invented it while working for Exxon in the seventies. The innovation allowed for drilling wells that are deeper and hotter than previously possible. It helped revolutionize fracking, especially when fracking was later married to horizontal drilling by George Mitchell, who also died at the age of 94 (see 
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According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Range Resources, the first driller to sink a Marcellus well back in 2004, has applied for and received a conditional use application to build three well pads in Fawn Township in Allegheny County, PA. The township secretary says a road into the property is now being built. Construction of the well pads is not expected “until the weather breaks.”
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the country. In 2021, MDN told you that TVA is spending over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines (see 
XTO Energy began to drill four shale wells in Prospect Borough, Butler County, PA, in 2019. At least one of the wells was drilled down to a depth of nearly 2,000 feet. At some point since that time, XTO decided not to finish the wells and filed a request to plug the wells. A Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) inspector visited the well pad, the Coretsky well pad, in September of last year and issued a “failure to plug” notice of violation for the four wells (called the Patton wells). Although it took a few months, XTO said the equipment would be delivered last week and that, as of today (Monday), the process would begin to cap and plug the four abandoned wells.
Just one week ago, the price of natural gas, both the futures price and spot (physical) price, jumped — in some cases by four times in the space of just a couple of days (see 
Spire Inc. is the owner and operator of the Spire STL Pipeline, a 65-mile pipeline that connects to and flows Marcellus/Utica gas from the Rockies Express (REX) pipeline in Scott County, IL, to residents and businesses in the St. Louis, MO area. Spire STL has been up and running since 2019 (see 
The Baker Hughes rig count gained rigs for the first time in three weeks last week. The count went from 619 active rigs two weeks ago to 620 last week — up a single rig. Better than nothing! The Marcellus/Utica count gained two (both in Pennsylvania) to land at 42 active rigs overall. PA had 21 rigs, up from 19, while OH maintained 13 rigs, and WV maintained eight rigs.
There were 23 new permits issued to drill in the Marcellus/Utica during the week of Jan. 8-14, versus 18 permits issued for the prior week. Pennsylvania issued 13 new permits last week. Ohio issued just 2 new permits. West Virginia issued 8 new permits — for the second week in a row. EQT scored the top slot for new permits, receiving 7 permits to drill in Lycoming and Greene counties in PA.
Shippers, including drillers, utility companies, and others that buy and sell natural gas, are now free to buy and sell producer-certified gas (PCG) or responsibly sourced gas (RSG) at all pooling points across the Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) system following a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (DC Circuit). The judges of the DC Circuit dismissed a case brought by Antero Resources and EQT Corporation attempting to block TGP’s plan. We will explain.
Horizontal directional drilling (HDD) is a form of trenchless drilling to install pipelines, like natural gas pipelines, underground without digging a big trench first. It uses directional drilling, similar to drilling a horizontal shale well, in order to install the pipeline. In 2018, Energy Transfer’s Sunoco Logisitics unit, which was building the Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline project at the time using HDD, and the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) settled a lawsuit with radicalized green groups, including THE Delaware Riverkeeper, the Clean Air Council, and the Mountain Watershed Association (see