TVA Proposes New 500 MW Natural Gas Power Plant in Mississippi
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the U.S. TVA’s service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. TVA is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the U.S. Two years ago, MDN told you that TVA is spending over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines (see TVA Investing $1B to Build New Natgas-Fired Electric Plants). A number of those projects are underway. All of them are opposed (typically via lawsuits) by foreign-backed Big Green groups (see our TVA stories here). Yesterday, TVA announced another proposed new gas-fired power plant — this one in Mississippi.
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We spotted a pair of articles noting a decrease in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the U.S. energy sector in 2023. One of the articles, from the Bidenistas at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), credits an increase in so-called renewable power generation as the main reason for the decrease. The second article, from Philadelphia attorney Dan Markind, who writes about the Marcellus, properly credits the decrease in CO2 emissions to the retirement of coal-fired power replaced by natural gas-fired power. However, a chart in the EIA article caught our attention and is why we titled this post the way we did. The indisputable fact is that natural gas continues to dominate power generation (the #1 fuel for powergen), which is unchanged in 2024 and for the foreseeable future.
A team of researchers led by the University of Maryland claims they can now “fingerprint” methane to determine the source of where the molecules come from. Using isotopic variants, the researchers say they can distinguish fossil fuel sources of methane from microbial sources from swamps, landfills, and farms. If true, this is a new and welcomed development. First, the news, then a discussion of its importance.
In its assessment of global LNG supplies and natural gas stocks for the winter of 2023/2024, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says the world (and the U.S.) has enough natural gas to meet demand. However, there’s a big BUT… EIA says, “but risks remain.” What are those risks? Possible extreme weather and supply issues.
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More progress to report on finishing the 94% completed (now likely closer to 97% completed) Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. MVP needs to cross under Interstate 81 in Montgomery County, VA, and it’s no small challenge to drill under the highway because it’s solid rock. On Oct. 13, MVP (being built by Equitrans Midstream) filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to drill 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on the I-81 crossing. Last Tuesday, FERC approved it, although the approval comes with a few strings attached, like using special lights and monitoring noise levels.
An interesting dichotomy we sometimes (but don’t often) see: The NYMEX Henry Hub futures price is down (below $3/MMBtu) and heading lower, while spot prices (physical trading) of natural gas at various trading hubs around the country are going higher, especially in the Northeast. In both cases — the futures price and the spot price — the primary reason for moving down or up is the weather, which may seem contradictory. We will explain…
We spotted an article appearing on the PBS-backed Allegheny Front website supposedly reporting a story about Pennsylvania lawmakers looking for “best practices” to adopt in regulating the soon-coming hydrogen hub projects the state will see. PA will see some investment in hydrogen from two different hydrogen hub projects led by neighboring states (West Virginia and Delaware). The article wants you to think that PA lawmakers are reviewing and considering various regulations they might use to protect the public in this uncharted new territory of hydrogen energy. The real thrust of the article, however, is to push a leftist narrative that the hydrogen hubs should avoid using natural gas as the feedstock to produce hydrogen.
On November 16, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) agreed to Dominion Energy subsidiary Virginia Electric and Power Company’s petition requesting that FERC declare Dominion’s planned LNG production, storage, and regasification facility in Greensville County, VA, would be exempt from FERC jurisdiction under section 7 of the Natural Gas Act (NGA). The project includes a 25-million-gallon LNG storage tank, 15 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of liquefaction capacity, 500 MMcf/d regasification capacity, pretreatment facilities, and associated station yard piping.
Once a month, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) analysts issue the agency’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), their best guess about where energy prices and production will go in the next 12 months. Last month, the report predicted new all-time highs for natural gas production in 2023 (see 
A pair of analysts (authors/economists) have an article on the OilPrice.com website asking this question: Does the Natural Gas Industry Have a Future? They use data to paint a picture of a commodity (natural gas) that is, at best, in trouble. Why? The sales volume of natgas has gone up, but ever-so-slowly. The usage of natural gas by consumers to heat and cook is going down, especially in places that are banning it for those uses (like New York State). The picture painted by the authors appears to be pretty bleak. As usual, we have a different perspective.
Before heading out the door last Wednesday for the extended Thanksgiving holiday weekend, MDN checked to see if the various state environmental agencies had posted updates for new permits issued to drill shale wells. We found only a single permit issued, in Pennsylvania, for new shale wells among all three Marcellus/Utica states (nothing for Ohio or West Virginia). We figured maybe the worker bees had not yet entered the data, so we held back the report for the week of Nov. 13 – 19 new permits. We checked again yesterday morning, and then again this morning. And it’s still only that single PA permit, which is the lowest number of new permits issued in a single week in our extensive memory of tracking these things. We hope the dearth of permits is because of the holiday and is a fluke and not a new trend.
It’s been a financial roller coaster for oil and gas drillers over the past 15 years. Investors in shale oil and gas companies suffered for years with little or no returns for their invested money. Five of eight large Marcellus/Utica drillers saw their share prices decrease by an astonishing 85% or more from 2008 to 2019 (see 
Last Wednesday, before heading out the door for the Thanksgiving holiday, MDN brought you the sad (but not unsurprising) news that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro had decided to appeal a Commonwealth Court decision striking down his predecessor’s attempt to force the state to implement a multi-billion-dollar carbon tax, called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (see 
In January 2016, Invenergy announced its intention to build a natural gas-powered electric plant in rural Elizabeth Township, in Allegheny County, PA (see