SWPA Republican Rep. Sells Out, Turns Against Marcellus Industry
We’re naming names. Pennsylvania State Rep. Charity Grimm Krupa (Republican from Fayette County) has turned against the Marcellus industry. She is introducing legislation that would ban drilling new wastewater injection wells in the state, making it much harder to drill new shale wells. Companies end up drilling fewer wells without a place to dispose of the naturally occurring water that comes from shale (and conventional) wells for years after an oil or gas well comes online. Was Krupa always anti-drilling? Or has she recently lost her way? Either way, she needs to be vigorously opposed in this effort–and someone needs to primary her in the next election. She needs to go.
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The U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) is giving utility giant Duke Energy (mega profitable) and one of its natural gas suppliers, Williams (i.e., the Transco Pipeline, also mega profitable) $1 million of taxpayer money to do their jobs of monitoring for methane leaks. Dontcha love corporate welfare? Of course, if the government is going to blow taxpayers’ money on energy projects like uncompetitive and unreliable renewables, why not give a little love to fossil energy too, right? Still, it bugs us.
Carbon offsets are the same thing as carbon taxes. A carbon offset refers to reducing so-called greenhouse gas emissions by buying a credit from someone who plants trees or agrees not to cut down trees. A company gets to keep on polluting as long as it pays a tax to do it–pretending they are helping the precious environment by paying to plant or not chop down trees. It is the darnedest feat of mental gymnastics we’ve ever seen. Who thinks up this stuff? (Hey, wanna buy a bridge in Brooklyn? We have one to sell!) A new study by the leftists at the University of Cambridge published yesterday in the journal Science exposes the sale of carbon credits as a scam.
Bonus post today! Something we came across after completing our list of stories to write and share–but just too good to pass up. This story perfectly illustrates what has happened inside the Democrat Party from its fearmongering about climate change and demonization of fossil energy. A group of kids in their early 20s (thoroughly brainwashed from K-12 and now in college) showed up at a hoity-toity, very exclusive fundraiser for Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, herself a hardened anti-fossil fuel leftist. The kids crashed her party being held at a private Nantucket Island home. The kids demanded Healey shut down all new fossil-fuel projects in the Bay State, and demanded she answer “yes or no” right then and there to their demands. Healey demurred, and the wacko kids got loud and mouthy and had to be escorted out of the event. It came close to a fistfight between some of the older leftwing libs attending the event and the kids. Civil war in the Democrat Party.
New shale permits issued for Aug 14 – 20 in the Marcellus/Utica finally turned around. There were 27 new permits issued last week, way up from the 10 issued the prior week. Last week’s permit tally included 21 new permits in Pennsylvania, 2 new permits in Ohio, and 4 new permits in West Virginia (after no permits in WV for three weeks in a row). The top permittee for the week, for the second week in a row, was Chesapeake Energy, receiving 6 permits–5 in Bradford County and 1 in Susquehanna County.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Drought watch remains for 20 Pa. counties, lifted for 47 counties; Reformers say make Pa. state permits more like pizzas; Pennsylvania farmers benefit from strong natural gas industry; NATIONAL: GOP candidates embrace domestic energy production in first debate; Carbon capture faces several challenges to wider commercialization; INTERNATIONAL: IMF says fossil fuel subsidies hit record high in 2022; Citi says OPEC may need to cut again.
An Act of Congress (the Fiscal Responsibility Act) cleared away the remaining obstacles to completing the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (see 
Two Marshall County, WV landowners with the same last name (obviously related) sued Southwestern Energy (SWN), accusing the company of “well bashing,” in March of this year (see 
Two weeks ago MDN told you that eight “blue” states, including New Jersey (the Blue State Mafia), are challenging the Williams Regional Energy Access Expansion (REAE) project, a plan to beef up the Transco pipeline in Pennsylvania and New Jersey to deliver an extra 829 MMcf/d of Marcellus gas to PA, NJ, and Maryland (see 
In early 2021, MDN told you about a so-called “research report” issued by a front organization for the Heinz Endowments called the Ohio River Valley Institute (see 
The stench coming from inside the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is growing. Since early this year, Kevin Mooney, an investigative reporter with the PA-based Commonwealth Foundation and D.C.-based Heritage Foundation, has been digging into potential ethics (and legal) violations by FERC commissioners. His work has focused on FERC Commissioner Allison Clements, a former attorney for the radical National Resources Defense Council (see 
Hydrogen energy continues to interest those of us in the Marcellus/Utica (and elsewhere). Why? Billions of dollars are being thrown at companies as an incentive to make hydrogen energy the next BIG THING that can potentially replace evil, vile fossil energy. Thing is, 95% of all hydrogen comes from cracking methane (natural gas), a fact that drives the left crazy, and the reason why we love it (a huge new customer for M-U gas). Widespread use of hydrogen energy will only happen by mixing hydrogen with natural gas in existing pipelines. Except that’s a problem. Existing equipment can’t flow hydrogen–at least not over a 10% or so mix of hydrogen. But, maybe it can! A researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory says math can solve the problem. Math to the rescue!
Nearly one year after EQT announced a deal to buy privately-owned Tug Hill Operating’s West Virginia shale assets for roughly $5.2 billion (see