DC Hearing Exposes Corrupt Climate Litigation Financing by the Left
There’s some major corruption going on in the world of the left, and it got exposed last Wednesday at a Congressional hearing on Capitol Hill. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform held the hearing, chaired by Rep. James Comer (Republican from Kentucky). It was a hearing about a distortion of the justice system called third-party litigation funding (TPLF). It is the practice of a party with no direct stake in a lawsuit funding the plaintiff and the plaintiff’s lawyers as they pursue litigation. Example: billionaires like Michael Bloomberg and Big Green groups (funded in part by foreign countries like China and Russia) paying for lawyers for smaller green groups and mom-and-pop plaintiffs to repeatedly sue the oil and gas industry to block drilling and pipelines, or to force a change in regulations. There are, believe it or not, investment funds set up to invest in lawsuits! And the investors (the people with the money) can control whether or not the plaintiffs they are backing can or cannot settle the lawsuit. It is no longer about justice but about money. It is a GROTESQUE bastardization of the entire justice system. And it MUST STOP.
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OTHER U.S. REGIONS: California sues big oil demanding damages, relief; Venture Global says court battles not slowing company’s LNG projects; NATIONAL: RFK Jr says he would ban fracking in plan to tackle plastics pollution; Sorry, but the losers in Washington can’t pick energy winners; Biden attacks again in his war on oil, but prices bite back; In a bad omen for inflation, US oil prices top $90 a barrel.
Thanks to the good work of Pennsylvania’s Senate Republicans, residents and ratepayers across the Commonwealth have been spared a spike in their electricity rates for a seventh time. The state just missed the latest so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) “auction” that forces coal- and gas-fired power plants to pay obscenely high taxes to continue operating. As a bonus, missing the auction denies Democrats in Harrisburg millions of dollars in play money they can line their pockets with (and line the pockets of those who support them). That’s called a win/win!
In April 2019, President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) instructing the Environmental Protection Agency to review Section 401 of the Clean Water Act–the section that grants states (and tribes) the right to have a say in pipeline and other infrastructure projects (see 
U.S. LNG exports dropped in the week ending September 13 compared to the prior week because the Freeport LNG terminal shipped only one cargo during that time. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its weekly natural gas report that 18 LNG carriers departed the U.S. between Sept. 7 and Sept. 13, down by eight cargoes compared to the week before. As we reported yesterday, Freeport is known to have canceled at least 3-4 cargos over the past week (see 
Jennifer Granholm, former governor of Michigan and current Secretary of the U.S. Dept. of Energy under dementia Joe, sat before Members of Congress in a hearing and lied to their faces, which is called perjury. Granholm told Congress she does not own individual shares of stocks in companies. She and her husband, in fact, do own stocks. As Secretary of Energy, Granholm promoted companies in which she and her husband own stocks, using federal government money to enrich herself. It’s gross corruption, and it’s perjury. Granholm needs to go. Congresswoman Claudia Tenney from Upstate NY is calling for an impeachment inquiry of Granholm to help the process along.
Yesterday, the Potential Gas Committee (PGC) released its year-end assessment of the nation’s estimated natural gas resource base, “Potential Supply of Natural Gas in the United States,” at an event hosted by the American Gas Association. Experts from the PGC presented the current state of technically recoverable reserves in the United States, providing valuable information on a region-by-region basis. We have the executive summary below. Of particular interest for us was the finding that the U.S. has enough gas to supply current and future needs for the next 100 years! Yet we do not, says the PGC, have enough pipelines to flow it.
New shale permits issued for Sep 4 – 10 in the Marcellus/Utica continued to be in the crapper. There were 14 new permits issued last week, up 1 from 13 issued two weeks ago, and down from the 16 issued three weeks ago. Not so long ago we routinely saw 30+ issued each week. Last week’s permit tally included 8 new permits in Pennsylvania, no new permits in Ohio, and 6 new permits in West Virginia. The top permittee for the week was Antero Resources, which received six permits in WV.
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. The latest monthly report, issued Tuesday, predicts that U.S. natural gas production AND demand will rise to record highs in 2023. EIA projects that dry gas production will end up at 102.69 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2023 and rise to 104.93 Bcf/d in 2024. The current record high is 98.13 Bcf/d, set in 2022.
Three days ago, the feedgas (natural gas) flowing to the Freeport LNG export facility on Quintana Island, TX, dropped to roughly 622 MMcf/d, which is 31% of the facility’s normal capacity of 2 Bcf/d (see 
New Fortress Energy (NFE) plans to build an LNG liquefaction facility in Bradford County, PA–in the northeastern part of the state (see 
The nutters are out in full force, particularly in Pennsylvania, using fraudulent “studies” by the Ohio River Valley Insititute (ORVI) and (sadly) the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) to call for an end to the Marcellus industry in the great Keystone State. A recent “letter to the editor” appearing in the Sunbury (PA) Daily Item is a perfect example. On Sept. 3, the Daily Item ran an op-ed titled “Is fracking good for Pennsylvania,” concluding that it is not. It was written by a member of the Climate Reality Project, a far-left organization that irrationally hates fossil energy. The typical references were made to the fraudulent ORVI and Pitt studies. Ten days later, another op-ed appeared in the Daily Item, written by David Callahan from the Marcellus Shale Coalition, setting the record straight.