S&P Global De-Wokeifies – Dumps ESG Scores from Credit Ratings
S&P Global Ratings is a credit rating agency and a division of S&P Global that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks, bonds, and commodities. S&P is considered the largest of the Big Three credit-rating agencies, including Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings. In what can only be characterized as an earthquake in the so-called ESG movement, S&P Ratings announced it is ditching its system of numerically ranking corporate borrowers on their ESG risk on a scale of 1 to 5–just two years after implementing it. Why?
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NATIONAL: BlackRock and its ESG ‘voting choice’ ruse; Joe Biden’s bureaucratic land grab; Without a replacement, abandoning fossil fuels, supports China; INTERNATIONAL: The climate-friendly cows bred to belch less methane.
On July 11, the federal EPA held an online hearing to accept comments on a draft permit it intended to issue allowing G2 STEM to drill a proposed new wastewater injection well in Fayette County, PA (see 
Headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, WhiteHawk Energy was founded in 2021 to acquire mineral rights and royalty interests in U.S. shale plays. The management team of WhiteHawk has deep roots in the Marcellus, having founded Atlas Energy (a Marcellus driller) that was later sold to Chevron for $4.3 billion. In March 2022, MDN told you that WhiteHawk had purchased mineral and royalty rights in southwestern Pennsylvania, primarily in Washington and Green counties, for $52.5 million, covering 475,000 gross acres (see 
The League of [Liberal Democrat] Women Voters of Pennsylvania is “teaming up” with the leftist fanatics at Food & Water Watch to launch a zombie (i.e., form) letter-writing campaign, hoping to convince the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) NOT to award a $1 billion hydrogen hub contract for any application that includes the Keystone State (there are three such applications). Cause, you know, it would involve building more fossil fuel infrastructure in the state, and *everybody* knows that fossil fuels are Satanic. The Lib Dem groups are hoping if they can’t dazzle the DOE with brilliance, they can baffle them with mountains of Barbara Streisand form letters.
The so-called Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) is behind most of the lawsuits filed by municipalities around the country (cities, counties, states) against Big Oil & Gas companies, claiming fossil energy companies know and have known for years that using their products is toasting Mom Earth into oblivion. It is the most outrageous abuse of the justice system we know of. The lawsuits are instigated (and funded) by CCI and a litany of colluding nonprofits. Get ready in the Keystone State. CCI has partnered up with the Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council (CAC) and, by all appearances, is trying to convince government officials in PA to sue PA energy companies.
Equitrans Midstream, the builder of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project, proposed to extend the pipeline by an extra 75 miles from the current terminus in Pittsylvania County, VA, to Alamance County, NC, to provide natural gas for heating and electric generation. The extension is called MVP Southgate. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a liberal Democrat, is against it (see 
We read an article that breathlessly proclaimed North Carolina is on pace to generate more of its power from solar than from coal this year. It is, said the author, “another sign of the state’s energy transformation toward a greener future.” Release the party poppers! ? But as we read the article, we discovered solar only provides “roughly 8%” of NC’s electricity. Coal currently provides between 7% and 8%. The current champion is (and will be for decades) natural gas, which provides 40% of NC’s electricity. So much for NC’s “transition toward a greener [solar] future.”
There is trouble brewing along the Gulf Coast between Venture Global LNG and its biggest customers: BP, Shell, Edison International (an Italian utility company), Repsol, and GALP Energia (a Portuguese energy company). Venture Global is building the Calcasieu Pass LNG export facility in southwestern Louisiana’s Cameron Parish, less than 50 miles south of Lake Charles. While Venture Global is still working on completing Calcasieu Pass, it has, so far, shipped some 177 cargoes of LNG, much of that during the mega-high prices of last year when the Russia/Ukraine war was at its peak. Yet none of those cargoes went to the facility’s contracted customers, causing trouble.
Southwestern Energy, with major assets in the Marcellus/Utica and Louisiana Haynesville, issued its second quarter 2023 update late last week. The company generated $231 million in net income for the quarter versus profiting $1.2 billion in 2Q22. Like other gas drillers, the price of natural gas dropping into the basement over the past eight months or so has caused profits to slide. But hey, they’re still in the black! Southwestern reported total net production of 423 Bcfe (billion cubic feet equivalent), or 4.6 Bcfe per day, including 4.0 Bcf per day of gas and 106 MBbls (thousand barrels) per day of liquids (86% natgas, 12% NGLs, 2% oil). Southwestern invested $595 million of capital, drilled 38 wells, completed 46 wells, and placed 50 wells online to sales, including 28 in the Marcellus/Utica and 22 in the Haynesville.
In 2020, EOG Resources, one of the largest oil and gas drillers in the U.S. (with international operations in Trinidad and China), sold *all* of its Marcellus assets, which were located in Bradford County, PA, to Tilden Resources for $130 million (see 
For the fourth week in a row and the 13th time in the last 14 weeks, the U.S. active rig count lost rigs. It’s grueling. Last week the number decreased by five rigs after falling five rigs the week before–now down to 659 active rigs across both oil and gas. The Marcellus dropped one rig (in Pennsylvania) for a combined M-U rig count of 45–the lowest this year. Some 14 weeks ago, the M-U lost four rigs (going from 53 down to 49). Seven weeks ago, we lost another rig, down to 48. Last week we lost two more down to 46, and this week another. The trend is not our friend.
Equitrans Midstream owns two natural gas storage wells in the Swarts Complex and Hunters Cave Storage Fields area of Greene County, PA–in Center, Franklin, Morris, and Washington Townships. CONSOL Energy, which used to be part of CNX Resources but is now a standalone company focusing on the coal industry, plans to mine coal above and around the Equitrans Hunters Cave and Swarts Natural Gas Storage Fields over the next several decades. So Equitrans is proposing to abandon its two existing storage wells (near where CONSOL needs to work) and drill two new wells in the same vicinity–just not near CONSOL’s coal mining activities.