Other Stories of Interest: Thu, Aug 31, 2023
NATIONAL: Boys & Girls Clubs of America national partnership with Chevron; Oil is going to $300 a barrel; Oil price calm might be deceptive; Shale E&Ps in high-gear consolidation: big fish seize top-tier acreage; Natural gas significantly more affordable than electricity; Is responsibly sourced natural gas about to take center stage?; INTERNATIONAL: LNG imports from Russia rise, despite cuts in pipeline gas; Three more countries began importing LNG this year, more will follow; U.S. LNG exports to take center stage at G7 meeting.
Read More “Other Stories of Interest: Thu, Aug 31, 2023”
A Repsol well located on a pad in Troy (Bradford County), PA, experienced uncontrolled natural gas venting. The situation began around 4 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 27. It continued to vent “sporadically” until about 2:30 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 28. Repsol called the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to report the situation at 2:02 a.m. on Monday. A DEP inspector was at the site within hours, at 5:55 a.m. The venting caused a brief evacuation order for several homes within a half-mile radius of the well pad, which was lifted hours later when the DEP determined the venting had stopped.
Last week, MDN brought you information about what happens next when (not if) the mighty 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline gets completed (see 
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. In typical fashion, Democrats oppose it (see 
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration is once again signaling its intent to block shale drilling in certain regions of the state by using a new “environmental justice” (it’s racist to drill there) policy. We told you about Shapiro’s intent two weeks ago when the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued new so-called environmental justice (EJ) policies to go into effect in September (see 
Is there now a truce in the long-running dispute between Epsilon Energy and Chesapeake Energy over drilling new wells in Susquehanna County, PA? Perhaps! Yesterday, Epsilon, a small publicly-traded energy company that joint venture partners with (gives money to) other companies, like Chesapeake Energy, with the other company doing the drilling, announced that “the operator of our upstream assets in the Marcellus recently notified us of near-term drilling plans on our acreage.” While not named, the “operator” must be Chessy. Epsilon has an ongoing lawsuit against Chesapeake for refusing to drill new wells on its jv acreage.
MiQ, one of four major certification authorities for so-called responsible gas, issued its First Half 2023 update yesterday to mark the organization’s major milestones. Among them, MiQ now claims it is THE largest methane emissions certifier in the country, certifying 20% of all U.S. natural gas production. MiQ continues to expand its geographical footprint, independently certifying 18 facilities from 11 natural gas producers during the first half of 2023. The organization also launched the world’s first comprehensive greenhouse gas certification and registry for LNG to enable buyers to track 100% of emissions along the supply chain.
In May, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to permanently restrict the powers of the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the agency’s attempt to control new construction throughout the country (including oil and gas construction) by gutting overly restrictive WOTUS (Waters of the United States) regulations issued by the EPA (see 
At the regular Murrysville, PA (Westmoreland County) town council meeting on August 16, the council voted to adopt Ordinance No. 1075-23, an ordinance amending the town code to add a provision allowing wastewater injection wells in the town. The new ordinance limits injection wells to properties zoned for business use. The prospective site must be at least five acres, and the well’s borehole cannot be within 250 feet of a property line. Other restrictions apply too. Needless to say, antis are not happy.
Two weeks ago, University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) researchers released three studies commissioned by the State Dept. of Health supposedly investigating whether or not there is a connection between shale drilling and childhood diseases, including cancer (see 
Last week, MDN told you about the great news coming from the Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia, Inc. (GO-WV) and its newest annual Gas Facts report covering the impact in WV from the shale energy industry in 2022 (see 
West Virginia University (WVU), the Mountain State’s public research university, is located in Morgantown, WV. Enrollment at all of WVU’s campuses at one point almost touched 30,000 students. Big university–important university. WVU has a major Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering program as part of the school’s Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources. However, WVU has a budget problem. Enrollment has been down some 5,000 students from 2014. That’s 5,000 fewer students paying tuition, resulting in a $45 million budget shortfall. So the school is cutting faculty and staff, and in some cases, eliminating programs like creative writing and foreign language studies.
The left is slowly, begrudgingly, but inevitably coming to the conclusion that so-called peak oil demand–the theory that other forms of energy will replace oil and that oil demand will diminish–is “pure fantasy.” Axios, founded by former POLITICO “journalists” and catering to Gen Z lefties with attention deficit disorder from growing up playing video games 24/7, ran a short article quoting research by “prominent analyst Arjun Murti,” who offers a sobering case for why “a global peak in oil demand may be very far away.” While the article doesn’t use this exact language, the upshot is that using oil for energy leads to human flourishing–lifting people out of poverty. Oil demand may slip in certain Western countries, but the use of oil for energy will continue to grow in third-world countries for decades to come.
A coalition of 1,609 scientists worldwide, including two Nobel Laureates, have signed a declaration stating “there is no climate emergency” and that they “strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy” being pushed across the globe. The declaration does not deny the harmful effect of greenhouse gasses but instead challenges the hysteria brought about by the narrative of imminent doom. Whoops! What happened to the mainstream media narrative that ALL real scientists believe in the hoax of catastrophic global warming? One more lie from the left is now exposed…