Va. Air Board Approves Gov. Youngkin’s Plan to Withdraw from RGGI
In 2021 as he was running for the office of Governor in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin pledged if he won, he would remove the state from the onerous carbon tax on coal- and gas-fired power plants called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). True to his word, after winning, Younkin pledged to ax RGGI with an executive order (see VA’s New Republican Gov Pledges to Cancel RGGI Carbon Tax). But then Virginia’s Democrat Attorney General declared Younkin could not just use an executive order to remove the state from RGGI (see Va. Gov. Youngkin Can’t Use Exec Order to Block RGGI Carbon Tax). It’s taken over a year, but Youngkin is now on the verge of keeping his RGGI promise following a vote by the Va. Air Pollution Control Board.
Read More “Va. Air Board Approves Gov. Youngkin’s Plan to Withdraw from RGGI”
A radicalized left-wing organization hellbent on forcing the end of fossil energy called Evergreen Action, along with another radical nonprofit called Ceres, partnered and paid a for-profit company called Synapse Energy Economics (that works exclusively for left-wing groups) to produce a completely sham and false “report” that (try not to laugh) claims Pennsylvania residents will pay less for their electricity under the onerous, Marcellus-killing Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax.
Yesterday a group of paid activists and climate zealots showed up at the White House to protest the debt ceiling bill provision that forces the completion of the 94%, very safe, Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. In what has to be one of the saddest things we’ve seen coming from the leftwing nutmob, one parent actually pushed her seven-year-old to the microphone to tear up and declare MVP would ruin the environment. Oh, and the kid doesn’t even live along the path of the pipeline! Not even in the same state!! That’s called brainwashing. What kind of parent scares their kid like this, telling them lies about a simple and safe natural gas pipeline? SHAME on you.
MiQ and Highwood Emissions Management (HEM) yesterday released the world’s first “open-access, measurement-informed methane intensity index” for the U.S. natural gas sector. The MiQ-Highwood Index™ estimates (and the keyword there is ESTIMATES) a methane emissions intensity of 1% leakage from the production sector alone, and 2.2% leakage for the entire natural gas supply chain. Those numbers exceed current national averages suggested by the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory and GREET natural gas pathway models. The aim of the new MiQ-Highwood Index is methane shaming–to shame producers and pipeline companies into spending gobs of money to prevent every last molecule of methane from “escaping” (like a fugitive) into Mom Earth’s atmosphere.
Last December, Rice Acquisition Corp II, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) started by the Rice brothers (Danny, Toby, and Derek), announced a deal to acquire NET Power–an electric power developer with revolutionary new technology to capture every last molecule of carbon dioxide from natural gas-fired power plants (see 
New shale permits issued for May 29-Jun 4 in the Marcellus/Utica finally went higher again last week. There were 25 new permits issued, up from the dismal 8 new permits issued the previous week. Last week’s permit tally included 13 new permits for Pennsylvania, 6 new permits for Ohio, and 6 new permits in West Virginia. EQT scored the most new permits with 7 issued in Greene County, PA. Close behind in the #2 position was Antero Resources, with 6 new permits issued in Ritchie County, WV.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Calif. will fall 21% short of power needed to meet 2045 EV mandate; NATIONAL: O&G companies jumping on hydrogen, but overrated; INTERNATIONAL: Macquarie group reveals oil market outlook; Russia ratifies agreement on natural gas supply with China.
Last week, the U.S. House and Senate voted to approve the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, to raise the debt ceiling. President Biden signed the bill on Saturday. A section in the bill forces federal government agencies and courts to complete all necessary authorizations to finish building the 94% completed Mountain Valley Pipeline (see 
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 EIA predicted an average price at the Henry Hub of $2.91/MMBtu for 2023, and $3.72/MMBtu for 2024 (see 
Last week MDN brought you the news that Northeast Natural Energy (NNE) has begun to drill a geothermal and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) data collection well as part of a study being conducted by West Virginia University and the U.S. Dept. of Energy (see 
Glenn O. Hawbaker, Inc., long known for providing stone quarries and asphalt plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio, also provides civil construction services for shale well sites. In August 2021, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced a plea deal with Hawbaker to pay back $20 million in alleged “stolen wages” from over 1,000 Hawbaker employees (see 
Here we go again. The shale-hating Democrats of the Pennsylvania legislature have floated a resolution to “study” how much money the Commonwealth is losing by not imposing an obscene severance tax on top of the existing impact fee (which is a severance tax by another name). Every single year Tom Wolf occupied the governor’s chair (eight loooooong years), his budgets insisted on including a Marcellus-killing severance tax. And every single year, the Republican-controlled legislature wisely refused. With a new Democrat governor, Josh “do nothing” Shapiro, and with the Dems now controlling the House (by a single vote), they are at it again–hoping to enact a Marcellus-killing severance tax. The first step is to “study” it…
Russia is not only an evil actor by invading a neighbor and murdering innocent civilians (Ukraine), for years, Russia has been an evil actor by funding Big Green groups that target U.S. domestic energy production. An expose running in RealClearEnergy details how Russia has funded organizations that have hired “journalists” to write propaganda against American energy companies. This one will make your blood boil…
In March, environmental radical Pat McDonnell of PennFuture, the former Pennsylvania Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), along with his best friend THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum, sued McDonnell’s former agency over permits the DEP issued to Williams to build the Regional Energy Access Expansion (REAE) project (see