Other Stories of Interest: Thu, May 18, 2023
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Coterra management remains defensive, despite outlook; Antero Resources is simply one of the best; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: LNG lobbyists ghost wrote officials’ letters supporting gas storage project; NATIONAL: What does a 2023 US recession mean for oil and gas in the country?; Are we being deceived by this natural gas market?; Shale drillers are auctioning off rigs at bargain basement prices; ChatGPT ponders U.S. electric grid collapse; INTERNATIONAL: Ineos founder fears for North Sea future; Russia steals oil market share in Asia from energy allies; Chevron’s carbon capture flagship is stuck at one-third capacity; EU president lets the de-growth cat out of the bag; S.Africa circles back to shale gas as power crisis drags.
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In November 2021, the Bidenistas initiated a massive power grab to transfer the right of individual states to regulate local natural gas gathering pipelines to the federal government’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (see 
Zefiro Methane Corp.
Eastern Gas Transmission and Storage (EGTS), a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy company, provides natural gas transportation and storage services with one of the largest underground natural gas storage systems in the United States. Essentially EGTS is a pipeline network that connects to other pipelines to flow and store natural gas in six states: Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. An upgrade of an EGTS metering station in Plum (Allegheny County, PA, near Pittsburgh) is currently under construction and due to be complete “by summer.”
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the U.S. TVA’s service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. TVA is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the country. In July 2021, MDN told you that TVA is spending over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines (see 
JobsOhio
Lately, we’ve been closely monitoring the price of natural gas, looking for indicators as to when the price will quit bumping around near $2/MMBtu and go higher once again. Two days ago, we told you experts are predicting we’ve now hit bottom, and the price of natgas will begin to rise (see 
NATIONAL: EPA running roughshod over Congress and consumers; INTERNATIONAL: Japan embraces G7’s gas support but companies may face problems; India looks to lock in long-term LNG deals; Oil falls as Chinese demand growth slows.
A small bit of progress to report about the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), which stretches from Wetzel County, WV, to Pittsylvania County, VA. Yesterday the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) issued its latest (third!) approval for MVP to traverse a piddly 3.5 miles of the federally-owned Jefferson National Forest. We have no doubt that radicalized leftists will, once again, challenge this permit, and that the colluding three Democrat judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will overturn it. That is, unless so-called permitting reform is passed by Congress, removing the 4th Circuit’s jurisdiction over this project.
Yesterday the commodity price of the Henry Hub natural gas benchmark (the NYMEX front-month futures price) popped by 5%, rising 11 cents to close at $2.38/MMBtu. (Unfortunately, the price widget along the right side of the MDN website has not been updated. It still shows Friday’s closing numbers, even though it uses yesterday’s date.) We follow the price of gas regularly because (a) it affects how much in royalties landowners receive, and (b) it affects how profitable it is to drill, a good indicator of whether drilling will pick up or slow down. As we said yesterday, experts are predicting we’ve hit bottom, and the price of natgas will now begin to rise (see 
Three New York City pension funds–the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, the Teachers’ Retirement System, and the Board of Education Retirement System–were sued this week by municipal employees for breaching their fiduciary duty and divesting from fossil energy companies. The plaintiffs allege the divestments have resulted in the loss of billions of dollars that otherwise would have gone to retirees. The pension funds went woke and decided they could no longer support companies that (in their wrong opinion) are creating catastrophic, man-made global warming.
The Dept. of Energy (DOE) grants permission for LNG export facilities to ship LNG to non-free trade agreement countries. It can take years to sign up enough customers (via contracts) and investors to make a “final investment decision” (or FID) to move forward with a project that often approaches $20 billion. LNG builders need to know once the plant is built, it can actually ship to other countries. But the DOE grants its permission to export with a string attached: The plant must get built and begin shipping within seven years–or the permit expires. Until April, LNG builders would routinely ask for an extension to the seven-year period. In April, the DOE changed its policy and declined to extend a permit for Energy Transfer’s Lake Charles LNG project beyond seven years (see 
Inflation is a measure of the rate of rising prices of goods and services in an economy. Inflation can occur when prices rise due to increases in production costs, such as raw materials and wages. A surge in demand for products and services can cause inflation as consumers are willing to pay more for the product. But inflation can also be caused by the government printing and spending too much money. We refer to the current high inflation in our country as Bidenflation–caused by the Biden White House and colluding Democrats in Congress–because they passed massive, reckless spending bills. Much of that spending is being paid for by simply printing new money. When you have more money chasing the same amount of goods and services, prices go up. Inflation.