Michigan Gas-Fired Plant Shuts Down Due to Noise, Vibration
Over 20 years ago, Indeck Energy floated a plan to build an electric generating plant (powered by natural gas) in Niles, Michigan, near Chicago. In 2016, those plans got serious (see $1B Electric Plant Planned Near Chicago, M-U Connection?). Indeck held an official groundbreaking ceremony in September 2019 (see Delayed Michigan Gas-Fired Plant Finally Begins Construction), and in September 2021, the plant began to generate electricity (see Michigan Gas-Fired Plant Finally Begins Producing Electricity). This week, the plant shut down, temporarily.
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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 
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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