Big Green Grifter McKibben Joins Fight Against Va. Gas-Fired Plant
Dominion Energy, a huge utility company and power generator headquartered in Virginia, recently dusted off its plan to build the Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center in the James River Industrial Center (see Dominion Plans to Build 1,000-MW Gas Peaker Plant Near Richmond, VA). The project includes building four 250-megawatt gas-fired power plants (1,000 MW total) that can jump into action during the coldest and hottest days of the year to help supply enough electricity for 250,000 homes on days when the sun doesn’t shine, and the wind doesn’t blow. A small group of antis (mostly from Big Green groups) recently gathered outside an elementary school to oppose the plan (see Small Group of Antis Oppose Dominion Chesterfield Peaker Plant). Their efforts to focus attention on the project failed, so they’ve called in “the big guns”–namely Bill McKibben, head of the radicalized 350.org.
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In 2015 Cunningham Energy, a small oil driller based in West Virginia, struck oil in the Big Injun sandstone formation in Clay County, WV (see 
At the end of May, WhiteHawk Energy, headquartered in Philadelphia with ownership of mineral and royalty interests for 850,000 gross unit acres and over 2,500 producing horizontal shale wells between the Marcellus and the Haynesville, sent a letter to the board and management of PHX Minerals, based in Fort Worth, Texas, owner of 75,000 leased mineral acres principally located in the SCOOP and Haynesville plays. The letter proposes marriage–a combination of the two companies. WhiteHawk received no response and tried again about three weeks later. Still nothing. So WhiteHawk has gone public to catch the attention of PHX shareholders, hoping to convince them to pressure PHX’s board–the M&A equivalent of a shotgun wedding.
Yesterday MDN editor Jim Willis had a nice chat with a renewing MDN subscriber (a landowner with wells and leases in Ohio). The question arose, “What do you see happening right now?” Jim’s response: “As long as the price of natural gas stays below $3, not much!” Jim made the point that price drives this industry, and ongoing prices in the basement aren’t helping. Can we get an amen? Both Jim and the subscriber agreed that gas prices may be heading higher soon. That conversation seems to have been prescient. Yesterday the front-month Henry Hub NYMEX futures price rocketed to a six-week high, close to $3 (closing at $2.96/Mcf). Are we finally going to go above, and stay above, $3 gas?
In May, the Bidenistas at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a hellscape of new regulations (681 pages) aimed at forcing coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to close (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. The latest monthly report, issued Tuesday, predicts that U.S. natural gas production AND demand will rise to record highs in 2023. EIA projected that dry gas production will rise to 103 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2023 and 104.12 Bcf/d in 2024. The current record high is 98.13 Bcf/d set in 2022.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: The future of gas in New Jersey; NATIONAL: Key Republican casts doubt on bipartisan permitting deal; At least 13 projects vie for $1.2B in carbon removal; House Dems urge SEC to set ‘strong and durable’ climate rule; Clean methanol gains momentum as a shipping fuel.
Coterra Energy, formed in 2021 by the merger of Permian oil driller Cimarex Energy and Marcellus gas driller Cabot Oil & Gas, issued its second quarter 2023 update yesterday. The company made far less profit in 2Q23 than it did one year ago, in line with other big Marcellus/Utica drillers. Coterra made $209 million in profit for 2Q23, versus $1.2 billion in 2Q22. Why the drop in profit? The crashing price of natural gas over the past eight months or so. Coterra received an average of $5.54/Mcf (before hedges) for its Marcellus gas in 2Q22, and $1.78/Mcf in 2Q23, a drop of 68%. Ouch. During a conference call with analysts, company management floated a potential plan to free up around $200 million from Marcellus operations in 2024 and reallocate it to other plays (the Permian or the Anadarko) by continuing to run just two rigs and one frac crew in the Marcellus.
Earlier this year, Roulette Oil & Gas LLC received approval from the federal EPA to build a shale wastewater injection well in Clara Township in Potter County, PA (see 
Greylock Energy is headquartered in Charleston, WV, with offices in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Wyoming and operations scattered throughout Appalachia and the Rockies. The company’s assets comprise more than 1.19 million acres, about 6,700 wells, including the operation of 4,000 wells throughout Appalachia (shale and conventional) and 2,600 miles of pipeline. Grelock has contracted with a company called Tachyus (headquartered in Houston, TX) to use its cloud-based greenhouse gas tracking and reporting service called Aurion. The purpose is, of course, to lower Greylock’s carbon and fugitive methane footprint–and to prove that it has lowered it.
One year ago, we reported the sad (and angering) news that U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a liberal Democrat from West Virginia, had betrayed his WV constituents and the entire country by secretly cutting a deal to vote for Joe Biden’s New Green Deal bill repackaged under the false and misleading name of the Inflation Reduction Act (see 
The left always twists language in its attempt to push its ideology and agenda–even in Christianity. The Pennsylvania-based Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), during its 15-year history, has supported every far-left environmental regulation proposed by the Democrat Party, and has criticized every conservative, Republican energy plan that allows for fossil energy to flourish in the Keystone State. That’s been our observation. They call themselves “Evangelical,” which is supposed to mean sticking to the teachings of the Gospel of Christ. Somehow they twist the word Evangelical into worshiping the mythology of man-made catastrophic global warming. They claim it is “creation care” to aggressively address global warming using anti-capitalist Marxist political ideology, like supporting the EPA’s plan to phase out all natural gas-fired power plants with new onerous regulations.
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?
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