NY Gov. Hochul Loses Her Mind – Wants to Ban Gas in New Buildings
Gov. Kathy Hochul is proposing to make New York the first state in the U.S. to ban natural gas heating and appliances in new buildings as a way to fight mythical man-made global warming. During her state-of-the-state address on Tuesday, Hochul proposed to ban the use of fossil fuels for heating and appliances (stoves) in homes by 2025, and a ban for businesses and larger structures (like apartment buildings) by 2028. New York would also prohibit the sale of any new fossil-fuel heating systems starting in 2030. Yes, she has certifiably lost her mind.
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NATIONAL: Chris Leitner leads Tenaska as new CEO; President Biden says no to gas stove ban; Crude oil prices forecast to decline beginning in the second half of 2023; Public shale drillers best private rivals in race to deploy rigs; INTERNATIONAL: Oil majors investing 8 times less in hydrogen than in biofuels; Europe still attracting majority of US LNG despite price plunge; The post-everything energy market.
West Virginia’s annual 60-day legislative session begins today. Yesterday, in preparation for the new session, the state’s Revenue Secretary, Dave Hardy, and Deputy Secretary, Mark Muchow, gave a report on the state’s finances to the Joint Committee on Finance. Hardy said state surpluses from taxes (particularly the severance tax) are “eye-popping and they’re historic numbers.” The high price of natural gas has led to record severance tax collections in the Mountain State. Halfway through the fiscal year, severance tax collections are up 113%. State revenue is up 21% year-to-date because of high severance tax collections. But, will the severance tax gravy train continue?
In a modern twist on an old story, the little town of Bethlehem (this one in Pennsylvania) provided a savior this past Christmas–in the form of a natural gas-fired power plant. The Bethlehem Energy Center, owned by Calpine, received permission (indeed, strong encouragement) from the U.S. Dept of Energy (at the request of the PJM grid operator) to “ramp up production” of electricity while other gas-fired power plants that are part of the PJM system began to fail due to the super-cold weather. Bethlehem powered up, keeping the lights (and heat) on Christmas Eve. Otherwise, Pennsylvanians living in the Lehigh Valley would have frozen their derrieres off. Marcellus gas as savior. Has a ring to it, eh?
Once a month, the analysts at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 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 or so. We sometimes poke some good-natured fun at the EIA because one month, their predictions go up, the next month, down, etc. What about the latest STEO dart board, published yesterday? EIA predicts average natural gas production will be 100.34 Bcf/d in 2023 and will go even higher to 102.29 Bcf/d in 2024. The current all-time high was 98.02 Bcf/d, and that was last year. As for the commodity price of gas, EIA says the Henry Hub spot price will average $4.90/MMBtu in 2023, down from $6.42/MMBtu in 2022.
The Better Path Coalition is a mish-mash of the some of the most radical leftwing “environmental” groups in Pennsylvania, including THE Delaware Riverkeeper, 350 Philadelphia, EcoJustice Working Group, Freshwater Accountability Project, and many more. Some of their members are not beyond committing crimes in the name of supposedly saving the planet (see 
Residents living in the vicinity of Energy Transfer’s Revolution Pipeline cryogenic plant in Bulger (Washington County), PA, got a nasty “present” on Christmas morning. Around 7:30 am, residents report hearing an explosion, followed by a fire, at the plant used to separate NGLs (natural gas liquids, including ethane, propane, and butane) from the raw gas stream that flows through the Revolution gathering pipeline (see 
Natural gas stoves are used in roughly 40% of households in the United States. The hard-left Bidenistas who control the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission are floating a trial balloon that they want to ban them all, forcing you (if you have one) to replace it with an electric stove. The stated reason for forcing a change is that gas stoves supposedly emit cancer-causing, and asthma-causing, chemicals. The Bidenistas are attempting to use fear as a weapon to convince people to go along with this tyranny. Don’t let them.
Yesterday we told you that the Pennsylvania-blessed effort by Shell and Equinor to build (at taxpayers’ expense) a so-called hydrogen hub in PA has received the Dept. of Energy’s blessing (“encouragement”) to submit a full application (see 
As we point out in a companion article today, the West Virginia concept paper to build a hydrogen hub in the Mountain State (endorsed by both Ohio and Kentucky) was approved, which now leads to a horse race with Pennsylvania and that state’s effort to do the same thing. Some 95% of the hydrogen created today comes from cracking natural gas. A hydrogen hub has the potential to be a HUGE new customer of Marcellus/Utica gas. That is, IF we don’t blow our opportunity to grab one of these hubs in our region. It would be better if PA joined the WV plan to present a united application for the entire M-U. But it seems that will not be the case. One of the two plans will win, and the other will lose. It could have been different. May the odds be ever in your favor.
Olympus Energy wants to drill six wells on a single pad in rural Elizabeth Township, a borough in Allegheny County on the east bank of the Monongahela River. The pad would sit about 2,400 feet (nearly half a mile) away from Elizabeth Forward High School. Some of the parents of students, and some of the administration, pushed back against Olympus’ drilling plan, using the kiddies as an excuse (see