Energy Elephants in the Room – J.P. Morgan 2022 Annual Energy Paper
Each year Michael Cembalest, the Chief Investment Officer at J.P. Morgan asset management, publishes a report on the state of the global energy space. It is a comprehensive assessment of the state of play in the world of energy, chock full of charts and data related to every industry segment. This year’s 2022 Annual Energy Paper, subtitled, “The Elephants in the Room” (full copy below), begins with a summary of the energy landscape, including the energy crisis in Europe, the recovery in the oil and gas sector, and a warning label on industrial electrification and carbon sequestration forecasts.
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OTHER U.S. REGIONS: The legal clash over a city’s landmark natural gas ban; Virginia Natural Gas hiring the next generation of workers to energy industry; NATIONAL: Puerto Rico gets Jones Act waiver for LNG shipments; INTERNATIONAL: Dozens of LNG-laden ships queue off Europe’s coasts unable to unload; Saudi prince sends threat after Biden warns of consequences for kingdom; China has stopped sales of LNG to Europe.
Here’s the latest ingenious way radicalized anti-fossil fuelers are attempting to cut off and strangle the Marcellus and Utica shale industry: Deny drillers any kind of means to dispose of the brine (naturally occurring water from the depths) that comes out of the borehole for years after a well is drilled. One of the best, most environmentally safe ways to dispose of brine is via injection wells. Antis are trying to strip Ohio’s right to regulate injection wells in the Buckeye State, hoping if the feds take over, many of those wells would get shut down.
The second-largest LNG export terminal in the U.S., Freeport LNG, located near Galveston, Texas, experienced an explosion and fire in early June (see 
More states are looking to divest state pension funds from BlackRock and other woke ESG investment banks that push anti-fossil fuel agendas. BlackRock, the largest investment firm in the world with some $10 trillion under management, is hemorrhaging customers. Last week we told you that South Carolina had joined Louisiana, Texas, West Virginia, and Florida in announcing it is divesting its state pension funds from BlackRock (see 
ESG investing is a euphemism from the left that means divesting from fossil energy companies. ESG investing has become all the rage in recent years. We have shared a number of articles about large pension funds in places like New York City divesting from fossil energy companies. As is typical, California is way ahead of the rest of the country in this regard. The huge California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), with $479 billion in assets under management, has been investing using ESG guidelines for more than a decade. A recent Wall Street Journal article revealed CalPERS has lost huge amounts of money by focusing on ESG investing (see 
This is how deeply global warming brainwashing has gone in our children. A couple of kids (judging from media pictures) who belong to a fringe group called Just Stop Oil want to influence the British government to stop ALL new oil and natural gas projects–onshore and offshore. The tactic chosen by the kids to convince the adults to stop all new drilling was to throw tomato soup on a priceless Vincent van Gogh painting called “Sunflowers” in London’s National Gallery last Friday.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has assessed a $670,000 fine plus extra “cost recovery” charges of nearly $30,000 against the Shell Pipeline Company for work done between 2019 and 2021 on Shell’s Falcon ethane pipeline project. The DEP says that a series of inspections showed “failure to comply” with this paperwork requirement and that paperwork requirement. There were a few instances of erosion into “waters of the commonwealth.” But in the end, the DEP acknowledges, “no visual aquatic impacts were observed.” No muddy water. No dead fishies. No dead salamanders. No dead nothing. In other words, the DEP fined Shell for nothing–no lasting impacts on the environment from the work done to construct the Falcon pipeline.
In March 2019, MDN told you about a new Williams plan to beef up the Transco pipeline in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to deliver an extra 829 MMcf/d (originally 1 billion cubic feet per day) of Marcellus gas to PA, NJ, and Maryland (see 
Two days ago, MDN told you that the Apostle of LNG, Toby Rice (CEO of EQT), had convinced his buddies at Williams and TC Energy (two pipeline companies) to join him in his latest effort to push for more U.S. LNG exports (see 
Capital from private investors and banks is leaving (or rather, not entering) the Marcellus/Utica region and is, instead, heading to the Gulf Coast–in particular, capital investment is heading to the Haynesville Shale in Louisiana and East Texas. That was the observation of several speakers at the recent Hart Energy America’s Natural Gas conference. According to Kevin Little, senior vice president for natural gas at Macquarie Energy, the lack of pipelines and infrastructure in the M-U is not just keeping the gas in the region, the lack of pipelines is keeping investment (for more drilling) out. Here is the real tragedy: “U.S. LNG export capacity is primed to ramp up and the largest, most economic natural gas basin [the M-U] is left out of the action, unable to increase production to meet the higher demand.”
Last year 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 
President Joe Biden has, on many occasions, stated that the U.S. would step up LNG exports to help our European friends (see