PA DEP Playing Beat the Clock with VOC Reg for Conventional Wells
In July, the PA Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) voted 5-0 to approve Part I of the final Environmental Quality Board (EQB) regulation that supposedly will capture every last molecule of stray methane that leaks from shale drilling operations (see PA IRRC Approves Onerous VOC/Methane Regulation for Shale Ops). The onerous new regulation, adding new layers of reporting and new equipment requirements (that won’t change a thing) was supposed to already be in effect, but the House Energy committee in August voted to disapprove of the unconventional regulations, setting up a possible delay. The EQB, part of the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), was supposed to have developed a separate set of regulations for conventional wells, but has dithered on that front as well. The whole thing is a mess and risks blowing $500-$750 million dollars in federal highway funds.
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Equinor, Norway’s largest oil company (state-owned, used to be called Statoil before they became ashamed to have the word “oil” in their name), announced it had achieved 100% certification for its natural gas produced in the Ohio Utica using Equitable Origin’s EO100™ standard. Equinor now produces “responsible” natural gas for its 27,000 operational net acres, and 242,000 non-operational net acres. Congrats!
We’re confused. The State of Connecticut has been on a holy mission to eliminate natural gas-fired power plants in the state. In January of this year, Connecticut’s weak governor, Ned Lamont, gave in to radicals and helped torpedo a 650-megawatt, gas-fired plant slated to be built in eastern Connecticut (see 
Each month the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) publishes a huge report called Natural Gas Monthly. Last Friday, EIA issued the latest (September 2022) edition of the report. There is a LOT of information in the report–statistics, data, charts, you name it. And the report covers not just the U.S., but natural gas flows for all countries around the world. One aspect of the report deals with prices. The analysts at EIA excerpted some of that information into a post on the agency’s Today in Energy website, comparing the price of natural gas for both residential and commercial customers this year with the five-year rolling average. In real terms, the 2021 annual residential price was the highest since 2014, and the commercial price was the highest since 2015. It looks like we will fly by those statistics in 2022.
It doesn’t take much these days to buy yourself a “study” that shows what you want it to show. So-called scientists are for hire all over the place. Take, for example, “researchers” at Stanford University and the University of Arizona. All that the far-left Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) had to do was put some money into the pockets of a couple of “researchers” from those schools, and voila! A new “peer-reviewed” study was published yesterday that claims natural gas gathering pipelines (in the Permian Basin) leak like sieves. Oh yeah. It’s FAR worse than anyone had ever thought. All that methane is leaking and toasting Mom Earth, and the villain is gathering pipelines. What a load of…
The world is currently in the midst of its third great energy crisis. The first came in 1973 (remember the long gas lines?) when the U.S. sided with Israel in the Yom Kippur war. OPEC (an enemy of Israel and the U.S.) tried to punish us by cutting off oil shipments. We should have learned back then. We didn’t. Near the end of the 1970s, when Islamic fundamentalists took over in Iran, we experienced our next great energy crisis (prices for oil doubled). And now, in 2021/2022, we are in the throes of our third worldwide energy crisis. But this time it is different. Instead of Middle Eastern despots being at the root of this crisis, it is self-inflicted–an irrational war against fossil energy by Joe Biden and those aligned with him on the environmental left.
NATIONAL: USA diesel demand bounces back with a vengeance; The great risk in pushing every home off natural gas; Oil prices have moved lower with SPR releases, but production still lags; U.S. gas at $4-$5 is a thing of the past, says Tellurian chairman; INTERNATIONAL: Fitch Solutions offers OPEC+ prediction; Global gas markets to remain tight next year amid supply squeeze; More U.S. LNG heads to Europe despite output constraints; LNG shipping rates ‘shooting for the stars’ at $500,000 per day.
MDN Editor Jim Willis had the honor of presenting today at the Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Landowner Alliance (
Nearly two years ago, Gov. Tom Wolf announced a $2.5 million contract had been awarded to the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health to “conduct research on the potential health effects of hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania” (see 
According to a column by a Reuters analyst, U.S. natural gas production will need to increase significantly to continue growing LNG exports while ensuring natgas remains affordable for domestic electric power producers, households, and industrial users. This is the first article (we’ve seen) that puts numbers to the claim that LNG exports are beginning to drive the price of domestic natgas to higher levels.
Princeton University’s endowment, the fourth largest in the U.S., is bowing to cancel culture and is going to divest any holdings it has in some (but not all) fossil energy companies, including Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy. Princeton is in good company with other Ivy League dunces, including Cornell University (see 
In September, EQT Corporation announced it is buying Tug Hill Operating’s West Virginia shale assets for $5.2 billion (see 
There’s ESG, and then there’s ESG. We’ve tried to make this distinction a number of times, and will use the latest ESG report issued by Antero Resources to make the distinction again. When a huge (very important) company like Antero Resources, a natural gas driller focused on West Virginia, talks about ESG (or Environmental, Social, and Governance), it’s talking about all of the things the company does to prove to wackos that it behaves in an environmentally responsible manner when extracting hydrocarbons out of the ground. When the wackos talk about ESG, they mean (a) get everyone to divest from fossil energy, and (b) if a company happens to be in the fossil energy business, it needs to move away from extracting oil and gas and toward investing in sketchy so-called renewable energy sources.
In August, Jennifer Granholm, hands down the most incompetent Secretary of Energy ever to hold the office, sent a letter to seven major refinery companies threatening them that if they don’t scale back exports of gasoline, diesel, and other liquid petroleum products, Granholm will have old dementia Joe whip up an executive order slapping a ban on such exports (see 