New York Makes a Serious Play to Grab $2B Regional Hydrogen Hub
It grieves us to write this, but New York State and its uber-leftist, very destructive Governor, Kathy Hochul, is running rings around Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia with respect to attracting one of four $2 billion hydrogen hubs. Hochul has just orchestrated adding two more states to what is now a six-state coalition aimed at grabbing the hub. In addition to six northeastern states, the NY coalition boasts the participation of 14 private sector industry leaders, 12 utilities, 20 hydrogen technology original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), ten universities, seven non-profits, two transportation companies, and three state agencies. There are over 60 partners cooperating to lay the groundwork for attracting the hydrogen hub to New York State.
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We’ve heard from a few MDN subscribers who think we’re being too hard on Joe Manchin and his sellout of the country in return for finishing the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. We don’t think so. The one thing everyone agrees on, those who support Manchin and the many of us who do not: It’s time to finish MVP…now.
Venture Global’s Calcasieu Pass LNG export facility in Louisiana shipped its inaugural cargo of LNG back in February (see 
We spotted a Reuters story with the headline, “U.S. oil & gas rig count falls for first time in 25 months – Baker Hughes.” We thought, “Oh oh, has the recovery in drilling finally peaked?” So we dug out the numbers for ourselves. We wanted to know how rig counts in the M-U (in PA, OH, and WV) are doing, as well as the total U.S. rig count. What we found is that the Reuters story is not accurate–one of the very few times we’ve observed Reuters being wrong about something.
You have to hand it to the wackadoodles of the Sierra Club–they sure are creative. They look for any way they can to block American fossil energy. They try to stop drilling for oil and gas via frack bans. They are behind many of the efforts to ban new customers from connecting to natural gas lines in “blue” cities (the ignorant fools fall into the trap almost every time). The Clubbers try to block the transportation of oil and gas by launching lawsuits against pipelines. And now, they are trying to block clean-burning American natural gas (far cleaner than any other gas extracted on the planet) from being exported to help our allies in Europe. The Clubbers and their radical brethren at a group called Healthy Gulf have challenged a “dredge and fill” permit granted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Driftwood LNG facility now under construction near Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Here’s a sobering (and startling) prediction: Within the next year, crude oil will likely hit $200 a barrel, translating to $10 a gallon at the pump. It will result in protests and demonstrations across the country and around the world. That’s the prediction of veteran financier and hedge fund manager Salem Abraham, who founded Abraham Trading Company over 30 years ago. Abraham says the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) coupled with a chronic underinvesting in fossil energy companies is why the price of oil is about to go haywire.
NATIONAL: DOE funds transforming energy production, low emissions tech; Firms make deals to boost LNG exports 60% from U.S., Canada, Mexico; INTERNATIONAL: Shell CEO warns energy crisis may last more than one winter; Musk says world needs more oil, gas as bridge to renewables.
Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) drills in the Greater Pittsburgh region, in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. Last year Olympus filed an application to build a new well pad in a rural part of Allegheny County, in West Deer Township. So-called “concerned citizens” (anti-fossil fuel zealots) got amped up to oppose the rural project (see 
In March, MDN told you that the Deputy Chief Administrative Law Judge of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) issued a ruling against the now completed Mariner East 2 pipeline project, assessing a $51,000 fine on the project for work done near an apartment complex (see 
The State of Florida has jumped on the divest-the-diverstors bandwagon. We have no doubt that Larry Fink, founder and CEO of the world’s largest investment firm, BlackRock, is now VERY concerned about the pushback he’s getting for pushing investors to divest from fossil energy companies. Two of the three largest states in the county (by population)–Texas and Florida–have decided to ban investments in funds that promote ESG–environmental, social, and governance. ESG is just another way of saying divest from fossil energy companies. And now the diverstors, like BlackRock and other Big Banks and Big Investment firms that divest, are themselves the targets for divestment. We love it!
BKV Corporation (Banpu Kalnin Ventures), the American shale drilling arm of Banpu of Thailand (Banpu owns 96% of BKV), originally entered the American shale sector by investing over $500 million in 2016-2017 to buy existing Marcellus wells and acreage in northeast Pennsylvania. Over the past seven years, BKV has become one of the top 20 gas-weighted natural gas producers in the U.S. BKV is now (with recent purchases) the largest natural gas producer in the Barnett Shale. The company is on a mission to be so-called net zero emissions (Scopes 1 & 2) by 2025. One of the ways the company plans to do it is by using ESG technology from Verde Co2 CCS, LLC.
Apparently, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf told a fib on Feb. 1 of this year when he said PA had received an initial $25 million cash infusion from the federal government’s new (so-called) infrastructure law for use in plugging orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells (see 
Using rational arguments and facts and science to make the case that natural gas and natgas pipelines benefit the environment is akin to spitting in the wind when talking with environmental leftists. But we suppose the effort must be made–at least for appearances. Such is the case in New Jersey, where representatives from several utility companies and an academic think tank patiently, rationally, and carefully lay out the case for how using natural gas and gas pipelines will help NJ achieve its so-called clean energy targets by 2050. The utility reps and think tank use the intellectual equivalent of baby talk so nutty lefties in the Garden State will understand what’s being said. Is it all just spitting in the wind? Probably.