PA Legislature Could Block RGGI Carbon Tax by Passing SB 106
If you live in Pennsylvania and listen to (or read) the media at all, you have likely heard about Senate Bill 106. The “short title” for the bill is this: “A Joint Resolution proposing separate and distinct amendments to the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, providing that there is no constitutional right to taxpayer-funded abortion or other right relating to abortion; further providing for action on concurrent orders and resolutions, for Lieutenant Governor and for qualifications of electors; and providing for election audits.” Yeah, not so short. The bill is aimed at amending the PA Constitution to cover several important issues.
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The Freeport LNG export facility, located in Quintana Island, Texas, has been offline since June due to an explosion and fire. Liquefying just over 2 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) of natural gas, including some Marcellus/Utica gas, Freeport is the second largest LNG exporter in the country. Three weeks ago, Freeport announced the plant would be mostly back online and producing 2 Bcf/d sometime in October (see 
Revenue, free cash flow, and even profitability for Marcellus/Utica drillers (in fact, pretty much all oil and gas drillers) were through the roof in the second quarter of 2022. Rising oil prices and surging natural gas realizations drove per-unit revenues to a 15-year high. Almost all of the extra money coming in went to the bottom line. What about the third quarter that we’re now in? RBN Energy reports “clouds are emerging on the horizon for U.S. E&Ps in the third quarter.” What clouds?
The number one source of electric generation in the United States is natural gas. Contrary to renewables zealots who blabber on about how wind and solar are taking over in generating electricity, the reality is far different. Natural gas, and coal, and even oil (i.e. fossil fuels) continue to be THE dominant source of fuel to generate electricity. Natgas has been and remains #1, king of the hill. And natgas’ role GREW in July, according to the Biden-controlled U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
The recently-adopted Manchin-Schumer so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which is a toned-down version of the Build Back Better/Green New Deal proposal of last year, is supposed to save Mom Earth from toasting to death. That’s what all the Big Green groups and Democrat politicians say. You could hear a collective sigh of relief that Joe Biden has saved the planet. The reality? When you plug the numbers into the United Nations climate model to measure the impact on global temperature by 2100, you find that the Manchin-Schumer bill, in the most optimistic scenario, will lower worldwide temperatures by 0.028 degrees Fahrenheit. In other words, it doesn’t lower temps AT ALL. What the new law does do is transfer hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money to corporate Democrat cronies in the renewable sector. It’s sickening.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: John Fetterman proposes prosecuting oil executives for high gas prices; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Ex-Chesapeake CEO becomes Continental president; Texas O&G upstream jobs topped 200,000 in July, first time since March 2020; INTERNATIONAL: Russia LNG plant scraps cargo to Asia buyer.
We’re carefully watching for the day when the futures price of Henry Hub natural gas passes the important psychological barrier of closing above $10/MMBtu. We came close yesterday. Early yesterday the NYMEX September (“front month”) contract shot up to an intraday high of $9.98. But ultimately, the price closed at the end of the day at $9.68, which was up 34.4 cents from Friday’s close (and a new 14-year high). What drove the price in this latest race to the top? Dominoes.
Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s (TGP) plan to flow more Marcellus gas to Westchester County, NY, and New York City, to be used for Consolidated Edison customers, is called the East 300 Upgrade Project. The East 300 project took a giant leap forward in April when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued permits that allow TGP to upgrade two existing compressor stations (in PA), and build a brand new compressor station in West Milford (Passaic County, NJ), just across the border and not far from Westchester County (see 
Earlier this year, one of the biggest nutjobs in Congress, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (Democrat-RI), introduced an excise tax, which he erroneously called a windfall profits tax, targeted at oil company profits. The bill would impose a 50% tax on the difference between the current sale price of a barrel of oil and the average price of a barrel of oil from 2015 to 2019, which was roughly $66 per barrel. It would apply to sales by companies that produce or import at least 300,000 barrels of oil per day (or did so in 2019). Whitehouse later revised his plan to a proposed 21% windfall profits tax on oil company profits over 10%. Believe it or not, Ohio appears to be debating whether or not to apply such a windfall profits tax to its energy producers.
Even with huge profits the likes of which haven’t been seen since, well, maybe forever–fossil energy companies in the U.S. are still having a tough time attracting private investment money. According to the Wall Street Journal, private equity raised $2.98 billion across seven oil and gas funds in the first half of the year. That is 40% lower than the amount raised in 12 oil and gas funds for the first half of 2021–when prices for oil and gas were half what they are now. But over in Europe, private equity investment in oil and gas is picking up!
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, in an interview with the Associated Press, attempts to come off as the reasonable, middle-of-the-road, aw-shucks guy who sticks up for what he believes is right and the good of West Virginians. Don’t fall for it. He was pressured by the wackadoodle left in the Democrat Party, and he folded like a cheap suit. Manchin deserves to be voted out of office the instant that opportunity arises. We’re talking, of course, of Manchin’s betrayal of fossil energy through his support for one of the most destructive pieces of legislation that has passed since Joe Biden began to occupy the White House–the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), better known as the Green New Deal (aka Build Back Better). Manchin’s betrayal has profound consequences for fossil energy in this country.
We simply don’t understand the minds of liberals. They are frustratingly irrational. In June, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about Germany buying LNG from Canada (see 
Morningstar provides what it calls “independent” research, ratings, and tools to help people invest. One of the so-called ratings is Morningstar’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing ratings for companies. The ESG measurement is a clever way of steering investors (investors representing big funds worth billions of dollars) away from investing in fossil energy companies. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and the AGs from 18 other states (19 AGs in all) have launched an investigation into Morningstar’s ESG rating system that “plays politics with pensions and real people’s livelihoods.”