Other Stories of Interest: Wed, Oct 5, 2022
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.
Read More “Other Stories of Interest: Wed, Oct 5, 2022”
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 
An oil and gas mineral lease is a critical part of the process for extracting and selling hydrocarbon molecules. MDN editor Jim Willis will present at next week’s 
It was an interesting day yesterday for the final day of the Marcellus Shale Coalition’s Shale Insight event, being held in Erie, PA. Shell outlined its vision for a regional hydrogen hub with Shell itself at the center of the action (guess we can’t blame them for trying, although we wish they were working with a broader coalition). More interesting, for us, were the addresses of four key politicians. Republicans Dr. Mehmet Oz, running for U.S. Senate in PA, and Doug Mastriano, running for governor in PA, addressed the event in person. Their counterparts, Democrats John Fetterman (running for Senate) and Josh Shapiro (running for governor), aired recorded messages and didn’t bother to show up in person–a MAJOR insult to the shale industry.
Some 225 hypocritical nutters were whipped into a frenzy by Big Green and its so-called Beyond Plastics campaign during a Zoom call Tuesday night to “prepare” for the startup of Shell’s mighty ethane cracker plant in Monaca, PA. It was really quite hilarious. There was talk of nurdle patrols, “sacrifice zones,” and celebrations over defeating Joe Manchin’s permitting reform bill. Why hypocritical? Because every single person on the call was using a computer or phone made out of (wait for it)….plastics. The clothes on their bodies and shoes on their feet are made largely from plastics. The cars and boats and paraphernalia they use to hunt down evidence of environmental plastics pollution from the cracker plant–all made from plastics. We wonder, Do they know how stupid they look?
There is a growing chorus of executives in the C-suite of large (and small) companies standing up to say so-called ESG (environment, social, governance) investing and proposed regulations is a bunch of hokum. A large majority (75%) of CFOs recently surveyed by left-leaning CNBC do NOT support the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed ESG regulations (see