Feds Finally Issue Initial $25M Each to PA, OH, WV for Orphan Wells
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 PA Receives First $25M (Out of $104M) to Plug Orphaned Wells). The Dept. of Interior issued a press release yesterday, nearly eight months later, to say 22 states have just been issued their first $25 million from the program–including Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia.
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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.
This is getting good. In July, West Virginia dropped the hammer and told five Big Banks (investment firms) the state is about to divest and stop doing business with them (see 
Will oil and gas companies put their extra cash to good use on more fossil energy exploration and production? Or will they blow it on the myth of green energy? Powerhouse consulting and accounting firm Deloitte seems to think O&G will begin to invest more in “green” capital expenditures, raising it from the current 5% average to perhaps 30%. We think that’s a waste. Deloitte has just published a new report, “Striking the Balance: How and Where Will O&G Producers Deploy their Cash?” (full copy below), which examines how O&G companies can “play a key role over the next decade in creating synergy between energy security and energy transition, while helping commercialize essential low-carbon technologies.” Energy “transition” is a misnomer. Read today’s article/interview with Enterprise Products Partners.
Here’s a bit of news only one major news outlet (the Wall Street Journal) has covered: Last week 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. She’s making them an offer they can’t refuse.
After several weeks of anemic permit numbers for Pennsylvania, last week PA came roaring back by issuing 30 permits to drill new shale wells. Some 12 of those permits went to Coterra Energy for two pads in Susquehanna County. EQT (aka Rice Drilling) received six permits for a single pad in Greene County, and Chesapeake Energy also received six permits split between two pads–one pad in Bradford County and the other in Lycoming County.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Zeldin ramps up attacks on Hochul after Dem digs rival on fracking; NATIONAL: 21 LNG carriers departing U.S. this week; Recapping a wild week in the energy policy landscape; INTERNATIONAL: Russia burns off gas as Europe’s energy bills rocket.
The 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project from Wetzel County, WV, to Pittsylvania County, VA, announced in 2014, was supposed to be completed in 2018 and cost $3.5 billion. The project builder, Equitrans Midstream, now says MVP, which is 94% complete, should be done by the end of 2023 at a staggering cost of $6.6 billion. What happened between 2014 and today is that Big Green groups, many of which use foreign funding (from countries like Russia), have repeatedly challenged the project. Complicit and colluding judges have placed roadblocks in the way, preventing MVP from finishing. Given the ongoing opposition from the radical left, MVP asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in June to extend the time to complete the project until October 2026, just in case. On Tuesday, FERC granted MVP’s request.
New York State’s Governor, Kathy Hochul, and Attorney General, Letitia James, issued virtually the same press release yesterday to announce they’ve killed yet another small business in New York State. In an amusing display of vanity, Hochul and James (both Democrats and political rivals, James wants Hochul’s position as Governor) issued slightly different versions of the same press release, each putting her own name first in the release. The release says James R. Lee and his corporate affiliates–Lee Oil Company, Inc., Whitesville Producing Corporation, Whitesville Production Corp., Allegro Oil & Gas Inc., and Allegro Investments Corporation–owned or operated hundreds of oil wells in Steuben and Cattaraugus counties. A state lawsuit claimed some 400 of those wells were not properly plugged. The state won a $2 million judgment against Lee and his companies for lack of compliance, the biggest such award in state history related to plugging old wells.
Talk about irony! Scared of the potential impacts of the coronavirus and with the price of oil crashing in March 2020 (just as COVID was getting started), Royal Dutch Shell pulled out of a 50/50 joint venture partnership with Energy Transfer (ET) to build a new LNG export facility in Lake Charles, Louisiana (see 
The same old issue keeps returning in Pennsylvania for landowners and rights owners. The Pennsylvania Minimum Royalty Act guarantees payments to all rights owners of at least 12.5% of the value of the produced gas. Yet contracts signed by many landowners allow for post-production deductions, and those deductions sometimes (often?) result in landowners receiving less than 12.5% in royalty payments. This issue has been a thorn of contention between landowners and drillers for years–two groups that are normally allies. Farmers/landowners from several western PA counties gathered yesterday at the Washington County Farm Bureau’s annual legislative meeting to discuss, among other issues, minimum royalties.
In April 2021, MDN brought you the news that Chesapeake Energy, after buying Eagle Ford oil assets in 2018 for $4 billion (during the reign of Doug Lawler), was looking to unload those assets for around $2 billion (see 
Here’s something you won’t hear about or read in the Big Legacy Media…A group of 1,100 scientists and policy experts from around the world has joined together to establish a new group called Climate Intelligence (