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Grant Twp Charter Banning Injection Wells Struck Down by PA Court
Since 2015 we’ve reported on the case of Grant Township, a town that passed an ordinance cooked up by the radical Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to try and block a state-approved injection well proposed by Pennsylvania General Energy (see our Grant Township articles here). Are we finally coming to the end of this nonsense? Yes! PA Commonwealth Court recently ruled against Grant’s attempt to override state law with its own home-cooked regulations.
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A new audit of the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources’ (ODNR) Orphan Well Program was released August 9 by the Auditor of State’s Ohio Performance Team (full copy below). The Ohio Auditor’s office reviews the operations of government agencies and programs and offers recommendations to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. Auditor of State Keith Faber said in the audit that ODNR is still spending only about half of the funding required to plug old wells. Faber said, “ODNR’s Orphan Well Program is moving in the right direction, but there’s still much work to do,” and “We need to pick up the pace.” It was a metaphorical kick in the seat of the pants.
Food & Water Watch (extremist radicals on the far-left spectrum) stirred up a small group of New Jersey residents to come out and protest a proposed electric generating plant to be located at the site of a current power plant in Woodbridge, NJ. Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) already operates one gas-fired power plant at the location. The plant currently powers about 700,000 homes. In 2018, CPV proposed adding a second power plant at the same location (see 
The 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project is 94% complete and in the ground. About the only thing left to build is a short 3.5-mile piece on federal land (Jefferson National Forest) and crossings either through or under several hundred creeks and swamps. We are almost there. And yet anti-fossil fuel zealots believe they can still stop the project and block it from ever finishing. We read yet another fawning ode to environmental zealots article about a small group gathering to commiserate about how they dream of stopping MVP, and it struck us, as it often does, how these people speak of themselves and their efforts in religious terms.
Pennsylvania issued seven new shale permits for the week of August 8-14, with two each going to EQT (in Greene County) and Chesapeake Energy (in Sullivan County). Ohio issued five new permits, with four of them going to Encino Energy (Harrison County). Finally, West Virginia issue five new permits with all of them going to Jay-Bee Oil & Gas (Tyler County).
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: U.S. natgas exports to Mexico increasing at West Texas border; Oil’s new Bible-thumping, Biden-bashing billionaire; Town vote sought on natural gas easement; NATIONAL: Biden freeze on oil and gas leases reinstated; Natgas futures ‘puke’ as low-ball storage already priced into market; The energy report – good news or bad news?; Winter is coming: $13 natural gas prices?; Why natural-gas prices are holding near 14-year highs; Carbon capture gets a big boost in Biden’s climate bill; INTERNATIONAL: Flotilla of diesel ships heads to Europe; The new world energy order: a battle of attrition.
Seneca Resources, a 100% subsidiary and the drilling arm of National Fuel Gas Company, announced on Tuesday that the company has achieved an “A” certification grade under the MiQ Standard for Methane Emissions Performance (MiQ Standard), the highest available certification level MiQ awards, for all of the company’s 1+ billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica. Seneca can now claim it produces responsible gas and the molecules can be traded/bundled on the MiQ Digital Registry.
It used to be that freedom and justice and capitalism were baked into our psyche via the U.S. Constitution. All of those things–freedom, justice, and capitalism–are rapidly disappearing. They are replaced with totalitarian statism. The people we “elect” actually think we serve them and that they tell us what we can and can’t do. Example: A pipeline expansion (looping pipe and expanding some compressor stations) by Williams in the Marcellus/Utica is now imperiled by authoritarians in New Jersey.
U.S. Senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, supposedly “secured an agreement” to fast-track the completion of the 94% completed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in return for selling out the entire country by voting for the Big Green “Build Back Better” bill, renamed to the laughable “Inflation Reduction Act” (see 
Powerhouse consulting and accounting firm Ernst & Young (YN) has just published and released a new study called “US oil and gas reserves, production and ESG benchmarking study” (full copy below). The EY study shows U.S. oil and gas producers “recovered and reset” in 2021, posting increased profits of $73.7 billion and $211.9 billion in revenues, with significant deal activity that drove $144.1 billion in capital expenditures. The study documents how the industry’s 50 largest publicly traded exploration and production (E&P) companies responded to higher commodity prices in 2021 with an analysis of reserve and production information, as well as their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures.
Candidate for governor of New York State running on the Republican line, Lee Zeldin, is pushing to reverse the now-permanent ban on fracking in the state. The frack ban was enacted into law as part of a sneaky budget bill Andrew Cuomo signed in 2020 while everyone was distracted with COVID (see 
Coterra Energy was formed by the merger of Cabot Oil & Gas (Marcellus gas driller) with Cimarex Energy (Permian gas driller) last October (see