Energy Sec Granholm Outright Lies in Meeting with Big Oil Cos.
Last Thursday U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm (not the brightest bulb in the pack) led an in-person meeting with CEOs and executives of seven major U.S. oil companies at the U.S. Dept. of Energy headquarters in Washington, D.C. Granholm kicked off the meeting by spouting the same lie the rest of the Biden administration repeats ad naseum: Putin is to blame for high gasoline prices. That is a complete fabrication. While Putin’s actions have led to something of an increase in worldwide oil and gasoline prices, the main reason for high prices here at home is Granholm and other Bidenistas who have trashed talked fossil energy from DAY ONE. They are the ones to blame and at fault.
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Each quarter the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas conducts an energy survey of exploration and production (E&P) and oilfield services (OFS) firms across the Federal Reserve’s three-state Eleventh District, including Texas, New Mexico, and Louisiana. The latest survey, for 2Q22, included 85 E&P firms and 52 OFS companies. Respondents said they expect a Henry Hub natural gas price of $7.55/MMBtu and a West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil price of $108/bbl by the end of 2022. The wisdom of this particular crowd is probably about as reliable a prediction as you can get with respect to O&G prices.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Chevron long-term deal to buy 2 MTPA of LNG from Cheniere; NATIONAL: ‘Re-fracs’ rise as cheap way to lift U.S. oil output; Carbon removal and usage gains traction as energy transition lags; INTERNATIONAL: Germany fears Russia could permanently close main gas pipeline; Why Chinese imports of U.S. LNG collapsed.
Strap in–the roller coaster ride continues. Yesterday the NYMEX Henry Hub front-month (July) futures contract for natural gas plunged 10%, by $0.62, following news that more gas was stored (“injected”) than previously anticipated by analysts and traders. Storage inventories rose to 2.169 Tcf (trillion cubic feet) for the week ended June 17 following a 74 Bcf (billion cubic feet) injection. Most people thought the injection would be no more than 60 Bcf. No doubt the ongoing outage at Freeport LNG pushing an extra 2 Bcf/d on the domestic market had something to do with the extra storage build. Models predict cooler weather is coming in the next few weeks. Throw it all into the pot–higher storage, Freeport offline, and cooler weather–and traders got spooked.
The Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board (EHB) is a special court set up in PA to hear appeals of decisions made by the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). In February 2021, a landowner (three people living at the same address) in Susquehanna County, PA, filed a lawsuit with the EHB against the DEP and Coterra Energy (formerly known as Cabot Oil & Gas) alleging Coterra’s drilling program nearby had led to polluting their water well. As of last week, the case was dismissed and the Pittsburgh attorney for the landowner (for the first time ever) was sanctioned by the EHB.
When drilling for natural gas, other substances come out of the borehole along with methane (CH4). Some wells produce NGLs (natural gas liquids) which are gases with other molecular structures, like ethane (C2H6), butane (C4H10), and propane (C3H8). Sometimes crude oil, condensate, and natural gasoline come out–all of which are liquids. Water from the depths (called brine) also comes out of the hole. When the pressure of natgas coming from the hole is high, as it is in the beginning when a well is first drilled, liquids come out of the hole along with the gas with little or no issue. However, as pressure decreases, the liquids can fall back down the well and begin to accumulate–a condition called liquid loading. Plunger lift is a technology used to solve the issue of liquid loading.
PennEnergy Resources recently reapplied (for a second time) for a permit to draw water from Big Sewickley Creek–but this time the request is cut in half, to just 1.5 million gallons of water a day (see 
The province of Quebec, Canada, with a huge supply of Utica Shale gas sitting beneath it, passed a new law in April–Bill 21–outlawing all oil and natural gas production throughout the province (see 
Next month President Biden is heading to the Middle East and is scheduled to meet with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)–the man who allegedly ordered the murder of Saudi Jamal Khashoggi, a reporter for the Washington Post. Biden previously called MBS a “pariah” following the Khashoggi episode. Why is Biden now meeting with him? To beg for more oil production. A group of 27 energy associations, including the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Marcellus Shale Coalition, sent a letter to Biden inviting him to tour American energy infrastructure before he boards the plane to meet with MBS.
We finally started to see more permits issued again last week. After the Marcellus/Utica was in the permit doldrum for nearly a month, bumping around at 20 permits or below, last week the number increased to a total of 34 permits issued to drill new shale wells. Pennsylvania issued 13 new permits, with seven of them going to Coterra Energy in Susquehanna County on the same pad. Ohio issued 14 new permits, with 12 of them going to Ascent Resources distributed across four different counties. And West Virginia issued seven new permits, all of them to Antero Resources, all in Doddridge County.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally-owned electric utility corporation in the U.S. TVA’s service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. TVA is the sixth-largest power supplier and the largest public utility in the country. One year ago MDN told you that TVA is spending over $1 billion to replace six coal-fired plants with natgas-fired turbines (see 
