Granholm Won’t Limit LNG Exports, Might Restrict Oil Exports
On Tuesday, the Bidenistas ruled out limiting or banning exports of LNG from the U.S. to our friends in Europe and other countries. However, Jennifer Granholm, Secretary of Energy, arrogantly told Big Oil companies in a “bitter” meeting last Friday that the administration is still considering limits on exports of petroleum products (diesel, gasoline, oil) because the White House is in butt-covering mode with the price of domestic gasoline beginning to rise again before the election. It would be just fine for gas prices to spike after the election–but not before. So Granholm is making serious threats to curtail exports of petroleum products in order to artificially lower prices for a month or so, just until the election passes.
Read More “Granholm Won’t Limit LNG Exports, Might Restrict Oil Exports”
Each month the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) publishes a huge report called Natural Gas Monthly. Last Friday, EIA issued the latest (September 2022) edition of the report. There is a LOT of information in the report–statistics, data, charts, you name it. And the report covers not just the U.S., but natural gas flows for all countries around the world. One aspect of the report deals with prices. The analysts at EIA excerpted some of that information into a post on the agency’s Today in Energy website, comparing the price of natural gas for both residential and commercial customers this year with the five-year rolling average. In real terms, the 2021 annual residential price was the highest since 2014, and the commercial price was the highest since 2015. It looks like we will fly by those statistics in 2022.
It doesn’t take much these days to buy yourself a “study” that shows what you want it to show. So-called scientists are for hire all over the place. Take, for example, “researchers” at Stanford University and the University of Arizona. All that the far-left Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) had to do was put some money into the pockets of a couple of “researchers” from those schools, and voila! A new “peer-reviewed” study was published yesterday that claims natural gas gathering pipelines (in the Permian Basin) leak like sieves. Oh yeah. It’s FAR worse than anyone had ever thought. All that methane is leaking and toasting Mom Earth, and the villain is gathering pipelines. What a load of…
The world is currently in the midst of its third great energy crisis. The first came in 1973 (remember the long gas lines?) when the U.S. sided with Israel in the Yom Kippur war. OPEC (an enemy of Israel and the U.S.) tried to punish us by cutting off oil shipments. We should have learned back then. We didn’t. Near the end of the 1970s, when Islamic fundamentalists took over in Iran, we experienced our next great energy crisis (prices for oil doubled). And now, in 2021/2022, we are in the throes of our third worldwide energy crisis. But this time it is different. Instead of Middle Eastern despots being at the root of this crisis, it is self-inflicted–an irrational war against fossil energy by Joe Biden and those aligned with him on the environmental left.
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.
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