Dark Side of ESG – Huge Losses for Investors, High/Regressive Taxes
We have a growing unease about ESG, or “environmental, social, governance” efforts that are popping up like dandelions in springtime. We’ve spoken about this before. While we applaud the efforts by Marcellus/Utica drillers and pipeline companies (and others in the M-U supply chain) to ensure their businesses are responsible stewards of Mom Earth. Slapping an ESG label on those efforts (as M-U companies tend to do) is NOT what the environmental left is talking about when they use the same term. We see a number of ESG-related stories as we scan the news each day. Over the past few months, we’ve seen an increase in stories questioning so-called ESG efforts being forced on us by the left. We have several recent stories that plumb the depths of how ESG (as defined by the left) is bad for the U.S.
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An opinion column appearing in (of all places) Newsweek, a profoundly liberal publication, appears under the headline, “Environmentalism Is a Fundamentalist Religion.” That sure caught our attention! Written by Joel Kotkin, Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, the column assumes that man-made global warming is happening (something we do not assume). But even operating with that assumption, Kotkin says what’s needed to combat so-called climate change is a “pragmatic approach based on adapting to real and verifiable dangers.” He goes on to say the left’s “war” against climate change is doomed to make things worse for most people. Kotkin is one of the few on the left who is refreshingly honest!
Last week the three states with active Marcellus/Utica drilling, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, issued a collective 21 new drilling permits, down from the 30 permits issued the week before, and down from the 40 permits issued the week before that. The trend is not our friend right now. PA issued 13 permits, and OH and WV issued four permits each.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: GO-WV leader recognized as first female WV O&G Person of the Year; NATIONAL: U.S. weekly export amounts to 21 LNG carriers; INTERNATIONAL: Britain seeks USA gas deals; Increase in Suez Canal transit fees unlikely to impact LNG trade flows.
Pennsylvania State Senator Katie Muth’s attempt to block a proposed frack wastewater treatment plant in Dimock (hours away from her own district) is failing spectacularly. Muth tried to challenge and block a permit for the plant, an effort which was mostly rejected in court back in June (see 
Two weeks ago, a lawsuit brought by two West Virginia landowners seeking to overturn the state’s newly enacted forced pooling (i.e. unitization) law was tossed by a federal judge (see 
MDN has highlighted Capstone Turbine Corporation, a California company that manufactures small electric-generating plants that run on natural gas, several times in the past (
Yesterday evening, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (from West Virginia) finally released a draft bill that purportedly streamlines the permitting process for oil and gas pipelines, among other things. The bill, called the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2022, also clears away the remaining roadblocks to complete the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline that travels through WV and into Virginia. MVP is 94% done and in the ground, yet anti-fossil fuel wackos keep blocking its completion with frivolous lawsuits and colluding federal judges. Manchin wants to blast through it and get it done, to his credit.
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Anti-fossil fuelers at Penn State are trying their hardest to spin the results of a recent study by university researchers to say it shows a link between “elevated levels of chloride in groundwater” and fracking in Pennsylvania. As we read a summary of the study appearing on Penn State News, it was obvious the study proves just the opposite–that THERE IS NO LINK between the two!