Manchin Tries to Sell Permitting Bill to Lefties at Pittsburgh Event
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, from West Virginia, made a stop at the Global Clean Energy Action Forum (a confab of global warming wackos) on Friday to make a pitch for support of his “save Mountain Valley Pipeline” bill without actually mentioning MVP. At the start of his talk, Manchin was heckled by four wackadoodle protesters who were escorted out by security. Manchin then talked about his bill and how it will streamline the process for renewable energy projects. No mention of fossil fuel projects. Love the one you’re with, right?
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The term “woke” is thrown around a lot these days. The left introduces race and alleged racism wherever it can as a bludgeon to justify stripping away more of your Constitutional freedoms. Woke means everything and everyone is racist. The Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just launched a new “Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights” (“woke office”) that will try to paint any new pipeline, any new compressor station, any new fossil energy infrastructure project of any kind as racist and therefore should not get built.
The price for the “front month” NYMEX natural gas contract, which trades based on the spot price of gas at the Henry Hub in southern Louisiana, dropped again on Friday–closing at $6.83/MMBtu. Most predictions we’ve seen say that natural gas will average much higher both this year and next–in the $9 or $10 range. So why is the price dipping right now, and will it stay low?
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: California looking to ban natural gas furnaces, heaters by 2030; Louisiana gas pipeline projects key to unlocking more U.S. LNG exports; NATIONAL: Oil posts longest run of weekly losses this year; Why top banks are betting oil will stage a recovery; Diverse strategies for oil and gas energy transition; Phaseout of oil cars show contempt for rural America and developing world; INTERNATIONAL: Global climate change protests demand compensation ahead of COP27; Liz Truss, we support fracking too – that’s why we know it can’t work for Britain.
The natural gas industry is apparently not satisfied with being in the natural gas business anymore. Increasingly, local distribution companies (LDCs, or utilities) are investigating, and in some cases experimenting with, introducing highly explosive hydrogen into the natural gas stream they flow to homes and businesses. Peoples Gas in Pittsburgh is teaming up with the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) to figure out how to mix hydrogen with the natural gas it serves to its customers in Pennsylvania and beyond.
On Monday, local business leaders in Jefferson County, OH, were treated to an update on the Utica Shale and how local manufacturers can benefit from the growth in the shale industry. According to Robert Naylor, executive director for the Jefferson County Port Authority, “the (purpose) of the workshop was to stress or demonstrate how the business community — vendors and manufacturers — could enter the energy supply chain to create jobs, workforce development and overall economic game for our region.” Two powerhouse speakers from 
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.
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.
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 