Allegheny County | Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania
Loudmouths Pressure Allegheny County to Ban Fracking UNDER Parks
Since 2013 anti-fossil fuel zealots–people with an irrational hatred of fossil fuels–have tried to ban drilling under (not on) public parks in Allegheny County, PA (near Pittsburgh). A small group of perhaps 100 radicals gathered outside the City-County building in downtown Pittsburgh last night to throw a collective temper tantrum, demanding Allegheny County Council ban any new drilling under (not on) county-owned parks.
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In March the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), corrupted by the Bidenistas, said it will begin to force all publicly traded companies to disclose their so-called greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the imaginary climate risks their businesses face (see 
Two weeks ago a pathetically low six new permits were issued to drill shale wells across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia (see 
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Equinor and Cheniere sign 15-year LNG purchase deal; NATIONAL: US weekly LNG exports decrease by one LNG carrier; How the U.S. turned the tables on OPEC; Joe Biden’s ‘green energy’ dreams: enriching friends, crushing the working class; INTERNATIONAL: OPEC+ set to remove all production curbs in August; Sweden banning extraction of coal, oil, and gas; European natural gas prices soar by almost 40% after fire at key US export terminal.
The second-largest LNG export terminal in the U.S., Freeport LNG located near Galveston, Texas, experienced an explosion and fire yesterday. Thankfully nobody was injured and it did not take long to extinguish the fire (see video below). However, the incident has, according to Freeport officials, taken the plant offline for “at least three weeks.” Freeport liquefies and exports approximately 2 Bcf (billion cubic feet) each and every day. In May the U.S. liquefied and exported 11.6 Bcf/d, ergo the Freeport outage takes ~17% of our exports offline. That news sent the Henry Hub NYMEX futures price plunging by 59 cents. At least one, possibly more Marcellus/Utica drillers sell molecules to the Freeport facility.
Although the NYMEX price for natural gas took a plunge yesterday due to news that the country’s second-largest LNG export facility, Freeport, is offline for three weeks (see today’s lead story), the price of physically traded “day-ahead” natural gas (the spot price) in the Marcellus/Utica region continues to soar. In May, the average price of natural gas for day-ahead delivery in the M-U region soared, up 209% over May 2021. The price of spot gas everywhere is up–across the entire country. But it was up the most in the M-U in May.
We’re always on the lookout for indicators and trends that tell us whether or not there will be more or less drilling (and leasing) in the Marcellus/Utica. Lately, we’ve seen a couple of mentions of new leases signed, at least in the Ohio Utica (see 
The Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board (EHB) partially dismissed a challenge brought by Philly-area State Senator Katie Muth. She seeks to block Eureka Resources from moving forward with the construction of a new shale wastewater recycling facility in Dimock, PA–a location hours away from her own district. The EHB ruled that Muth has no standing under the PA Environmental Rights Amendment (ERA) to bring a challenge. The proposed facility is not in her district and there’s nothing that ties her to that location.
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia are all scrambling to form working groups or other alliances in an attempt to be THE state chosen for one of four regional hydrogen hubs funded by the so-called Biden infrastructure bill (see 
Last month MDN brought you the news that Joe Biden is renominating Richard “Dick” Glick to serve yet another undistinguished term at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (see 
EQT CEO Toby Rice is and has been on a mission–to spread the gospel of LNG (see 
Each month the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) issues a monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO). Last month, in May, the STEO made the startling prediction that the average Henry Hub price for natural gas (the national benchmark) would hit $8.13 for 3Q22 and $8.59 for the entire second half of this year (see 
The number-crunchers at our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, published their analysis of LNG exports for the first four months of 2022. Unsurprisingly, because of the Ukraine war, EIA found that 74% of the LNG exported from the U.S. during that time has gone to Europe. It’s pretty much a reversal of last year when 34% of our LNG went to Europe. Last year most of our LNG went to Asia–China and South Korea. The percentages of how much U.S. LNG goes to Europe and how much goes to Asia have changed places over the past year.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” (Quote attributed to Joseph Goebbels, the head of Nazi Germany’s Ministry of Propaganda) The left so often adopts the attitude if you keep repeating the same lie over and over–preferably the bigger the lie the better–the lie will become accepted as the truth. State Sen. Katie Muth, D-Montgomery, chair of the Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Policy Committee, and Sen. Jim Brewster, D-Allegheny, are expert practitioners of this strategy with respect to lying about the Marcellus Shale and fracking. They were at it again last week holding a public (i.e. propaganda) hearing at the Community College of Allegheny County.