U.S. Supreme Court Refuses to Block Biden’s “Social Cost of Carbon”
In his first two days in office, Joe Biden declared war on the oil and gas industry. One of the first things he did was to revive an interagency working group on the “social cost” of greenhouse gas emissions and directed the issuance of an “interim” cost (see What Biden’s First Two Days on the Job Mean for the O&G Industry). The social cost of carbon dioxide emissions is a metric that regulators use to assess the monetary impact of emissions increases. On his very first day in office, Biden restored the so-called climate cost estimate to $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions after the Trump administration had reduced the figure to $7 or less per ton. In February a federal judge overturned Biden’s order (see Fed Judge Overturns Biden Order to Use Global CO2 Cost Estimates), but in March a panel of judges overturned that judge and reinstated Biden’s crazy-high carbon cost (see 5th Circuit Restores Biden Order to Use Global CO2 Cost Estimates). The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and the Supremes weren’t so Supreme this time, saying they won’t block Biden’s obscenely high cost of carbon number.
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Fighting back against the campaign by the left to defund fossil energy companies is winning. It is the divestors, companies like BlackRock, that now face the ash heap of history as states like Texas and West Virginia are pulling investments with banks and hedge funds that advocate divesting from fossil energy. Companies like BlackRock are trying to have it both ways, claiming they still invest in fossil energy. But their words (and actions) expose them as frauds. They don’t fool TX and WV and others who have decided to divest from the divestors. The result is that so-called ESG investing (investing in companies that pledge allegiance to the flag of ESG over profits) is beginning to crash and burn.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Christian nationalism on the rise in some GOP campaigns; NATIONAL: USA rig count drops; White House eyes restarting idle refineries; US weekly LNG exports up by five LNG carriers; Natural gas vs. coal fuel costs for power generation; INTERNATIONAL: EU leaders back push to ban most Russia oil.
MDN will not publish on Friday, May 27, nor on Monday, May 31. Jim is taking Friday off in preparation for a wedding happening in his family. Monday is, of course, the Memorial Day holiday. A shout out to all of our currently serving and former veterans, and remembrance for those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country. They are not forgotten.
We are on the cusp of seeing the NYMEX Henry Hub futures price close above $9/MMBtu. Yesterday it closed at $8.97/MMBtu. Will today be the day it goes above $9? Probably. The price hit $9.40 during intraday trading yesterday but slid back down the hill just a bit before the closing bell. We are now at 14-year highs for the NYMEX price of gas. We’re still nowhere near the all-time high of close to $15.78 hit in December 2005. The scary thought is that we may well exceed the old record at some point in the next six months (see 
We spotted a story on The Motley Fool investor’s website yesterday noting that several Marcellus/Utica publicly-traded drillers saw “double-digit” increases in their share price just yesterday, for a single day. The article highlights both Range Resources and Southwestern Energy. We started nosing around to see how the stock price for all of the big publicly-traded M-U drillers has performed this year, from the beginning of the year. It was an eye-opener. ALL of them are up from the beginning of the year. Most are up at least 75% in value since Jan. 1. A few have doubled in value, now up more than 100% since Jan. 1. We have the list below for how each one performed. Welcome to the bull market in oil and gas!
We have mixed emotions about Elliott Management, a so-called activist investment firm. On the one hand, Elliott assisted the Rice boys in their takeover of EQT in July 2019, which turned out to be a very positive thing (see 
The International Gas Union (IGU), Snam, and Rystad Energy partnered to produce and have just released the Global Gas Report 2022 (GGR). According to the authors, if the world wants to limit mythical global warming to 1.5C and fulfill so-called net-zero ambitions by 2050, greenhouse gas emissions will need to peak before 2025. (You know we don’t believe global warming bullcrapus, but bear with us here.) The GGR (full copy below) says the best, most realistic way to reduce GHG emissions and hit those targets involves–yep–natural gas. In fact, natgas will, says the report, play a “critical role” in decarbonization initiatives.
On Monday 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 
Just last week MDN told you we will, from now on, bring you new permit data for the previous week on Fridays. Yet here it is Thursday and we’re sharing the permit data for last week. What gives? MDN and its author, Jim Willis, are taking a break Friday (tomorrow) and next Monday for the Memorial Day holiday. Well, we’re taking Monday off for the holiday. We’re taking Friday off because there’s a wedding in Jim’s family this weekend. There are preparations to make, and celebrations to partake in. So we’re bringing you the permit data today, on Thursday. Speaking of which, there were 24 new permits issued last week, with 14 of them going to Pennsylvania, seven to Ohio, and three to West Virginia. We break it down below.
The radicals of the Clean Air Council (CAC) are claiming a (very small) victory in their campaign against processing NGLs at the Marcus Hook refinery located near Philadelphia. CAC is CACkling that they have forced Energy Transfer, builder of the mighty Mariner East (ME) pipeline system (a pipeline that CAC couldn’t stop), to back down on how permits are issued for the Marcus Hook facility–the place where NGLs from ME end up for processing and loading for export. The end result is…well…not much. Nothing will really change. The same volume of NGLs will still flow to Marcus Hook, and the same volume of NGLs will be loaded onto ships and exported to other countries. The only thing that changes is that ET spends more time and pays more money to obtain a single large permit instead of two separate, smaller permits. We’ll explain.
Northeast Natural Energy (NNE) is a “top 10” shale driller in West Virginia, headquartered in Morgantown, WV (see 
When a pipeline company considers whether or not to build a new pipeline, the company conducts an “open season”–a time when drillers (producers), traders, buyers, and others who want guaranteed capacity along that pipeline can sign long-term contracts. Such contracts guarantee pipeline companies will be able to make back the considerable amount of money they have to spend to build the pipeline. What happens when those 5-, 10-, and 20-year contracts expire?