4th Circuit Throws Out Plan for Safer MVP Drilling re Candy Darter
Even when we’re joking about the leftist clown judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (i.e. the 4th Circus), we’re right! A few weeks ago we told you about the candy darter, a small fishie on the threatened and endangered species list that lives in a few creeks under which 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) wants to drill. While the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) both agree the candy darter would not be harmed by a change in drilling methods for MVP, the clown judges of the 4th Circus disagree and think THEY know more than the experts at both FERC and USFWS. (Of course they think they know it all–they read Dr. Seuss books as their guidance on environmental issues! This is not a joke.) Yesterday the judges tossed yet another permit for MVP.
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Evolution Well Services, headquartered in Houston with a regional office in Pittsburgh, specializes in “electric” fracking–using natural gas from the well pad (instead of diesel fuel) to power turbines to create electricity that drives fracking pumps. In September 2020, three former Evolution employees who worked at remote sites in the Marcellus/Utica for the company, filed a lawsuit against the company claiming Evolution failed to pay them for their commute to and from job sites. This past Tuesday a federal judge in Pennsylvania granted conditional certification for the lawsuit to become a class action.
Quebec, Canada is foolishly pushing forward with a total ban on all oil and gas drilling in the province. On Tuesday the province’s minister of energy and natural resources “tabled” Bill 21 which expropriates (seizes control of) all oil and gas wells and pulls back any previously issued permits to drill. Tabling in Canada means something different than it does here in the U.S.–it means to begin consideration. It’s the next step in finalizing a new law to ban oil and gas drilling in the province, including a ban on drilling in Quebec’s extensive Utica Shale.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) was established in 1977 as a replacement for the Federal Power Commission. The agency’s mandate was to determine whether wholesale electricity prices were unjust and unreasonable and, if so, to regulate pricing and order refunds for overcharges to ratepayers. Over the years FERC’s mission grew to include the licensing and regulation of hydropower projects; the approval and regulation of interstate oil and gas pipelines; and ensuring the reliability of the nation’s electric power grids. FERC was created as an *economic* agency, NOT an environmental agency. It’s time for FERC to return to its original charter and quit trying to use health and environmental impacts (non-economic factors) to steer decisions on projects.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: New England natural gas and electricity prices increase sharply; U.S. driller Presidio in advanced talks to buy Exxon shale gas wells; NATIONAL: Oil over $90 a barrel as winter weather threatens production; US weekly LNG exports down by 3 from last week; Oil frackers brace for end of the U.S. shale boom; BlackRock pushing firms towards energy transition; Biden administration blocks more investments in American energy security; Fossil fuel groups slam Biden Fed nominee for her ‘vendetta’ against US energy companies.
Once again Pennsylvania’s Attorney General, Josh Shapiro, is turning accidents, including an accident that caused an explosion of the newly completed 
Yesterday MDN told you about Pennsylvania, the state with perhaps the most abandoned and orphaned wells of any U.S. state (estimated at over 200,000 such wells, although the officially recognized number is 8,000+) has received some pocket change, $25 million, out of a promised $104 million, to begin the work of plugging some of those wells (see 
We can’t resist a good railroad story. We’ve always loved them (we know, we’re weird). Here’s a good railroad story for you: Frack sand company Smart Sand, Inc., headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas, has just opened for business and is shipping frack sand to a brand new transloading facility in Waynesburg (Greene County), Pennsylvania.
Anecdotally in reading articles about electric power production in New England, we know that almost all electricity is produced in the region by natural gas (unless they run low, then they use fuel oil). We also know a majority of the electricity produced in the PJM region, including the M-U area, is also produced by natural gas. What we didn’t know (but do now) is that the vast majority of electricity in the southeastern U.S. is produced by natural gas. Most of the molecules feeding southeast gas plants come from the M-U.
This *really* has our blood boiling. The same Democrat politicians in New England who have blocked new natural gas pipelines from the Marcellus (just 200 miles away) to their region, preferring so-called “renewable energy” instead, have just asked the hapless, incompetent Secretary of the Dept. of Energy, Jennifer Granholm (a fellow Democrat) to restrict LNG exports so their constituents don’t have to suffer the pain of their (the politicians’) decision to block pipelines. We’re talking about Massachusetts’ two U.S. Senators, Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren and Ed “Lackey” Markey, and Sen. Pat “Leaky” Leahy whose home state of Vermont has banned all fracking and blocks pipelines. Talk about chutzpah!
Our apologies that this latest weekly permit update is a day late. Normally we issued these updates on Wednesdays. Yesterday the Pennsylvania database we use to locate information on new permits issued was throwing an error. We alerted the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection, which maintains the database, and they got it fixed sometime last night. So we’re back! Our thanks to the programmers at the DEP.