PA, OH, WV State Treasurers Ask Biden to Dump Anti-O&G Fed Nominee
Joe Biden has nominated a D.C. swamp dweller by the name of Sarah Bloom Raskin to become the Fed’s (Federal Reserve) vice chair for supervision. Raskin is in favor of forcing banks to divest from fossil fuel companies. She’s a radical and the radical “progressive” Democrats (i.e. Communists) in D.C. all love her. That’s all you need to know about her unfitness for the position. Here’s one more thing to know: Every single oil and gas group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the state treasurers for 24 states all oppose her being appointed to the Fed.
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NATIONAL: The global gas crisis has made American LNG hot again; INTERNATIONAL: Joe Biden’s opposition to natgas pipelines emboldens Putin, jeopardizes Europe; Russia, China agree 30-year gas deal via new pipeline, to settle in euros.
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.
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!