Squabbling Breaks Out at FERC Meeting Over Regulating GHG Emissions
An interesting back and forth took place (we’d call it squabbling) at a technical conference last Friday hosted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). FERC Chairman Richard “Dick” Glick pontificated that so-called global warming considerations must be made when evaluating new pipeline projects. He has used that excuse for years to vote against every single new pipeline project brought before him. Another FERC Commissioner, James Danly, pushed back and revealed flaws in Glick’s reasoning.
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Last week Pennsylvania issued 15 new permits for shale well drilling, up nicely from the prior week of just 2 new permits. Ohio issued 9 new permits last week, and West Virginia issued 8 new permits. All totaled, the M-U saw 32 new permits issued last week, the most we’ve seen in a single week for some time. More drilling on the way!
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Cheniere produces 1st LNG at Sabine Pass Train 6; NATIONAL: API, NOIA react to House reconciliation bill passage; Biden orders release of USA oil reserves; The upside of Biden’s oil move – good timing, and too small to hurt anything; New algorithm efficiently diagnoses shale fracture results from fiber-optic data; Regressive energy taxes hit poor and lower-income families, creates more inflation; INTERNATIONAL: Anti-OPEC+ officially emerges.
The environmental radicals on the left continue their push to defeat the construction of an $800 million liquefaction plant in Wyalusing (Bradford County), PA, meant to liquefy and ship LNG to a planned facility on the Delaware River, for exporting to other countries. The left’s latest ploy? Antis are proclaiming a special permit issued during the Trump administration that allows LNG from the Wyalusing plant to be shipped via special rail cars is about to expire at the end of this month and almost certainly won’t get renewed. In addition, antis have stirred up some of the liberal locals near the port facility where the LNG would get safely loaded onto ships. It is a continuing, coordinated two-pronged attack against the project.
The front-month futures contract for natural gas trading at the Henry Hub in southern Louisiana (called the NYMEX) has taken a pretty serious dip in recent days, falling by $0.28 yesterday to just $4.79. However, the physically traded spot price that natgas is fetching at trading hubs near Boston and New York City was through the roof yesterday. And although the spot price in places like northeastern PA (Tennessee Gas Zone 4 Marcellus) and the Tri-State corners area (Eastern Gas South) are down a bit from a month ago, those prices are relatively high too. What’s going on with the price of natgas?
Yes, we as a collective society have lost our collective heads. So-called Critical Race Theory (CRT) appears to have brainwashed large swaths of our great land into seeing racism in every interaction and under every rock, tree–and now, even under the ground. Pipelines are racist! That’s the cry of the hard left, which unfortunately now controls our federal government. Three weeks ago we told you the Biden EPA had launched a film flam “investigation” (i.e. witch hunt) into a small pipeline aimed at delivering natural gas to a facility in Brooklyn so the gas can be liquefied and carted around New York City to prevent gas outages (see 
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) latest Monthly Electric Generator Inventory, between 2022 and 2025 (the next three years) some 27.3 gigawatts (GW) of new natural gas-fired capacity is scheduled to come online in the United States. Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania–states with pipeline access to natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale plays–account for a combined 43% of the natural gas-fired capacity planned to come online. Yes, our molecules will feed almost half of all new gas-fired power plants!
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) published a notice in the November 20 Pennsylvania Bulletin that it has signed an oil and gas lease agreement with BKV Operating, LLC (Banpu, Thailand’s largest coal mining company and an investor/operator drilling shale wells here) covering 198.5 acres of the Susquehanna River located in Mehoopany and Washington Townships in Wyoming County.
In early September the Weirton, WV Zoning Board of Appeals rejected a request by Southwestern Energy to build a well pad inside city limits (see 
In February 2020 pipeline giant Williams officially confirmed it was ending its years-long bid to build the Constitution Pipeline, a $683 million, 124-mile pipeline from Susquehanna County, PA to Schoharie County, NY to move Marcellus gas into NY and New England (see 
Is the glass half empty, or half full? Last Friday MDN told you that the Pennsylvania State Public Utility Commission (PUC) issued a list of 14 new requirements for the Mariner East Pipeline projects, for all three pipelines–ME1, ME2, and ME2X (see