Other Stories of Interest: Thu, Oct 28, 2021
NATIONAL: National tax on natural gas would be an issue for all Americans; U.S. consumers expected to spend more for heating oil this upcoming winter; Upcoming chill sends November natural gas up to $6.20 at expiration; ‘King Coal’ roars back; INTERNATIONAL: ‘Save your species’: UN uses dinosaur in fossil fuel message; OPEC+ comfortable with rising price trend; Putin signals additional natural gas may be bound for Europe.
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Equitrans Midstream, owner of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) and a related gathering pipeline called Hammerhead designed to feed 1.6 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day) of Marcellus/Utica gas into MVP, says an arbitration panel ruled in its favor in a dispute with EQT Corp. over the delayed startup of Hammerhead. According to an 8-K filing, Equitrans said the three-member arbitration panel ruled that the in-service delay beyond October 1, 2020, for Hammerhead was caused by a force majeure, so EQT has no early termination right under the Hammerhead gathering agreement or related right to purchase the Hammerhead project.
Last week MDN told you about a clever play by Republicans in the Pennsylvania House and Senate to box in Democrat Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is running for governor next year, on the issue of whether or not it is legal for current Dem Gov. Tom Wolf to force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an obscene carbon tax meant to kill coal and gas-fired power plants in the state (see 
We bet you didn’t know a hunk of metal in the ground could be racist. We’re as surprised as you. Imagine that–an inanimate object can actually discriminate against people of color. Who woulda thought? Yes, we’re being sarcastic in an effort to point out the complete lunacy and fallacy of claims that 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 is somehow racist because the pipeline passes through communities that are predominately black or Hispanic. How on God’s green earth is a pipeline delivering fuel to keep people warm in the winter racist? Answer: It’s not.
GM, Ford, and other Big Auto companies might want to rethink their ill-advised plans to manufacture only electric vehicles beginning a few years from now based on dementia Joe’s big plans to electrify everything, including transportation. Biden’s own U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts the number of “light duty vehicles” or LDVs (cars and trucks) worldwide will nearly double in the next 30 years, from 1.31 billion LDVs on the planet in 2020 to 2.21 billion in 2050. But the big news is that only 31% of all those 2.21 billion LDVs in 2050 will be electric-powered vehicles. The rest will be powered by gasoline, diesel fuel, and natural gas. Tell us again (so we can have a good laugh) about the end of fossil fuels in the next 10-15 years. 🙂
Last week Pennsylvania issued 21 permits to drill new shale wells. Most of the permits went to two well pads, one in Butler County drilled by PennEnergy Resources and the other in Tioga County drilled by Repsol. Ohio issued six new permits, three to Encino Energy, two to Utica Resource Operating, and one to Ascent Resources. West Virginia, for the second week in a row, issued just one new permit. Last week’s WV permit went to Tug Hill Operating in Marshall County.
Everyone is scratching their heads trying to figure out why, given the price natural gas is fetching in both the futures and physical spot price market, natural gas drillers don’t drill more wells. The excuse given is that budgets are cast, plans made, and by gosh companies are finally showing fiscal discipline and sticking to their plans because if they don’t, investors will scream bloody murder. The last time we checked investors don’t mind spending a little more money to drill new wells if it puts more money in their pockets! That message finally seems to be getting through. Yesterday U.S. natural gas production surged to its highest level since late August (when Hurricane Ida struck, shutting down natgas production in the Gulf). Most of the gains came from more production in the Marcellus/Utica.
In August, Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP, owned by Equitrans Midstream) filed a subpoena in federal court to find out who recklessly promoted a meeting of a group of anti-pipeline zealots, encouraging them to gather close to (50 feet from) explosives being used to blast through rock to install MVP, putting themselves and workers in harm’s way and causing delays to pipeline construction (see 
Another MVP (Mountain Valley Pipeline) story in the news today. In August 2018 MDN told you about a group of six Franklin County, VA landowners who sued to block the construction of MVP across their property (see 
In July the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved a plan by Dominion Energy to clean up and “undo” the work done for the company’s previous Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project (see 
In the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s latest Winter Fuels Outlook, the EIA forecasts that U.S. households that primarily use natural gas for space heating will spend an average of $746 on heating this winter (October-March), which is $172, or 30%, more than last year. Natural gas is the primary heating fuel for nearly half (48%) of U.S. homes. This situation of high prices for American consumers is NOT because we are exporting LNG. It’s happening for a variety of reasons that can be boiled down into two main causes: (1) not enough pipelines, and (2) pressure by woke, pimple-faced Millennial investors to divest from oil and gas companies, meaning lack of capital and lack of will on the part of drillers to drill more wells.
Two weeks ago MDN brought you a summary of the latest efforts in the Marcellus/Utica midstream and upstream to create so-called responsibly sourced gas (see 
What role do hydrogen (H2) and carbon capture and sequestration (CSS) play in the future of the Marcellus/Utica (and all oil and gas)? That’s the gajillion-dollar question. Will H2 and CSS play a big role? Minor role? Is H2 the fuel of the future, really? No one knows, but we can’t afford to ignore it. The number one source for the manufacture and creation of H2 is…natural gas. If the H2 market takes off, it could be an important new customer for M-U molecules. You can get a front-row seat to learn more about H2, CSS, and the intersection of them with the M-U at the