Plum Boro Injection Well in SWPA Now Open for Business!
With the Biden administration relentlessly attacking American fossil fuels with bans and over-regulation, and with foreign-backed Big Green groups relentlessly attacking American fossil fuels via lawsuits, sometimes it’s hard not to be pessimistic about our beloved industry. Every now and again we happen across a feel-good fossil fuel story with a happy ending. This is one such story. A long-fought-over wastewater injection well in Plum Boro (Allegheny County, Pittsburgh suburb) is finally open for business, having overcome all sorts of smears and slanders and lawsuits by the enviro-left. Here’s a story where the good guys win!
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Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to force the state to participate in the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a tax on carbon aimed at eliminating coal and natural gas-fired electric power plants, got a boost yesterday when the state Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) Air Quality Technical Advisory Board voted 10-8 in favor of the plan.
One of the ways the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania State Legislature is attempting to block Gov. Tom Wolf from unilaterally forcing the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon tax scheme, is by voting against any new members to the state’s Public Utility Commission (see 
We’ve seen this routine play out dozens (maybe hundreds) of times over the years: Publicly-traded drilling companies float new IOUs (notes) to pay off older notes coming due. Why they never just pay them off and get out of debt we don’t know–that’s above our understanding of high finance. We just know this is the way it always has and likely always will work. Antero Resources, the third-largest natural gas producer in the U.S. and the second-largest NGL producer, focused entirely on drilling in the M-U (mainly in West Virginia) is the latest to do the IOU refinancing thing.
The Democrats who run some of the largest cities in the United States thought it would be easy to target, attack, and bring down Big Oil the same way they did Big Tobacco a generation ago–with neverending, huge lawsuits. Big Mistake. Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a lawsuit brought by the leftist Dems from the City of Baltimore, Maryland against BP, Chevron, Shell, Exxon and other Big Oil companies, alleging the use of oil and gas is causing catastrophic, man-made global warming. Based on a technicality, the Supremes ruled 7-1 against Baltimore, rejecting the lawsuit and making it much harder for other cities to try the same sleazy tactic.
Powerhouse consulting firm Deloitte has just published a series of studies addressing the question of whether oil and gas (and chemicals) companies should optimize and capture the remaining value from hydrocarbons (keep drilling for oil and gas), or should they “embrace the broader energy scope” and begin investing in so-called green energy? Deloitte says, “There is no easy answer to this conundrum.”
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: UAlbany faculty wants pension fund to divest from fossil fuels; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: ‘You’re fracking welcome’ billboard points to strain between oil and gas, Santa Fe; NATIONAL: Despite more people staying at home, U.S. residential energy use fell 4% in 2020; The impact of decarbonization efforts on the LNG industry; John Kerry’s 45-person climate staff is stifling; Biden’s energy policy descends into chaos; INTERNATIONAL: Optimizing gas mixtures for hydrogen storage in clathrate hydrates.
Diversified Gas & Oil Company, which owns close to 8 million acres of leases with some 60,000 (mostly) conventional oil and gas wells (with over 400 Marcellus/Utica shale wells) in the Appalachian Basin, is no longer calling itself Diversified Gas & Oil Company. Instead, the company has changed its name to Diversified Energy Company. The company also changed its website URL from the old dgoc.com to 
Two weeks ago we brought you the sad news that completion and startup for Equitrans’ 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) and the company’s 75-mile extension to it called MVP Southgate will now be delayed until 2022 and 2023 respectively (see 
This Wednesday the radicals of “Protect PT” (Penn Township)–a group funded with shadowy Big Green money–will try to convince the Democrats sitting on Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court to overturn legal and safe shale drilling at well pads in Penn Township (Westmoreland County, PA). Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) previously submitted plans to drill multiple wells on two new well pads in the township. The Zoning Hearing Board approved the plans.
Did you know that Mom Earth is polluting…herself? Did you know that Mom Earth is responsible for her own global warming? Yeah. You see, a full 25% of all so-called fugitive methane emissions (methane that goes unfiltered up into the atmosphere) come from swamps. Or what you may call “wetlands.” And there isn’t a darned thing we mankind can do about it because, well, they’re wetlands and pristine and if you drain them, that’s an environmental crime against Mom Earth. Yet swamps are causing a big, fat global warming issue. What’s an environmentalist wacko to do?
Ascent Resources, originally founded as American Energy Partners by gas legend Aubrey McClendon, is a privately-held company that focuses 100% on the Ohio Utica Shale. Ascent is Ohio’s largest natural gas producer and the 8th largest natural gas producer in the U.S. The company issued its first-quarter 2021 update earlier this week. The big announcement coming from CEO Jeff Fisher is that Ascent is pursuing (like three other M-U drillers) “certification” of its shale gas.