Pittsburgh Works Together Biz/Labor Group Condemns Wolf Carbon Tax
In March 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to enter the public consciousness, some 500 people from labor unions and industry met in Pittsburgh to launch an organization called Pittsburgh Works Together (PWT), dedicated to fighting back against those who want to end southwest PA industries including steel, natural gas, and petrochemicals (see CNX CEO Backs New SWPA Group to Counter “Elites and Extremists”). The alliance is going strong and has just condemned PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), nothing more than an obscene carbon tax on coal and gas-fired power plants.
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No doubt you heard about the ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline, a pipeline that flows a significant amount of refined products (gasoline and diesel fuel) from the Gulf Coast where it’s refined as far north as New Jersey. Most of the gasoline supply for states like North and South Carolina comes from the Colonial Pipeline. When the pipeline went offline for over a week, most gas stations in NC ran out of gas. It was panic city across the state. The outage pointed out the weakness of having most of a state’s supply of fuel provided by a single pipeline. Top officials in NC are equally (perhaps more) concerned that most of the state’s natural gas supply comes from a single interstate pipeline: the mighty Williams Transco pipeline.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: DeIuliis calls on companies to invest more on local economically disadvantaged parts of region; NATIONAL: February 2021 drop in U.S. ethane demand was largest monthly decline on record; U.S. Senate Republicans readying new infrastructure proposal; Hydrogen markets looking for regulatory attention; INTERNATIONAL: New IEA net zero roadmap undermines America’s energy security; US waives sanctions against Nord Stream 2 developers.
Last November Gulfport Energy, the third-largest driller in the Ohio Utica Shale (by the number of wells drilled), filed for a “pre-arranged” Chapter 11 bankruptcy (see 
New York State has become outright hostile to any business remotely connected to fossil fuels. NY is prejudiced and discriminates against oil and natural gas. The latest example is a “bitcoin miner” that uses natural gas to produce electricity to power some serious computers. Even though the company is doing its best to atone for its “sin” of using natural gas via buying indulgences (aka carbon offsets), environmentalist wackos still oppose the facility located in Dresden, near beautiful Seneca Lake (one of New York’s Finger Lakes) in the central part of the state.
Ohio’s House Bill (HB) 6 law granted billions (plural) of dollars to FirstEnergy in an attempt to prop up the company’s economically failing nuclear power plants. FirstEnergy bribed state legislators to pass, and keep passed, HB 6 by paying out $61 million to a small group of insiders, including the now-former Speaker of the House (see 
The International Energy Agency (IEA) is in somebody’s back pocket–like Saudi Arabia, or maybe some of the other OPEC members. How do we know? The IEA has just published a nonsensical “report” called “Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector” (full copy below). In the report, IEA makes the preposterous claim that if the world (i.e. the U.S.) doesn’t stop all new drilling for oil and gas right now, today, the earth will toast itself into oblivion by 2050. As we so often say, follow the money.
Our friend Mark Mathis at the Clear Energy Alliance has done it again. Mark has produced another fantastic, short video (4 1/2 minutes long) that superbly explains the modern “climate crisis” panic that we see being forced on the public day after day by a compliant media. We are told by very stupid people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Occasional-Cortex) that we have just 10-12 years and then it’s all over. We’re done. We’re toasted. Because we continue to burn fossil fuels. She’s a certifiable idiot. Why do large multi-national corporations, Big Green groups, and others continue to promote her wildly wrong theories and Green New Deal? As Mark so eloquently summarizes: panic = profit. People are making money from this gigantic global warming hoax.
All three M-U states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania received a sizable 14 new permits (after receiving 18 permits the previous week). The majority of those permits were for wells on three pads in northeastern PA. Ohio received 3 new permits last week all in one county (Greene) for one driller (Eclipse, now owned by Southwestern Energy) on one well pad. And West Virginia received a sizable 13 new permits with 9 of them split between two well pads for different drillers (Northeast Natural Energy and Tug Hill).
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!
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.