OH Legislature Passes Ban on NatGas Bans, Gov. Expected to Sign
The states that produce Marcellus and Utica Shale are ensuring no rogue local municipalities will get it into their heads to ban the use of natural gas like some municipalities in left-leaning states including California and New York. Both Pennsylvania and Ohio have bills that would “ban bans” of natural gas (see OH, PA Bills Prevent Natural Gas Bans by Local Municipalities). While PA’s bill is still making progress, the Ohio legislature has jumped ahead and just passed House Bill (HB) 201 to ban bans. The bill now goes to Gov. Mike DeWine who is sure to sign it into law.
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Here’s an interesting concept. What if you were to replace the natural gas flowing through a pipeline, say an old, unused pipeline, with compressed air instead? And what if you retooled an existing gas- or coal-fired power plant so the compressed air itself spins the turbines in the compressor to produce electricity? That’s the concept being floated by the appropriately named company called Breeze.
The Enverus U.S. rig count continues to break one-year records. For the week ending June 23, the rig count stood at 577–the highest number it has seen since April 2020, just as the pandemic was starting to take hold and shut everything down. The Marcellus play lost one rig, while the Utica remained even. Collectively the M-U is currently running 45 rigs.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: NC Gov. Cooper nominates former DEQ lobbyist Elizabeth Biser to lead agency; NATIONAL: U.S. ethane exports surge with additional export capacity and expanded tanker fleet; FERC establishes Office of Public Participation; INTERNATIONAL: China to use more natural gas in energy mix to 2035.
“I’m greener than you!” … “No, I’M greener than YOU!!” So we imagine the backroom squabbling that’s going on among Marcellus/Utica drillers as we watch companies engage in a form of brinksmanship for how clean and green their natural gas is versus a competitor’s. EQT announced that in addition to the myriad of environmental programs they already belong to, they’ve joined a United Nations program to further prove their commitment to reduce global warming (see today’s related post). Not to be outdone, Southwestern Energy stepped up its commitment to a program it first joined in 2018 to certify some of its production as responsibly developed. Now ALL of Southwestern’s M-U gas will get the TrustWell certification.
EQT continues to fall all over itself in its efforts to prove the natural gas it extracts from Mom Earth is environmentally friendly and safe and good and yummy and worthy and… We’ve lost track of how many certification programs the company has joined–at least four prior to yesterday. The latest (fifth?) program EQT has joined is the United Nations’ Climate and Clean Air Coalition’s Oil & Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP 2.0).
A “reporter” at the Columbus Dispatch has just published a hatchet job on a shale waste handling and processing facility located in Belmont County, OH. The facility is located (gasp!) a half-mile away from a high school and a hospital. It’s also located near the Ohio River and it handles (gasp!) “radioactive waste.” That’s how the article begins. It goes downhill from there, making wild claims of “overflowing barrels” of radioactive waste at the facility.
Here’s a peer-reviewed, published research study you won’t read about in mainstream media. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Penn State University, and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation recently published research in The Electricity Journal (full copy below) detailing how much money it cost New England electric ratepayers in 2014 when there was a cold-weather event that caused a shortage of natural gas used for power plants, due to lack of pipelines. New Englanders paid $1.8 BILLION for that one event in skyrocketed electric rates–due to the folly of their elected leaders in blocking new pipelines to the region.
Three far-left Democrat judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit have attacked the Marcellus/Utica by overturning a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval for a long-completed and flowing natural gas pipeline in the St. Louis, MO area–a pipeline that flows M-U gas to residents, businesses, and electric generating plants in the region. The Spire STL pipeline now faces closure. It is a 
The price of natural gas traded on “forward” contracts for the fall at what used to be called the Dominion South (now called Eastern Gas Transmission) trading hub near Pittsburgh is up 23 cents (14%) for contracts in September and October. Forward prices are based on current spot prices. Translation: The market is strongly indicating it thinks the price of M-U gas is heading higher in the coming fall months.
An interesting post by our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) about their latest predictions for the price of natural gas at the benchmark Henry Hub. EIA predicts the average price at HH this year, in 2021, will end up being around $3.07 per million British thermal units (MMBtu). The average in 2020 was $1.998 (round it up to $2.00). So this year the average price will be some 54% higher than last year. What about 2022?
We have published a number of posts about hydrogen (H2), the next “big thing” in energy (