Electrical Generation | Energy Services | FirstEnergy | Industrywide Issues | Ohio | Regulation | Statewide OH
OH Gov. DeWine Reverses Course, Wants to Repeal $1B Nuke Bailout
We’re pretty certain Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (RINO) doesn’t read MDN, but we’re glad to see he took our advice from yesterday when we said he’s “stupid if he vetoes the bill to repeal House Bill (HB) 6. Does he not realize he will be given the political equivalent of an anal exam to see if his palms were greased by FirstEnergy too?! The only reason the bill passed was bribery. It’s poisoned. It must be overturned.” A day after DeWine expressed support for the bribe-ridden HB 6 that became law when he signed it last year, DeWine reversed course and now says he supports repeal of that terrible law.
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In March 2016, MDN reported that 47 dumpsters full of concentrated frack waste from OH, PA and WV was illegally dumped in a Kentucky landfill in Estill County, KY (see 
Earlier this week Kinder Morgan, one of (perhaps THE) largest pipeline company in the U.S., issued its second-quarter update. While most headlines blare that the company “lost” $637 million during 2Q, what they don’t say (until you read a few paragraphs in) is that it was a paper loss. Yes, revenue was down. But if you take the impairment (writedown) charge away, KM actually made $363 million in profit during 2Q. It was not, however, KM’s financial performance that caught our attention. It was the update on Marcellus/Utica projects like the Elba Island LNG export facility and a new project to expand Tennessee Gas Pipeline to provide more gas into New York City that caught our eye.
New Fortress Energy, which likes to build and own as much of the LNG supply chain as possible, built and recently finished an LNG import terminal in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently dinged the company, asking for an explanation as to why they built it without FERC permission (see 
Once again the Enverus onshore rig count added more active rigs over the past week. Last week at this time the rig count stood at 279. This week, as of yesterday, the count stood at 290, a gain of 11 rigs! However, the Marcellus/Utica counts remain pretty anemic. The Marcellus lost a rig from the dry gas area of northeastern PA. The total Marcellus count is 27. The Ohio Utica remains steady at a paltry 7 active rigs.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: EQT rolls back curtailments of natural gas production; Shareholders OK doubling of EQT’s authorized shares; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Duke Energy’s natural gas plant near Asheville now producing power; NATIONAL: Frac is back; U.S. weekly LNG exports edge up; Is Warren Buffett right about natural gas?; COVID not done wreaking havoc on oil and gas industry; Natural gas rallies as traders eye Gulf of Mexico storm activity.
Terry Pegula is a billionaire who owns both the Buffalo Sabres (NHL hockey team) and the Buffalo Bills (NFL football team). Pegula is the owner of East Resources, once a big driller (and holder of acreage) in the Marcellus Shale. Pegula sold off East’s Marcellus assets and used the money, in part, to buy the Buffalo Bills in 2014, which gave rise to MDN calling the team “the Marcellus Bills”–since it was Marcellus money that kept the team in Buffalo, instead of moving to another market (see 
This absolutely must stop. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is completely out of control and abusing his power as AG. He has charged a third Marcellus/Utica company, National Fuel Gas Company, with crimes because of a few minor cases of erosion runoff during the installation of a pipeline in Washington County, PA. Since when is erosion a CRIME?
“Be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23). That phrase needs to be tattooed on the side of FirstEnergy’s headquarters because their sin of (allegedly) bribing Ohio lawmakers to pass a highly unpopular bailout of the company’s economically failing nuclear power plants has certainly found them out (see 
Just yesterday MDN told you about one expert’s view that there won’t be one massive NGL storage hub built in the Marcellus/Utica, but a number of smaller hubs (see 
Montage Resources, the new name for the merger of Eclipse Resources with Blue Ridge Mountain Resources which happened more than a year ago, announced yesterday it is selling its “non-core” wellhead gathering infrastructure (pipelines) in the Ohio Utica condensate development area to an unnamed international buyer for $25 million. The transaction is expected to close by the end of this year.
Each day New York State becomes more like a third world, tinhorn dictatorship. High and Supreme Lord Andrew Cuomo (governor and dictator of NY) has issued edicts to *permanently* ban all fracking in the state. The suckup legislature dutifully obliged (see 
We told you that the law passed in Ohio (House Bill 6) granting FirstEnergy (now called Energy Harbor) $1 billion in corporate welfare from ratepayers, destroying the fair playing field for natgas-fired electric plants in the bargain, stunk to high heaven. We told you that the entire thing was corrupt (see 
Last week MDN brought you details of the 
BJ Services, a pressure pumping (i.e. fracking) company, began life in the 1870s. BJ was purchased by, and merged into, Baker Hughes in 2009 for $5.5 billion. In November 2016, Baker Hughes along with financial partners Goldman Sachs and CSL Capital Management combined forces (and money) to turn the Baker Hughes BJ division back into a standalone company (see