Energy Stories of Interest: Thu, May 9, 2019
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Ohio’s oil and gas industry offers a wide variety of career opportunities; Exelon to close Pennsylvania Three Mile Island nuclear plant in September; Michael Bloomberg is paying a climate prosecutor $125,000 to work ‘pro bono’ for Maryland’s AG; NATIONAL: U.S. energy consumption, production, and exports reach record highs in 2018; The shale revolution isn’t just about cheap energy, it’s changing geopolitics; Once-key data about natural gas loses clout; Clean Energy inks slew of natural gas contracts nationwide; Trump’s misguided U-turn on the Jones Act; INTERNATIONAL: Natural gas vehicles likely to account for 50 pc of total new sales by 2030.
Read More “Energy Stories of Interest: Thu, May 9, 2019”
Saudi Arabia is sniffing around the Marcellus Shale. Bloomberg reports that super secret talks are happening between Saudi Aramco (largest oil company in the world, owned by the Saudi government) and Equinor, which until recently was called Statoil. Equinor is majority-owned by the government of Norway. The Saudis are considering “buying a stake” in or possibly a joint venture with Equinor. It seems Norway is hesitant to hop into bed with the Saudis. We don’t blame them.
A Pennsylvania federal judge has ordered a former EQT employee to turn over his cell phone to EQT so they can have experts examine it for deleted text messages to Toby Rice and others helping him. You may recall EQT accused two fired workers of stealing company secrets and sharing those secrets with Toby and Derek Rice, who are trying to take over EQT (see 
Here’s an interesting and fun fact: In just 12 years electricity generated by coal plants has gone from powering 87% of Ohio’s homes and businesses to just 47%. So-called renewables (solar and wind) make up a whopping 3% of Ohio’s electric generation. So what’s replacing coal? Natural gas, which now generates 34% of the state’s electricity. Gas still hasn’t beaten coal, but give it a few more years and it will.
On multiple occasions we have outlined the reasons why federal agencies like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) exist–in order to prevent individual states from harming their neighbors economically. An individual state can’t block a new interstate highway, or the trucks and cars that travel it, from entering their state. It’s the same for power transmission lines and for pipelines. Yet New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is violating that law by rejecting interstate pipelines.
One of the few “green” advocates we respect is Michael Shellenberger, a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” Green Book Award Winner, and president of Environmental Progress, a research and policy organization. His articles often appear on the Forbes website (we’ve linked to many of them in our “Best of the Rest” roundup). Shellenberger, one of the few environmentalists to endorse and defend fracking, recently penned an article that accuses the fracking/shale industry of a double standard when it comes to their opposition to bailing out nuclear plants with government subsidies.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has just fined EQT $330,775 for erosion and sedimentation violations at two well sites in Forward Township, Allegheny County, PA. Water with sediment in it leaked from the well sites in early 2018, which sometimes happens. The reason for the stiff fine is that EQT failed to notify the DEP when it happened. If the DEP finds out via its own inspections first, the cost goes way up.
In October 2017, MDN told you a second Marcellus gas-fired electric generating plant is planned for Greene County, PA (see 
We have news of a new, small pipeline project with the potential to carry more PA Marcellus natural gas to several locations in Delaware and Maryland. Eastern Shore Natural Gas Company (ESNG), a subsidiary company of Chesapeake Utilities Corporation, filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Sept. 2018 to build 19+ miles of new pipeline and new meter and delivery stations in Kent and Sussex counties in Delaware, and Wicomico and Somerset counties in Maryland. FERC has just issued a positive environmental assessment (EA) for the project.
The battle to buy Anadarko Petroleum by Chevron and Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) has taken an interesting turn. Over the weekend Oxy revised its offer. It will still pay Anadarko shareholders $57 billion (as before), but the offer was revised to dial up the amount of cash and dial down the amount of stock swaps. Never hurts to use cash as a sweetener. The new offer did the trick. Although Anadarko previously signed an agreement to sell itself to Chevron, Anadarko announced yesterday they are leaving Chevron at the altar and riding off into the sunset to elope with Oxy.