Energy Stories of Interest: Thu, Apr 18, 2019
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: DCNR’s EDWIN database of PA oil & gas well information; Gov. Wolf reappoints Gladys Brown Dutrieuille as PUC chairman; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Gulf LNG gets environmental clearance; Permian activity is firing up but holding back regional natural gas prices; NATIONAL: ExxonKnew activists release manual to eliminate energy industry; Sempra LNG names vice president of engineering; Toshiba to start new bidding round for it US LNG business; Is the natural gas meltdown finally here?; Cramer – Chevron’s Anadarko merger won’t be the only oil deal this year; Emerson’s IoT system enhances shale oil production, monitoring.
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Swamp dwellers are recoiling in horror that the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee has just approved a series of bills that restores some sanity in how environmental regulations are made and paid for in the Keystone State. The bills begin, in a small way, to take back control of our system of creating laws, returning authority for making laws to the PA legislature, instead of creating and forcing laws on citizens by unelected, nameless, faceless, swamp-dwelling bureaucrats in regulatory agencies like the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). Let us explain.
Last November, a variety of Big Green groups including the Clean Air Council, Widener University Environmental Law and Sustainability Center, eco(n)law LLC and 61 others submitted a “rulemaking petition” (407-page plan) to the Pennsylvania Environment Quality Board (EQB) requesting the Board and PA Gov. Tom Wolf establish a cap-and-trade greenhouse gas emission reduction program to eliminate carbon emissions from major sources by 2052. It’s a bizarre plan, meant to eliminate fossil fuel production and use, including Marcellus Shale production. Yesterday the EQB voted to accept and consider this cockamamie plan.
Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, published a post yesterday with information that’s sure to make anti-fossil fuelers go nuts. Even with increased use of so-called renewables and a major emphasis on conserving energy, America’s overall energy usage went up 4% in 2018 to a new, all-time high. Not only that, but America’s use of dreaded fossil fuels also went up by 4% last year!
Good old American ingenuity has done it again. A company in Oklahoma called Newpoint Gas has, using existing technology, developed a process to produce clean water, electricity and hydrogen energy from natural gas–and do it with zero emissions. How cool is that?
It’s no secret that upstream companies (drillers) like EQT are trimming head count and reducing annual spending. So it probably won’t come as a surprise that EQT has put 46,000 square feet (out of 250,000 sq. ft.) in its palatial headquarters in downtown Pittsburgh up for sublease. Meanwhile, in a contrasting bit of news, midstream (pipeline) company Williams has just renewed the lease for its big regional Pittsburgh headquarters at Park Place Corporate Center–a 112,481 sq. ft. building.
In a new and important development in New York State’s war against natural gas pipelines, local utility Consolidated Edison says if the Williams Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project is delayed or canceled, not only will Westchester suburbanites continue to be subject to Con Ed’s ban on new customers from hooking up to receive natgas, so too will customers who live in New York City itself.
Yesterday our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, issued our favorite monthly report, the Drilling Productivity Report. The DPR is a forecast of oil and gas production in the country’s seven major shale plays for the coming month, made by the expert number crunchers at EIA.