Dems Demand Watchdog Probe Cheniere’s $370M Tax Break
Five Senate Democrats have escalated their fight over Cheniere Energy’s $370 million IRS “alternative fuel” tax payout, formally asking Treasury’s internal watchdog to investigate. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), joined by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Edward Markey (D-MA), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), sent an Aug. 20 letter to Acting Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) Heather Hill. The letter asks TIGTA to determine how and why the IRS decided LNG tankers qualify as “motorboats” under the Alternative Fuel Excise Tax (AFET) credit—and, notably, whether the call was made to reward President Trump’s campaign donors. Read More “Dems Demand Watchdog Probe Cheniere’s $370M Tax Break”
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Yet, again, it’s all about Josh (Shapiro); OTHER U.S. REGIONS: DOE Sec. Wright visits NH co-op to discuss energy challenges; Gunvor in talks to buy Haynesville shale assets for over $1 billion; NATIONAL: U.S. natural gas futures slip in range-bound trading; Peak gas, peak demand? McKibben in fantasy land; The teens taking on data centers; U.S. LNG feedgas demand falls; INTERNATIONAL: Oil drops as Iran diplomacy gains; Woodside retreats on clean energy, doubles down on LNG; Global EV sales rise again in July; Iran, Oman push talks for ‘interim’ Hormuz reopening; A U.S. – Canada trade war would bring dire impacts on oil trade. 
A press release from BKV Corporation (NYSE: BKV) last week announced that a Form S-3 registration statement covering 5.3 million shares held by its Thai parent’s power arm had taken effect. It sounds like news. It isn’t. But it sent us back through BKV’s second quarter numbers, and those tell a story northeastern Pennsylvania landowners ought to hear: the Marcellus assets that launched this company are now 10% of its reserves, and they’re getting essentially none of BKV’s growth money. 
A federal appeals court has handed XTO Energy (ExxonMobil’s shale subsidiary) a win in a long-running Western Pennsylvania royalty lawsuit, ruling Monday that XTO did NOT give up its right to push some landowners into private arbitration — even though it spent 55 months litigating the case before it asked. The case is Salvatora v. XTO Energy Inc., a cousin of the Kriley case MDN has also followed. Same defendant, same Pittsburgh courthouse, same plaintiffs’ firm, same complaint: landowners say XTO shaved too much off their royalty checks for “post-production costs” — the gathering, compression, and processing charges that move gas from the wellhead to a buyer. 
A new Penn State study went looking for radium from fracking in southwestern Pennsylvania drinking water. It tested 91 private wells and springs in Washington and Greene counties and found exactly zero samples above the EPA limit — and the radium it did find carries the chemical fingerprint of the rock the water sits in, not Marcellus brine. You wouldn’t know that from Penn State’s press release headline, which falsely blares, “
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit last Friday slammed the door on Big Green’s attempt to yank the New York water permit for the Williams/Transco Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline. Six environmental groups asked the court to vacate the Clean Water Act Section 401 water quality certification (WQC) that the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) issued in November 2025. In a summary order issued Aug. 21, a three-judge panel said no. The permit stands. NESE, already under construction, keeps building. 
The highly functional and responsible Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), unlike its dysfunctional and irresponsible counterpart, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), continues to support the shale energy industry by approving water withdrawals and consumptive use requests for responsible, safe shale drilling. The SRBC published a notice in the August 22nd Pennsylvania Bulletin that the SRBC approved and/or renewed 35 general water use permits in July for individual shale gas well drilling pads in Bradford, Centre, Clearfield, Clinton, Lycoming, Susquehanna, Tioga, and Wyoming counties. 
PJM Interconnection — the grid operator that keeps the lights on for 67 million people across 13 states and DC, including most of the Marcellus/Utica region — dropped its new five-year strategy last Wednesday (Aug. 19). Most of the coverage focused on the four bullet-point priorities, which read like every corporate strategy document ever written. But if you skip to page 5, PJM says two things out loud that our industry has been shouting for a decade: pipeline constraints are choking the grid, and the grid is getting less reliable as it gets more intermittent. 
Three weeks, same number. The Marcellus/Utica held at 35 rigs again last week — Pennsylvania 16, Ohio 10, West Virginia 9, nobody budging. This time we had company: the national count fell five to 588, the first decline in four weeks. And the Haynesville, which has been eating our lunch all summer, gave back two rigs. The bigger story, though, is happening after the drilling stops. Frac crews nationally dropped by nine in a single week.