The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) published a post noting the increase in the use of energy in the U.S. from 2020 to 2021. Energy usage increased by 25%, adjusted for inflation, in 2021. Why? In 2020 we were deep in the throes of lockdowns due to COVID. Nobody was going anywhere, pretty much, which…
Read More...When a government bureaucrat says, “We’re not coming for your gas stove,” you know what that means, right? It means just the opposite. It means they ARE coming for your gas stove. On July 26, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) voted in an “open” meeting to adopt new regulations to “decarbonize” buildings…
Read More...West Virginia’s state budget runs from July 1 through the following year’s June 30. WV’s General Revenue collections for July 2023, the first month of Fiscal Year 2024, came in at a respectable $7.7 million above estimates, with total collections of $335 million. However, that $335 million collected is 12% lower than the $381 million…
Read More...Newly-elected Gov. Josh Shapiro, who appears to be completely ineffective since taking office (which is not necessarily a bad thing), appointed a working group in April to help guide him on what he should do concerning the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax and the broader issue of global warming (see PA Gov Appoints…
Read More...In May, the Bidenistas at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a hellscape of new regulations (681 pages) aimed at forcing coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to close (see New Biden EPA Regs a “Death Sentence” for Fossil-Fuel Power Plants). The editors of the Wall Street Journal called the new EPA regulations “An EPA…
Read More...Equitrans Midstream issued its second quarter update yesterday, and WOW, what an update! The company had lots to talk about following the high drama surrounding its Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project over the past couple of months. Equitrans CEO Tom Karam said following the U.S. Supreme Court’s intervention, construction has now resumed on MVP and…
Read More...In February 2022, Equitrans Midstream announced it had filed a new pipeline expansion project with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (see Equitrans Files New $160M Pipe Expansion Project with FERC). Called the Ohio Valley Connector Expansion Project (or OVCX), the $160 million project will add compression along Equitrans pipelines in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia…
Read More...DT Midstream (DTM), headquartered in Detroit, owns major assets in the Marcellus/Utica region and other regions. DTM issued its second quarter 2023 update yesterday. The company announced it had reached a final investment decision (FID) to build a new greenfield gathering system in the Ohio Utica Shale. The gathering system will transport associated gas from…
Read More...In 2021 as he was running for the office of Governor in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin pledged if he won, he would remove the state from the onerous carbon tax on coal- and gas-fired power plants called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Following his recent review of a new regulation to remove the state from…
Read More...Eureka Resources, which operates three frack wastewater treatment facilities in the Marcellus Shale (and building a fourth facility in Dimock, PA), is doing really cool stuff. In October 2019, the company began extracting lithium from Marcellus wastewater at one of its plants in Bradford County, PA (see Marcellus Wastewater Plant in PA Extracts 1st Batch…
Read More...In July, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced that it had appointed a 17-member committee to figure out how to dole out $5 million to fund local community projects located near the Shell cracker plant in Beaver County, PA, following a $10 million fine against the plant for violating air emissions standards (see…
Read More...Permitting in Pennsylvania, especially those overseen by the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), has been broken for years. A Chapter 102 Erosion and Sedimentation permit sometimes takes two, three, even six to eight months for approval–instead of the law-mandated 14 days. It got so bad that in the fall of 2019, PA State Sen. Gene…
Read More...Eversource wants to build the Western Massachusetts Natural Gas Reliability Project in Springfield, Massachusetts, to prevent winter gas outages. The purpose of the tiny 5.3-mile pipeline is to function as a backup–to prevent natural gas from being turned off for 58,000 Eversource customers (200,000 people) in the region. The existing pipeline in that area is…
Read More...The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is reporting feed gas (natural gas) delivered to LNG export facilities for the first six months of this year hit a new all-time average high of 12.8 Bcf/d (billion cubic feet per day). We hit that high after the Freeport LNG facility finally came back online following a June…
Read More...For the third week in a row and the 12th time in the last 13 weeks, the U.S. active rig count lost rigs. Last week the number decreased by five rigs after falling six rigs the week before (see U.S. Rig Count Drops Another 6 Rigs, Now Lowest Level in 16 Mos.). Both the Marcellus…
Read More...