Earlier this month U.S. District Judge Robert D. Mariani dismissed the Wayne Land and Mineral Group (WLMG) v. Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) lawsuit that argued the DRBC had “taken” the property rights of landowners in eastern Pennsylvania, robbing them of their right to allow shale drilling on and under their land. It’s a sad…
Read More...Two weeks ago, MDN brought you the exciting news that President Trump pledged to get the long-dead Pennsylvania Marcellus to New York State Constitution Pipeline built (see Stop Press! Trump Pledges to Revive PA-to-NY Constitution Pipeline). Since then, we’ve eagerly monitored the news to see if there has been any indication that the builder, Williams,…
Read More...After the shocking news in 2022 that then-U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (from West Virginia) had sold out his state and the entire country by agreeing to support the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) bill, the details began to come out about just how bad the bill (now law) really is for the oil and gas…
Read More...Wow! What a difference 10 years and the election of Donald J. Trump can make. In May 2015, MDN reported that HSBC Bank (otherwise known as The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) circulated a note to investors telling them they should divest from fossil fuel companies. HSBC said if they didn’t divest from fossil energy,…
Read More...Here’s a company we’ve not written about since 2021: IOG Capital and its subsidiary IOG Resources. Back in 2015 we first told you that IOG Capital had cut a deal with Seneca Resources to fund Seneca’s Marcellus drilling program in Elk, McKean and Cameron counties in northcentral Pennsylvania (see Seneca Res. Cuts Deal with IOG…
Read More...You know we delight in connecting the dots that others often miss. We spotted big news in the quarterly update for DT Midstream (DTM), headquartered in Detroit, which owns major assets in the Marcellus/Utica region and other regions like the Haynesville. Earlier this year the company closed on the purchase of three pipeline systems, two…
Read More...As we reported two days ago, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, acting like a junkie cut off from his drugs, finally got the Trump administration to restart the flow of drugs (i.e., money) that had been paused to give Elon Musk’s DOGErs a chance to ensure the payments are legit (see PA Gov. Claims Victory in…
Read More...We explored an important issue last September—the ballooning cost of plugging orphaned oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania (see PA DEP Spending WAY Too Much to Plug Abandoned/Orphaned Wells). As a reminder, abandoned wells are those with no production for at least 12 months in a row. Orphaned wells were abandoned before 1985, and the…
Read More...In September 2023, MDN told you about a non-profit organization called Project InnerSpace, which was contacting public officials, academics, and oil and gas interests in Pennsylvania, pitching a transition from fossil fuel extraction to geothermal energy using the same workers and potentially, the same infrastructure (see Siren Song of Geothermal Calls to PA Conventional &…
Read More...Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) released its latest quarterly Natural Gas Production Report for October through December 2024 (full copy below). There were 84 new horizontal wells spud (drilled) in 4Q24, a decrease of 26 wells (-24%) compared to 4Q23. However, 4Q’s spud number increased from the 63 drilled in the prior quarter,…
Read More...The Pennsylvania Senate Appropriations Committee held a budget hearing yesterday in Harrisburg. The Department of Environmental Protection’s Acting Secretary Jessica Shirley was on the hot seat. Although many topics were discussed, Senators were most interested in speeding permit reviews, Governor Shapiro’s Lightning Energy Plan, and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax Shapiro insists…
Read More...MDN has written numerous posts about AI (artificial intelligence) and the data centers that provide the computing power AI requires. Why? AI data centers use enormous amounts of electricity, most of which is generated by natural gas-fired power plants. Some 25% of all the data centers currently operating in the country are located in northern…
Read More...U.S. power generators plan to retire about 8.1 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired power generation capacity this year, roughly double the amount that was retired in 2024, the Energy Information Administration said on Tuesday. In addition, power generators plan to retire 2.6 GW of U.S. natural gas capacity, representing 0.5% of the natural gas fleet in…
Read More...Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro can rest easy now that he’s got his “fix” of $2.1 billion in federal taxpayer money promised to him by the Bidenistas before they left town. As you may recall, the Trump administration put an immediate pause on some federal funds after Elon Musk’s DOGE kids discovered massive fraud in government…
Read More...Here’s a factoid that had escaped our notice until now: The NYMEX “front month” contract price for natural gas today is ~150% higher than it was one year ago. Yesterday, February 24, 2025, the NYMEX natural gas front-month contract (March 2025) settled at $3.994 per MMBtu. The same price a year ago was $1.602 per…
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