The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) is shopping for a public relations firm that can help the agency convince gullible New Yorkers that they’re better off paying more money for unreliable renewable energy than they are in using fossil fuels like natural gas. NYSERDA is offering $500,000 for a one-year contract…
The problem-plagued Freeport LNG export plant continues to be mostly offline following an episode of cold temps in January. It seems like this facility has been out of commission more than it’s been in commission since it went online in 2019. A few days ago, Freeport announced that two of the three trains at its…
It’s full speed ahead for the radical anti-Marcellus Democrats in the Pennsylvania State Legislature. Last week, PA Gov. Josh Shapiro traveled to Scranton, PA, to do a dog-and-pony show announcing his personalized version of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax that would apply only to PA (see PA Gov. Shapiro Proposes Own Version…
Honestly, we can’t heap enough praise on the excellent work done by Pennsylvania shale drillers. It is unreasonable to expect there will be absolutely zero problems when engaging in something as complex as drilling a mile straight down and then one to four miles horizontally underground. Nothing in life is error-free. NOTHING. There’s always a…
Where do business dreams go to die? New York State, of course. Yesterday, the New York State Senate passed a bill to ban the use of carbon dioxide (CO2) in any process to extract natural gas or oil in the so-called Empire State. The NY Assembly (our state’s lower chamber) voted to approve the same…
Water use restrictions have finally been lifted at the Beaver Run Reservoir in Westmoreland County, PA (near Pittsburgh). The Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County (MAWC), which manages Beaver Run Reservoir, has issued a contract to CNX Resources allowing the company to buy up to 51 million gallons of water to use in fracking at nearby…
Here’s a strange one we don’t quite understand. Yet. Two weeks ago we brought you the news that a jury in a federal court had decided a group of Utica shale drillers, including Rice Drilling (now EQT), Ascent Resources, XTO, and Gulfport Energy, were not guilty of “unjust enrichment” by drilling into the Point Pleasant…
In January 2023, three Marcellus/Utica companies — Chesapeake Energy, EQT, and Equitrans Midstream — launched the Appalachian Methane Initiative (AMI), a coalition committed to further enhancing methane monitoring throughout the Appalachia Basin and reducing methane emissions throughout the region (see EQT, Chessy, Equitrans Form M-U Methane Monitoring Club). The initial pilot campaign from 2023 is…
The State of Texas just dropped a major bombshell on investment manager BlackRock and the entire so-called ESG (environment, social, governance) space. The Texas Permanent School Fund (PSF), created in the 19th century to support the state’s public schools, has pulled $8.5 billion of its investments away from BlackRock over the state’s determination that BlackRock…
The annual CERAWeek by S&P Global conference is happening now in Houston. Everybody who’s anybody is there. (Yes, we’re nobodies; we’re not there!) Oil and gas CEOs, politicians, regulatory agencies — they all convene in Houston to talk about energy at what is billed as “the world’s premier energy conference.” Toby Rice, CEO of EQT…
Last week, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro traveled to Scranton, PA, to do a dog-and-pony show announcing his personalized version of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax that would apply only to PA (see PA Gov. Shapiro Proposes Own Version of Marcellus-Killing Carbon Tax). Shapiro calls it PACER, the Pennsylvania Climate Emissions Reduction Act….
Thanks to abundant, clean Marcellus shale gas, Pennsylvania remained the country’s top electricity exporter in 2023 while simultaneously reaching a new low for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from electricity generation, according to the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office’s (IFO) latest analysis. Yes, you read that right. PA is producing more electricity than ever, yet CO2 emissions…
The latest monthly U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Drilling Productivity Report (DPR) for March, issued yesterday (below), shows EIA believes shale gas production across the seven major plays tracked in the monthly DPR for April will decrease production from the prior month of March. This is the ninth month in a row that EIA has…
For years, we have watched natural gas production in oil-focused plays like the Permian (in Texas and New Mexico) steadily rise. It was an annoyance, a curiosity, mostly an afterthought because production in the Marcellus/Utica, where we concentrate our attention, was also rising and quite dominant. But the M-U hit a plateau in December 2019…
In an embarrassing act of ignorance, seven Virginia state delegates and two state senators (all of them Democrats) who represent the greater Richmond, VA area signed a statement last Wednesday opposing Dominion Energy’s plan to build four small “peaker” electric generating plants in Chesterfield County, VA, a Richmond suburb (see Dominion Plans to Build 1,000-MW…