Welcome back to The Link-Up, your weekly rundown of our favorite stories from the past seven days in the oil and gas industry!
Washington Examiner
With the dire climate warning recently presented by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it's as important as ever to point things like this out: our greenhouse gas emissions fell by 2.7 percent from 2016 to 2017, and are down 12.2 percent since 2011. Why? Because natural gas is cleaner than coal, and our production of and demand for natural gas keeps growing. So... good for us.
S&P Global
Good for us, indeed. We mentioned a gas-powered plant that just opened in Lordstown, OH a couple weeks ago, but it's hardly alone, as this list of 26 projects in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia shows. The projects combined will have more than 21,000 megawatts of capacity. The Trumbull Energy Center (included in the table) represents 940 of that.
The surge in construction, of course, matches the surge of natural gas, and many of these plants will replace coal-fired versions.
New York Times
If you needed more evidence that Prop 112 has implications beyond Colorado, a long exploration in a "national" paper like the New York Times should at least offer that. Fair warning: it does present both sides of the argument. Also...
One recent industry poll obtained by The New York Times showed 43 percent of voters in favor, with 41 percent opposed.
Yikes.
Also, some guy quoted in the article gave his twins the middle names Halli and Burton. Good God man, I hope your boss at least knows about it.
John Elway is against Prop 112, by the way.
Colorado Springs Gazette
With Colorado standing as a model for things to come in a few senses, it's no surprise that it's ended up as a landing spot for activists. Here, for your reading enjoyment, is a respectable newspaper's editorial board going in with both barrels on one of them and examining the true motives of the Prop 112 push.
Business Journal Daily
Back in Ohio, everything's pretty good for the time being. As in Colorado, there's a tightly-contested gubernatorial race, but (also as in Colorado) both major candidates support the oil and gas industry, so it hasn't been much of a talking point, at least within the industry. Here's Democrat Richard Cordray at a Consumer Energy Alliance event:
"Ohio’s advantage is that we have abundant water and abundant energy. With that, we’ll always be a strong manufacturing state. But we will also be a state that attracts other businesses."
Dominion Post
The headline pretty much says it all, as the Shale Crescent gathered in Pittsburgh to talk about cooperation across state lines for the good of the group - even to the point where a new piece of branding was involved.
Hot take: It's not bad, I like the use of yellow, which is somewhat novel alongside the energy-logo-staple green. But I hope they broke it down into smaller pieces to give more usage options and flexibility, in fact, I wouldn't mind shedding the map altogether. Either way, I like being a part of The Power Region. Better there than The Wimpy Region.
See you next time!
