Cold winter weather continues for the Creston area with more snow, some bad roads, frozen water pipes, etc. The Wirt crew cleaned the Richardsonville road to the Calhoun County line. Steve Loudin who has only a two wheel drive vehicle got stuck in the parking lot at Shade Tree and then, going home, he almost ended up in the ditch. Some wonder if local road supervisors are being told to hold back on the use of materials to keep roads clean as it had been policy to encourage counties to “turn back in the money to get attaboys” and of course, fund “special projects for the elite”.
The other day (Thursday) two local residents motored to the Mouth of the Elk to talk with legislators. The sun was shining and I-77 was dry. Dimbulb the big road boss had two tandems, loaded with salt with plows attached to “impress the rubes”. “Lookee, lookee, see, see we’re ready to start with the first snow flake” even though nothing was in the forecast. Of course they could have warmed up a couple of bags of high quality coldmix and filled some potholes down where I-77 & I-79 join. A good tamper would have filled the now small holes.
On Sunday, February 8 services resumed at several local churches
The record cold weather has set some records and made some matters very, very clear. There was a record amount of natural gas withdrawn from storage fields as some producing wells froze off and bad road conditions made access difficult for oil & gas field workers. It is understood that Mother Hope (Hope Gas) has had trouble supplying natural gas to local customers and those on Megan (Jr. Hildreth’s gas utility) ended up without any fuel. Because of artificially low prices now for a number of years local producers have had no reason to rework wells for increased natural gas sales as the inflation adjusted rates are lower than prices 50 years ago. NYMEX is now $3.42/MMBTU although the February price for DTI (Mother Hope & Warren Buffett) is $7.15 and for TCO (Columbia Gas/TransCanada) is $7.31. Time will tell what actual sales prices are.
PJM, the outfit that runs the electric grid for W. Va. And adjacent states [including the Crestonarea], reported that over 90% of the power was generated during the coldest snap by coal, natural gas & nuclear with less that 5% by wind mills and solar panels. Of course in states where the latter are “mandated” the electric bills have soared and, of course, President Trump was blamed for “affordability”.
The recent cold weather, storms and power outages have made several items very clear. One has to be able to live without relying on bureaucrats and their plans to make life better. Several years back many folks in W. Va. & surrounding states heated their homes and cooked with coal but then the government people came and said “You must stop to save the planet”. Now the green weenies want to ban new natural gas hookups with such now being illegal in places like New York. Pot bellied stoves, wood cook stoves, heating fireplaces [Rumford] and space heaters do not need electric to function. With all the storms there is lots of firewood that one can pickup along the roads to use to keep warm.
Someone down in the West Virginia legislature decided that it would be a good idea to reduce from 5% to 3% the severance tax from Marcellus & Utica wells drilled for the next two years. Requiring that the meters be checked for accuracy — oh, we can’t do that, it’s all on the honor system, don’tcha know?
Watching the W. Va. State Senate one can make several conclusions. First the “leaders” apparently yearn for the days when the democrats ran the place for 80 years with absolute power. First off they passed a resolution at the request, so it was said, for Sen. Shelly Capito at the request of the deep state to require farms in the Ohio River drainage [that includes Creston, Arnoldsburg, Brohard, Nebo, etc.] to comply with the onerous regulations imposed on Agriculture in the Chesapeake Bay drainage. It would seem that this is to provide jobs for more obnoxious busybodies that are to come around and tell us all that we cannot now do. It might be a good idea to lay in a supply of tar and feathers so these fine gentlemen can be treated in an appropriate matter when they dare to show up. This was said to be SJR-7.
Then there is SJR-1 which is to allow for the consolidation of counties – a move down at the Mouth of the Elk since the 1960s. Oh, counties are so outdated, etc. We want “metro government”.
The school up at Morgantown that runs professional sports and an expansive health system has a senator on their payroll and they want him to run the senate. So the school and some “Chamber of Commerce” types are running a slate to take over the Republican senate and make it a cluster of RINOS, Polecats, weasels & venomous snakes. One of the players, a famous lobbyist, was holding court the other day in the capitol cafeteria.
Judge Joe Bob Goodwin the other day said that two illegal aliens that were nabbed in W. Va. Should be released as they “weren’t given their rights”. An appeals court then ruled that folks like Joe Bob, one of the local elites, had no say in such matters. Considering that there are likely 40 million illegal aliens in the nation there is not time to fool around with such nonsense.
The price of local Pennsylvania grade crude dipped to $62.29/bbl. With condensate fetching $44.29/bbl. And Marcellus & Utica light bringing $51.29/bbl. With all the snow & icy roads it has been difficult to get crude oil to market.
