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PA DEP Issues Adelphia Gateway Pipe 401 Water Certificate

Adelphia Gateway is a plan to convert an old/existing 84-mile oil pipeline stretching from Northampton County, PA through Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester counties, terminating in Delaware County at Marcus Hook, into a natural gas pipeline–flowing Marcellus gas to southeast PA. Roughly half of the pipeline was previously converted and already flows natgas. In December the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued final approval for the project (see FERC Issues Final OK for Southeast PA Adelphia Gateway Pipeline). In March 2019 Adelphia filed a request with the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection for a federal Clean Water Act 401 permit to cross streams and wetlands. The DEP finally issued the 401 permit this past week.
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Ohio Cancels Forced Pooling Hearings Due to COVID-19 Virus

In Ohio forced pooling is called “unitization.” When a landowner/leaseholder owns 65% of the mineral rights under property in a given location and wants to pool other neighboring properties into an oil or gas drilling unit, that landowner/leaseholder files a request with the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management. The Division head then schedules a hearing to consider the request. All such hearings scheduled for this week are now canceled and will be rescheduled. Furthermore, the Division will only be able to accept new unitization requests on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and they will only return phone calls about unitization on Fridays. All due to the COVID-19 coronavirus.
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PA DEP Schedules 3 Hearings on Permit Changes for ME2 Pipe

NOTE: These hearings have been canceled due to coronavirus concerns. Although the public hearings are canceled, individuals are still encouraged to submit comments about the proposed permit modifications and air plan approvals, as comments submitted for the record to DEP carry equal weight to those delivered in-person. Comments must be received by May 8, 2020, at 11:59 PM. Written comments should be mailed to the Waterways and Wetlands Program, 2 E. Main Street, Norristown, PA, 19401. Comments may also be submitted via email at [email protected] with the subject designating which modification request the comment is intended for.

It’s time to come out and support the Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline project at a series of three public hearings scheduled by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) in April near Philadelphia. That is if the hearings are actually held. DEP has scheduled one hearing in Delaware County (April 14) and two hearings in Chester County (April 15 & 16) on plans to issue the project state Chapter 102 (Erosion) and Chapter 105 (Water Encroachment) permits for construction in those locations.
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Ode to ME2: SWPA Resident Loves Sounds of Pipeline Progress

Drilling, whirring, humming, thumping, grinding, engines running, hammering, back-up warning beeps, banging, clanging. Those are the sounds of progress happening in Chester County, PA. Contrary to the griping and moaning mainstream media reports about those who live near Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline construction, the sounds of ME2 construction are music for at least one local resident because he knows about the economic prosperity this project will bring to the region.
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Uneconomic PA Nuke Plant Staying Open Thx to Illegal Wolf Plan

Electric power generator FirstEnergy (now called Energy Harbor Corp.) pulled off what we consider the biggest case of deception in the history of Ohio by pressuring Ohio legislators and a RINO governor to sign into law a bill to force Ohio residents to pay the company $1 billion so it can keep open two uneconomic/failing nuclear power plants (see Legal Effort to Overturn FirstEnergy $1B Ohio Nuke Bailout Dead). FirstEnergy/Energy Harbor also operates an economically failing nuke plant in Beaver County, PA. The company had planned to close it, but now says the power plant will remain open because PA Gov. Tom Wolf is attempting to illegally force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative–a group that slaps high carbon taxes on coal and gas-fired electric plants.

3/18/20 UPDATE: We’ve included a statement by the group Citizens Against Nuclear Bailouts in response to FirstEnergy’s deception.
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Biden Promises to End All U.S. Oil Drilling, Fracking in CNN Debate

Biden goes extreme in CNN debate

Presidential candidate sleepy/creepy Uncle Joe Biden has gone as hard/radical left as Communist candidate crazy Bernie Sanders. In a debate between the two dinosaurs (both older than Donald Trump!) on CNN on Sunday, Biden came out hard against oil drilling–both onshore and offshore. He says if he’s elected as president, he’ll outright ban it. He also muttered “no new fracking.” In all seriousness, one has to ask the question if this was one of Joe’s lucid or not-so-lucid moments. Biden displays signs of senility (we’re not joking). Biden is 77 years old. Bernie is 78. Trump is the youngster at 73. Just in case you thought Biden was somehow a “moderate” who wouldn’t really decimate the shale industry, think again. He’s as bad, or worse than the rest.
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Should U.S. Shale Companies Get Gov’t Help to Avoid Bankruptcy?

There is an increasing call from economists to “let the free market” determine who lives and who dies in the oil and gas industry. We won’t lie–we live in dire times. We don’t know what the outcome will eventually be. While the world is gripped in COVID-19 coronavirus panic, the Saudis and Russians have flooded the world markets with oil, forcing the price of oil to collapse. Now our own economists are writing that shale companies already teetering on the brink of bankruptcy should be allowed to go under. Don’t prolong the agony. There were already on the way out. But is that wise?
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Shale Energy Stories of Interest: Mon, Mar 16, 2020

MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Biggest weekly gainer in S&P 500 is Cabot Oil & Gas!; Susquehanna County has more than half of top producing PA gas wells!; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Developing bottlenecks in the Louisiana gas market; NATIONAL: Oil price recovery not likely until 2022; recent pullbacks ‘just the beginning’; E&Ps, OFS operators cutting capex and salaries as Covid-19 reshapes markets; Four more producers line up to slash capex, activity in wake of low oil prices; Can shale survive another bust?; It’s not Armageddon for America’s oil and gas industry; INTERNATIONAL: Another specter rises over LNG as European demand seen threatened by coronavirus; Saudi Arabia-Russia oil price feud hits U.S. economy hard.
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