PA Residents More Likely to Die Falling on Stairs than by Pipeline
Well this wasn’t supposed to happen. The Delaware County (PA) Council hired a company in July of this year at a cost of $115,000 to conduct an independent risk assessment study of both the Mariner East 2 (ME2) and Adelphia Gateway pipeline projects (both running through Delaware County), to assess just how much risk each pipeline poses to residents in the county, a heavily populated Philadelphia suburb. A group of antis paid $50,000 to Quest Consultants for the same thing. The antis released their “report” in October (see Sham “Risk Assessment” of ME2 Pipeline Released by Philly Antis). Perhaps the antis sensed that the forthcoming independent report wouldn’t paint the same wild, nightmare scenario their fake report paints. And right they were. The Council’s study, paid for with taxpayer money and just released, finds residents of Delaware County stand a far better chance of dying from falling down a flight of stairs, a house fire, or a car accident than they do from an explosion from either ME2 or Adelphia.
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Each year (for the 12th year running) the Canadian-based Fraser Institute surveys petroleum industry executives and managers (256 of them for 2018) asking them their opinions on the barriers to investing in exploration and production in various geographies across the globe. That is, what makes them more likely or less likely to spend money drilling in a particular location? The Global Petroleum Survey (full copy below), tallies the survey responses and ranks each geography from most desirable place to invest, to least desirable. Last year West Virginia was ranked as the fifth most desirable place to invest (see 
The preliminary numbers are in from the West Virginia Department of Tax and Revenue, and the numbers show that severance taxes paid by drillers in Mountain State hit a new high of $138 million, up 4.3% from in 2017. Six Marcellus/Utica shale counties–Doddridge, Wetzel, Ritchie, Tyler, Marshall, and Harrison–received $1 million or more of that back into county coffers. At the county level, the tax revenue goes for vital public services including first responders, community projects and social programs. Here’s a high-level rundown on who got what from this year’s severance tax honeypot.
Two schools in rural Susquehanna County, PA are saving big bucks and helping the environment at the same time–by switching to burning natural gas. One of those schools, Elk Lake, has made millions of dollars in royalties by hosting two shale wells *on school property* (see 
It takes a loooong time for the wheels of justice to turn, but (usually) turn they do. In 2016 Kathleen Kane, former Pennsylvania Attorney General who prosecuted and persecuted others, particularly in the gas drilling industry, was convicted of committing perjury (i.e. lying under oath) about leaking privileged grand jury information in a case unrelated to gas drilling. She was, in October 2016, sentenced to jail (see 
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading: PSC agrees to BPU natural gas pipeline purchase; Letter to the Editor: Pipeline workers live here, too; India’s Gail in wants to swap Cove Point LNG cargos; Danos reaches two safety milestones; Sabine Pass LNG cargo heading for UK; U.S. crude oil and natural gas proved reserves set new records in 2017; Steyer hits natural gas prices to advocate for full phase-out; Gazprom Board of Directors reviews prospects of shale gas and LNG sectors.