Scott Perry Suddenly Gone as PA DEP Deputy Sec for Oil & Gas Mgmt
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) Deputy Secretary for Oil and Gas Management since 2011, is no longer an employee of the agency. The DEP confirmed to the Environment Digest Blog that as of February 11 Perry is gone. He was scheduled to present the Oil and Gas Program fee report to the Environmental Quality Board on February 15–hence our title saying his departure was sudden. No official reason has been given for his departure.
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Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) drills in the Greater Pittsburgh region, in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. The company plans to drill a series of new wells (and a well pad) in Washington Township in Westmoreland County. In January we told you about a snag with plans to build the well pad and drill the wells (see 
Dominion Energy is divesting itself from a natural gas utility company it owns in West Virginia–Hope Gas, Inc. Dominion is selling Hope to investment firm Ullico Inc. for $690 million. Ullico plans to combine Hope Gas with another company it owns, Hearthstone Utilities, Inc. The reason this deal caught our attention is that Hope Gas owns and operates “2,000 miles of gathering pipelines” in the Mountain State.
The list is, unfortunately, long and getting longer. Atlantic Coast Pipeline. PennEast Pipeline. Constitution Pipeline. And others. Yes, each one of those massive projects that got canceled means a loss of revenue for the companies involved, and a loss of takeaway capacity for drillers in the Marcellus/Utica region. However, perhaps the biggest loss is the jobs those projects would have provided for union workers. The cancellation of each of those projects resulted in the loss of revenue and income for union workers–direct harm to families. Have you thought about those costs?
In his first two days in office, Joe Biden declared war on the oil and gas industry. One of the first things he did was to revive an interagency working group on the “social cost” of greenhouse gas emissions and directed the issuance of an “interim” cost (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: How W.Va. oil and gas aids U.S. foreign policy; After New Yorkers see sudden price increase, Gov. Kathy Hochul urges Con Ed to reform itself; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: These 23-year-old Texans made $4 million last year mining bitcoin off flare gas from oil drilling; NATIONAL: ESG and the dangerous structural increase in the price of oil; Biden’s empty promise to ‘work like the devil’ on gas prices; INTERNATIONAL: Europe relies primarily on imports to meet its natural gas needs; American gas to Europe’s rescue.