Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | MarkWest Energy | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Washington County
PA DEP Tweaks Already-Issued MarkWest Harmon Creek Plant Permit
Last November, MDN brought you the great news that MPLX (aka MarkWest Energy) would file to build an expansion at its existing Harmon Creek facility in Smith Township, Washington County, PA (see MPLX to Build New Harmon Creek III Gas Processing in PA Marcellus). MPLX plans to add a 300 MMcf/d (million cubic feet per day) processing plant and 40,000 bbls/d (barrels per day) de-ethanizer to the facility. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued the necessary air permit for the project in May (see PA DEP Approves MarkWest Processing Plant Expansion in SWPA). The DEP has made a few tweaks to the permit it issued in May for the expansion. Read More “PA DEP Tweaks Already-Issued MarkWest Harmon Creek Plant Permit”
Environment-related permitting in Pennsylvania, overseen by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), has been a hot mess for years. A Chapter 102 Erosion and Sedimentation permit sometimes takes two, three, or even six months for approval, instead of the policy-mandated 14 days. The DEP announced last November that it would soon implement the SPEED (Streamlining Permits for Economic Expansion and Development) program to speed up the permit approval process (see 
Once again, the NYMEX natural gas front-month contract (for August) took a plunge, going down 32.40 cents (8.67%) over the last two trading sessions. On the bright side, the price, which closed at $3.4150/MMBtu yesterday, is 40% higher than this time last year. At least there’s that. The question is, why is it heading lower, and how low will it go? We went looking for answers in the usual places. It’s important to note that most of the loss came in Monday trading, when the price “collapsed” by 28.3 cents (7.6%). Yesterday, the price declined a modest 4.10 cents (1.19%). 
We are finally seeing a return to sanity and real science following four years of out-of-control edicts during the Biden autopen administration. (The old fool likely didn’t even know a tenth of the things signed under his name.) On Monday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), along with the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, the Interior, and Transportation, revised regulations to eliminate all references to considering climate change, environmental justice, and other so-called environmental issues in their permit reviews. The left under Biden had introduced such nonsense in a bid to block new fossil energy projects. No more! The pendulum has swung back to the common-sense middle. 
The climate change hoaxers of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), along with other Big Green groups, are attempting another headfake of oil and gas companies and the financial institutions that help fund them. The Methane Finance Working Group, an initiative launched at the United Nations’ COP28 climate summit in 2023, released guidance to “deliver and deploy market-tested finance mechanisms that facilitate decarbonization across the oil and gas sector, while expanding the opportunities to achieve measurable methane emission reductions,” according to EDF. What the heck does that even mean? 
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