Blackhill Energy | Bradford County | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Regulation
PA DEP Issues Violation to Blackhill Energy for Methane Migration
On February 8, 2024, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued a notice of violation (NOV) to Blackhill Energy for failing to prevent the migration of shale gas into groundwater that contaminated three nearby private water wells in Springfield Township (Bradford County) in June of 2022. Yes, the NOV took nearly two years to get issued. We’re not sure why it takes so long to issue an NOV (perhaps a full investigation takes that long?), but it does. Blackhill self-reported the issue back in 2022 and presumably has already corrected it.
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New shale permits issued for Jul 24-30 in the Marcellus/Utica were down just a couple, but still a nice number. There were 29 new permits issued last week, down from the 31 issued the previous week. Last week’s permit tally included 22 new permits in Pennsylvania, 7 new permits in Ohio, and no new permits in West Virginia. The top permittee for the week was EQT Corporation, receiving a whopping 16 permits in Greene County, PA.
The difference between the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) and the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) is stark. The former is well-run and rational, the latter is disorganized and irrational. At least with respect to fracking. Over the weekend, the SRBC published a notice in the Pennsylvania Bulletin to announce that during the month of January, the agency approved 38 requests for daily water use on shale well pads in the SRBC’s jurisdictional territory in Pennsylvania, totaling some 233.5 million gallons. Put another way, this is a handy list of where drilling will soon happen in northeastern PA.
There was a healthy number of new permits issued in all three actively drilling Marcellus/Utica states last week. In Pennsylvania, 14 new shale well permits were issued across the state. In Ohio, five new shale permits were issued, four of them to a single driller (Ascent Resources) in a single county (Jefferson). West Virginia came roaring back after getting skunked with no permits two weeks ago. WV issued 10 new shale permits last week with five going to a single well pad in Monongalia County.