PA DEP Issues Three More Air Pollution NOVs to Shell Cracker
The mighty Shell ethane cracker has had “issues” getting and staying fully up to speed. Since it officially went online last November, Shell had received three separate notices of violation (NOVs) for exceeding allowable air pollution limits, largely related to repeated flaring episodes, as of the end of March (see our stories about NOVs for the cracker plant). However, on April 3 and then again on April 6, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued three more NOVs to the facility for exceeding air emissions limits.
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Yesterday MDN told you about the recently-filed application by the State of Pennsylvania to attract one of 6 to 10 so-called hydrogen hubs to the Keystone State (see 
Yeah, you read the headline correctly. Encino Energy offered the State of Ohio $1.8 BILLION (estimated) to drill for natural gas and oil under Salt Fork State Park, located in Guernsey County, OH. The park includes 17,229 acres of land and 2,952 acres of water. In December, Encino made an offer to the state immediately after House Bill (HB) 507 passed. The offer includes a payment of $5,500 per acre as a signing bonus and 20% royalties. No drilling would be done inside the park. All drilling would be done on land surrounding (on the outside of) the park.
One of two original “anchor” applicants in the billion-dollar hydrogen hub Hunger Games contest that was part of Pennsylvania’s application was Equinor (the Norwegian super major formerly known as Statoil). The Pittsburgh Business Times reports Equinor is now out and has been replaced by Mitsubishi Power, which (among other things) builds natural gas and hydrogen turbines to generate electricity. Why did Equinor leave? Is this proposal in trouble?
These days oil and gas companies (and other types of companies, too) have to “prove” they are helping to make Mom Earth better by achieving (giggle) “net-zero” carbon emissions. We giggle because net-zero is a myth. It’s a sham. And everybody knows it. But, these are the games people play now. Every night and every day now. Never meanin’ what they say now. Never sayin’ what they mean. (Whoops! Back to center.) Our own Marcellus/Utica companies, including the largest natural gas producer in the country, EQT, are forced to play the games too. Yesterday, EQT announced the company’s first “nature-based carbon offset initiative.” EQT will pay for trees to be planted in a Wheeling, WV park as atonement for emitting (sinning) CO2.
Since 2015 we’ve reported on the case of Grant Township (Indiana County, PA), a town that passed an ordinance cooked up by the radical Big Green group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to try and block a state-approved injection well proposed by Pennsylvania General Energy (
During a routine inspection conducted earlier this week by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), an inspector discovered two of 12 Repsol wells on a pad in Susquehanna County were (gasp!) venting methane into the atmosphere. Call the methane police! There’s fugitive methane escaping! The wells were drilled in 2016. Apparently, there has been an ongoing issue with these two wells since 2017, when the DEP determined the wells have defective casing and/or cementing.
New shale permits issued for Mar. 27-Apr. 2 in the Marcellus/Utica dropped quite a bit from the prior week. There were 21 new permits issued in total last week, down from 32 in the prior week. Last week’s tally included 15 new permits for Pennsylvania, 6 new permits for Ohio, and no new permits in West Virginia. Last week the top receiver of new permits was Ascent Resources with 6 new permits, 5 in Jefferson County, OH, and 1 in Harrison County, OH. Chesapeake Energy took the #2 slot with 5 new permits in Bradford County, PA.
Last summer, MDN brought you the news about a lawsuit against Diversified Energy and EQT over the issue of old and “abandoned” wells in West Virginia (see 
Yesterday, EQT Corporation and Context Labs announced a partnership to advance the commercialization of verified low-carbon intensity natural gas products and carbon credits. The partnership brings together EQT, the largest natural gas producer in the U.S., and Context Labs, an expert in distributed ledger technology, advanced climate data, and analytics. The partnership will help EQT prove that the natural gas it produces is low-carbon and responsible, and make it easier to market the gas to those who want to buy (and pay more for) low-carbon gas.
Gulfport Energy, the third-largest driller in the Ohio Utica Shale (by the number of wells drilled), emerged from bankruptcy in May 2021 with a new board and new top management. In January of this year, the company appointed a new CEO, John Reinhart, the former President and CEO of Marcellus/Utica driller Montage Resources Corporation before that company was gobbled up by Southwestern Energy (see 
The ARCH2 (Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub) project, the West Virginia-led effort to attract government funding for one of 6-10 regional hydrogen hubs, took a leap forward today with the announcement by Adams Fork Energy, Haldor Topsoe, and CNX Resources Corp. of a plan to build a “multi-billion-dollar” clean ammonia manufacturing facility in southern West Virginia. CNX will provide natural gas to the plant, tentatively scheduled to begin construction in 2024 in Mingo County, WV. The ammonia plant will be an “anchor project” in the ARCH2 Hydrogen Hub application currently under consideration by the U.S. Dept. of Energy.
Three weeks ago, Chesapeake Energy announced a 15-year deal to provide natural gas for LNG exports to Gunvor Singapore Pte (see 
In a case initially filed last summer in Ohio, a Belmont County mineral rights owner alleges that Rice Drilling (now owned by EQT) drained natural gas from a rock layer it did not have the right to access according to the signed lease. Golden Eagle Resources says the lease allowed Rice to drill down only as far as the Utica Shale layer, which Rice did. However, Golden Eagle says fractures from Rice’s fracking of the Utica layer reached down into the adjacent Point Pleasant layer and drained some of the gas from the Point Pleasant too–and that’s a no-no according to the lease.