Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Beaver County | Energy Companies | Ethane | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Processing Plants | Shell
Green Activists Complain to Wrong Agency re Shell Cracker Violations
Last Thursday around 30-40 environmental activists (anti-fossil fuelers), along with a handful of local residents, rallied in Beaver, PA, before showing up for the Beaver County Commission regular meeting. The protesters, who want the Shell ethane cracker plant shut down, vented their concerns about the plant to county commissioners. The three county commissioners listened while antis vented for more than an hour (they should receive hazard pay). The problem is, the protesters were in the wrong venue.
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A radicalized left-wing organization hellbent on forcing the end of fossil energy called Evergreen Action, along with another radical nonprofit called Ceres, partnered and paid a for-profit company called Synapse Energy Economics (that works exclusively for left-wing groups) to produce a completely sham and false “report” that (try not to laugh) claims Pennsylvania residents will pay less for their electricity under the onerous, Marcellus-killing Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax.
Yesterday a group of paid activists and climate zealots showed up at the White House to protest the debt ceiling bill provision that forces the completion of the 94%, very safe, Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. In what has to be one of the saddest things we’ve seen coming from the leftwing nutmob, one parent actually pushed her seven-year-old to the microphone to tear up and declare MVP would ruin the environment. Oh, and the kid doesn’t even live along the path of the pipeline! Not even in the same state!! That’s called brainwashing. What kind of parent scares their kid like this, telling them lies about a simple and safe natural gas pipeline? SHAME on you.
Last week, the U.S. House and Senate voted to approve the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, to raise the debt ceiling. President Biden signed the bill on Saturday. A section in the bill forces federal government agencies and courts to complete all necessary authorizations to finish building the 94% completed Mountain Valley Pipeline (see 
Russia is not only an evil actor by invading a neighbor and murdering innocent civilians (Ukraine), for years, Russia has been an evil actor by funding Big Green groups that target U.S. domestic energy production. An expose running in RealClearEnergy details how Russia has funded organizations that have hired “journalists” to write propaganda against American energy companies. This one will make your blood boil…
In March, environmental radical Pat McDonnell of PennFuture, the former Pennsylvania Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), along with his best friend THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum, sued McDonnell’s former agency over permits the DEP issued to Williams to build the Regional Energy Access Expansion (REAE) project (see 
With a one-vote majority in the Pennsylvania House, the Democrats who run the House are stepping up their attacks on the oil and gas industry in the state. The latest attack is House Bill (HB) 652, which is aimed at blocking new permits to build or expand various projects–including gas-fired power plants and wastewater injection wells–in so-called environmental justice areas. The left defines environmental justice as any area with a certain percentage of blacks and Latinos, or an area with a lot of poor people (i.e., rural). So, environmental justice areas are pretty much anyplace in the entire state–because every location is either urban (with minorities) or rural (with poor folk). Heads I win, tails you lose.
Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) currently operates a gas-fired power plant in the Keasbey section of Woodbridge, NJ. The plant currently generates power for about 700,000 homes. In 2018, CPV proposed adding a second power plant at the same location (see 
There is no doubt that LNG (liquefied natural gas) exports are a key and increasingly critical customer for our domestic natural gas–including gas produced in the Marcellus/Utica. The evil (and clever) minds of anti-fossil fuel zealots are always thinking up new ways to block domestic oil and gas production. Their latest strategy is to pressure (i.e., bully) Big Insurance companies into dropping insurance policies for LNG export plants. If the plants can’t get insurance to protect them against potential disasters, they can’t operate.
Cornell University professor Robert Howarth has poked his head up again to bash shale energy. This time he’s taking aim at hydrogen produced from natural gas. Howarth hates fossil fuels–all of them–including clean-burning natural gas. In March 2011, Howarth and two other Cornell profs published a peer-reviewed study in the journal Climatic Change titled, “Methane and the greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas from shale formations” (see 
Last summer Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 2644 was passed into law, becoming Act 96 of 2022 (see 
Olympus Energy wants to drill six wells on a single pad in rural Elizabeth Township, a borough in Allegheny County on the east bank of the Monongahela River. The pad would sit about 2,400 feet (nearly half a mile) away from Elizabeth Forward High School. Some of the parents of students, and some of the administration, pushed back against Olympus’ drilling plan, using the kiddies as an excuse (see 
An indisputable fact is that Joe Biden’s presidency has done more to damage the fossil fuel industry than any other president, including Lord Obama (and that’s saying something). Biden has been the best friend of the environmental left, like the League of Conservation Voters, Oil Change, Climate Defiance, Sierra Club, and more. Yet when Biden compromises even a little (to get more), like allowing Mountain Valley Pipeline to get completed (currently 94% done), the enviro left goes bananas. Because of a few recent decisions by Biden to support fossil energy projects, Big Green groups are threatening “direct actions” like shutting down parts of the D.C. swamp.
From the beginning of the shale revolution in Pennsylvania, State Rep. Greg Vitali (from the Philadelphia area), the current House Environmental Resources & Energy Committee Chairman, has been a shill, a mouthpiece for the rabid anti-fossil fuel lobby. Vitali no longer bothers to hide his joined-at-the-hip connection to Big Green. On full display for everyone to see is a column running in the Philadelphia Inquirer, supposedly co-authored by Vitali and Charles McPhedran, senior attorney for the left-wing Earthjustice organization. The column attacks crypto mining (Bitcoin mining) in the state, claiming it’s not “regulated” enough–by which they mean it should be blocked. Stopped. Hamstrung. Crypto mining is another term for computer server farms that use enormous amounts of electricity. Sometimes the server farms are located at remote (stranded) gas well sites where they (gasp!) burn natural gas to generate electricity. Vitali and McPhedran want to “regulate” (i.e., stop) such server farms.