Chester County | Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Monroe County | Northampton County | Pennsylvania | Pipelines
PA Awards 4 More Grants to Extend NatGas Pipelines – $2.3M
Pennsylvania’s Pipeline Investment Program (or PIPE) grants cover part of the cost for building new natural gas pipelines to connect homes and businesses in rural parts of the state to homegrown Marcellus Shale gas supplies. We’ve written about many of the more-than-a-dozen (so far) PIPE grant projects in the past (see our PIPE stories here). Another four such grants, totaling $2.3 million, have just been awarded–in Chester, Monroe and Northampton counties. The big news with this latest round of grants is that they will create 575 *permanent* new jobs in the Commonwealth. Some 500 of those jobs will be at a mushroom farm!
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Seems like all we see in mainstream media are articles bashing Energy Transfer’s Mariner East (ME) NGL pipeline projects. Most of the negative press comes from southeastern PA where the pipeline has hit snags in building through Philadelphia suburbs. Imagine our surprise in seeing a guest editorial in a southwestern PA newspaper supporting the ME project, a column that details just how this massive project has benefitted the Keystone State in numerous ways–all across the state.
BlackRock Inc. is the world’s number #1 asset manager–with nearly $7 trillion in investments. The company invests in a LOT of companies that produce or are dependent on the production of fossil fuels. Important company to our industry. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, in a pair of letters (one to CEOs and one to investors) has just signaled BlackRock will begin to move away from fossil fuel investments. But (and this is a big but), it won’t happen overnight.
The West Virginia legislature kicked off its 2020 60-day session yesterday with a bang–at least for the shale energy industry. House Speaker Roger Hanshaw introduced House Bill 4001, aimed at reassuring China it’s OK to begin investing some of that $84 billion they promised to invest in WV’s shale and downstream sector. The bill also would help fund the Appalachian NGL Storage and Trading Hub project and other big petrochemical projects (maybe even a cracker plant!).
We previously told you New York Gov. Andrew “man-child” Cuomo is getting desperate in his bid to deflect blame from himself for his own actions in blocking new natural gas supplies to the New York City/Long Island area. He’s so desperate he threatened utility company National Grid with kicking them out of the state and giving their franchise to another company (see 
JobsOhio, a private, nonprofit corporation that works works on behalf of the state to drive job creation and new capital investment in Ohio by attracting business, contracts out economic research to Cleveland State University (CSU)–to keep tabs on the Utica Shale industry. Last year CSU researchers found that from 2011-2017 the Utica Shale had attracted an amazing $70 billion in new private sector energy investments (see 
Drilling is great for local counties when it arrives. Especially for the “supply chain” in those counties–companies that sell goods and services to drilling companies. Everything from retail to convenience stores to restaurants to hotels to trucking companies and more. But what about businesses in nearby counties without any drilling activity? Is there any way they can share in the bounty too? There sure is!
Natural gas end-users, which include American households, businesses, manufacturers, and electric power generators, have realized $1.1 trillion in savings since 2008 as a result of increased natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica region, according to a new report released yesterday. You read that right! Folks across the country have benefited by using M-U gas to the tune of $1.1 trillion in savings. Astonishing! The new report (full copy below) says the total savings works out to be an average of $4,000 per household. Thank God for fracking and horizontal drilling in the Marcellus/Utica.
In April, Pennsylvania State Rep. Mike Turzai, Speaker of the House, and a group of conservative Republicans, announced a plan for the future of PA (see 
There is no way to track exactly how much royalty revenue is received by Pennsylvania landowners, because royalty income is not reported separately on the Pennsylvania income tax return. Royalty income is combined with rental, patent and copyright income on line 6 of the PA-40 state income tax return. However, the crack researchers at the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office, a state government agency created in 2010, has a way of estimating how much revenue has been generated by oil and gas royalties. The IFO just released a report (full copy below) that shows they estimate royalties in 2018 hit their highest level since they began tracking oil & gas royalty revenue in 2010.
