A new so-called “study” published in the journal Science of The Total Environment claims it has uncovered a link between fracking chemicals in farm water and a rare birth defect in horses. The researchers say this study “could” serve as a warning about fracking and human infant health. Is this it? Were we wrong for the past 11 years about the safety of fracking? Is this THE END?
Continue reading
Category: Hydraulic Fracturing
More Frack Crews Now Active in the Marcellus than the Permian!
This has to be a first in the modern shale era. There are now more active fracking crews working in the Marcellus Shale than in any other shale play, including the oily Permian. There are 450 fracking fleets available in the U.S., but only 70 of them are active right now. The Marcellus is using 31% of those active fleets, while the Permian is using 30%. We never thought we’d live to see the day!
Continue reading
Massive Hike in PA Shale Permit Fees Coming at June 3 Meeting
In Ohio, it costs drillers $5,500 to file for and receive a permit to drill a new shale well. In West Virginia, the cost is $10,150. In Pennsylvania, it currently costs drillers $5,000 for a new shale well permit. Following an upcoming meeting by the state Independent Regulatory Review Commission on June 3, PA’s permit fee will zoom to the top of the M-U list: $12,500 (2 1/2 times the previous fee).
Continue reading
Big Green Scared – NRDC Tries to Horn in on DRBC Fracking Lawsuit
In May 2016, a landowner in Wayne County, PA filed a lawsuit against the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) asking a judge to declare that the DRBC does not have jurisdiction to prevent the construction of a natural gas well (see Wayne County, PA Landowner Sues DRBC Over Fracking Ban). The case bounced around various courts and is now back in federal court in Scranton, PA where a judge will decide whether shale drilling is a “project” under regulations that govern the DRBC. Anti-fossil fuel haters at the National Resources Defense Council (aka Rockefeller family) are terrified the judge is about to rule against the DRBC (and them), and so has filed a friend of the court brief to try and snow (or intimidate) the judge.
Continue reading
New York’s Frack Ban Cuts Off 12M Acres of the Marcellus Shale
Earlier this month in New York State while no one was paying attention, distracted with literal life and death issues due to the coronavirus pandemic, the uber-corrupt and sleazy Andrew Cuomo slipped in a permanent ban on fracking into the annual state budget bill, which is now the law of our fallen (and sick) land (see Cuomo PERMANENTLY Bans NY Fracking in Now-Adopted Budget). New York has 12 million acres under which the Marcellus/Utica Shale lies, yet accessing it is now banned. NY produces 1% of the natural gas it uses each year. The rest is imported.
Continue reading
PA DEP Revising Regs for Recycled Wastewater Use in Fracking
The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) published a notice in Saturday’s Pennsylvania Bulletin that the agency is proposing changes to the Residual Waste General Permit WMGR123, which governs the processing, transfer and beneficial use of oil and gas liquid waste to develop or frack an oil and gas well. Some of the changes include defining certain terms, including “processing,” “transfer,” and “storage”; changing the application from a registration to a determination of applicability; revising sampling and analysis requirements; and revising the frequency of inspections.
Continue reading
CNX CEO Nick DeIuliis Takes Aim at Joe Biden in National Column
It’s an awesome thing to see the CEO of a major shale natural gas company stand up to the insanity that is the Democrat Party in the U.S. today. It’s gutsy. Business leaders often have strong political opinions, but they almost never share them out of fear for their own jobs–afraid of offending pimple-faced hedge fund investors who dot the financial landscape today. Not CNX Resources CEO Nick DeIuliis. He’s fearless and we wish we had a hundred more like him! Nick, who is mild-mannered and does not like the spotlight, is stepping up to push back against those who would ban fracking–including presidential candidate Joe Biden. Nick recently published a national column in The Hill, a must-read inside the swamp of Washington, DC., calling out Biden for his horrible positions on fracking and oil/gas energy.
Continue reading
EQT Converting One-Third of Completions to US Well E-Fracking
EQT and U.S. Well Services (USWS) have signed a deal for USWS to provide electric fracking for one-third of EQT’s completions operations over the next three years. Does USWS (and e-fracking) sound familiar? It should! Range Resources signed with USWS in January (see Range Resources Converts to Electric Fracking with US Well Serv.).
Continue reading
Frac Spreads – What They Are and What They Portend for 2020
While the drilling rig count is an important signal for the future of oil (and gas) production, drilling a hole in the ground is only half of the process (and only one-third of the cost). After the hole is drilled comes “completions”–fracking and other work to get the hole producing and connected to a pipeline. Fracking is done by a collection of equipment–things like high-pressure pumps. It’s known in the industry as a “frac spread” (or a “frac fleet”). Counting the number of frac spreads is a better indicator of how much oil will come online than counting active rigs. What does the frac spread count show right now? How quickly will U.S. oil production decrease?
Continue reading
What a National Ban on Fracking Would Mean in Real Numbers
We’re not anywhere close to being “through” the worst of the coronavirus siege. Yet the environmental left in this country is opportunistically using the virus to push for the end of oil AND natural gas use. It’s mindblowing how stupid they really are. They are blinded by their own wacko non-God environmental religion. As we begin to exit from the virus crisis, attention will once again return to the race for the U.S. presidency and to calls from a majority of the Democrat Party to slap a nationwide ban on fracking. What would that *really* mean, in dollars and cents and jobs? We have some numbers for you to mull over.
Continue reading
Time for Upstate New Yorkers to Sue, Overturn Permanent Frack Ban
Although it seems counterintuitive to say this, maybe NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his legion of radicalized Democrats have done New York landowners a favor with a permanent ban on fracking, passed as part of the most recent state budget (see Cuomo PERMANENTLY Bans NY Fracking in Now-Adopted Budget). How so? They have overplayed their hand by passing a permanent ban. It gives Upstate New Yorkers a VERY strong case against NY in court, to argue that the state has engaged in a “taking” of our private property rights without just compensation as provided for under the U.S. Constitution. So says our good friend Tom Shepstone…
Continue reading
Cuomo PERMANENTLY Bans NY Fracking in Now-Adopted Budget
While no one was paying attention, distracted with literal life and death issues due to the coronavirus pandemic, the uber-corrupt and sleazy Andrew Cuomo (worst governor EVER) slipped in a permanent ban on fracking into the annual state budget bill which is now the law of our fallen (and sick) land. This is truly a sad day for those of us who live in New York State. We seriously doubt there will ever be a Republican legislature and governor in NY to reverse the horrific damage now done to our civil liberties. Freedom died yesterday in New York State. We now live behind enemy lines.
Continue reading
Biden Promises to End All U.S. Oil Drilling, Fracking in CNN Debate
Presidential candidate sleepy/creepy Uncle Joe Biden has gone as hard/radical left as Communist candidate crazy Bernie Sanders. In a debate between the two dinosaurs (both older than Donald Trump!) on CNN on Sunday, Biden came out hard against oil drilling–both onshore and offshore. He says if he’s elected as president, he’ll outright ban it. He also muttered “no new fracking.” In all seriousness, one has to ask the question if this was one of Joe’s lucid or not-so-lucid moments. Biden displays signs of senility (we’re not joking). Biden is 77 years old. Bernie is 78. Trump is the youngster at 73. Just in case you thought Biden was somehow a “moderate” who wouldn’t really decimate the shale industry, think again. He’s as bad, or worse than the rest.
Continue reading
Grant Lawsuit Using ERA Threatens PA Injection Wells & Fracking
In a disappointing decision, Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court recently ruled a long-running lawsuit filed against Grant Township (Indiana County, PA) will continue on through the court system. For the past several years we’ve reported on the case of Grant Township, a town that passed an ordinance cooked up by the radical Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to try and block a state-approved injection well. Part of the ordinance was tossed. However, Commonwealth Court has decided the town can continue to try and make a case that it should be able to override state law with its home-cooked regulations because by doing so they will somehow protect citizens’ health, which the town says is allowed under PA’s poorly-written Environmental Rights Amendment (ERA).
Continue reading
National Energy Tech Lab Helps Shale Companies Frack Better
At first efforts by the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and its Marcellus Shale Energy and Environment Laboratory (launched five years ago) was aimed at tests to ensure fracking of shale wells (in all regions) does not harm the environment. It worked. NETL did prove that modern drilling and fracking is safe. Now the NETL mission has changed. New NETL tests launched across the country over the past year will help drillers understand how to frack even better than they do now! Yes, it can help drillers with their bottom line, but the purpose of NETL’s testing goes far beyond that.
Continue reading
Study: Frack Ban Will Kill American Economy, Lower GDP $7.1T
The American Petroleum Institute recently released the results of a study they commissioned that outlines the “dire consequences” of a ban on hydraulic fracturing–the kind of ban being pushed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Joe Biden. Here’s how dire it gets: If a frack ban is slapped into place by a Democrat President, by 2022 it will result in 7.5 million lost jobs, and by 2030 a total loss out of the economy of $7.5 TRILLION! You might as well say we will enter a new economic depression, the likes of which we haven’t experienced since the 1930s.
Continue reading