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).
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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.
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.
It’s election (i.e. silly) season all year long, until November. One of the key issues shaping up to influence the presidential election this year is, yes, FRACKING. The term fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, has been bastardized to the point it now means (in the public’s mind) “fossil fuels.” All of the Democrat presidential hopefuls are in favor of severely limiting, or outright banning, fracking. By which they mean the production of new oil and natural gas from shale deposits. It is a losing platform on which to run–yet that’s what they’re doing. We spotted an article on the Forbes website that uses simple arithmetic to calculate the impact fracking has (so far) had on Americans.
The Pennsylvania Democrat Party is about to get politically fracked–i.e., underground explosions that create large fractures, breaking it apart. Ironically, the Dems are getting fracked over fracking. As we have been reporting, all of the Democrat presidential candidates have signed on to either severely limit, or outright ban, hydraulic fracturing. Some of the more extreme elements, like crazy Bernie Sanders, want all fracking banned within five years–on public AND private land (see 
You’ve read the news that Democrats like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, along with most (if not all) of the Democrat presidential candidates, support a full-on ban of hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas (see 
A fascinating new study has just been published in the peer-reviewed journal Science of The Total Environment. The new study, titled “Characterizing anecdotal claims of groundwater contamination in shale energy basins,” looks at the perception of landowners who say local fracking activities have impacted (polluted) their water wells–versus reality. The study finds that in most cases the so-called pollution problems of these water wells is (using our own words here) “all in the heads” of the landowners. It’s not real. Fracking, in fact, has NOT caused the pollution of their wells. Researchers studied wells in the Texas Barnett and Eagle Ford, the Louisiana Haynesville, and (yep) the Pennsylvania Marcellus–in Dimock.
Last November MDN told you that Range Resources was testing an all-electric fracking fleet at the Ziolkowski Pad in Allegheny County (see 
A new Franklin & Marshall College (F&M) poll released today shows a befuddling result. F&M keeps tabs on a variety of political issues in the Keystone State. The latest poll’s findings on the issue of fracking raise some red flags for us. The results are mixed. The poll surveyed 628 registered voters over six days in January. It found 48% of voters support shale gas drilling in Pennsylvania, compared with 44% who oppose it. Pretty thin margin. However, 48% of those same voters favor a ban on all fracking in the state, versus 39% who oppose a ban. Can anyone say schizophrenia?
What is it about Yale University researchers and their obsession with sexually transmitted diseases? It seems like an unhealthy obsession to us. The same Yale brain trust that brought us a sham “study” in 2018 that said fracking causes STDs in Ohio (see 
As we reported earlier this week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo intends to take full advantage of a far-left, Democrat-controlled state legislature, in order to pass a permanent (for all time) ban on fracking (see 
There is one court case in Pennsylvania that we’ve been concerned about since April 2018. The Briggs v Southwestern Energy case had the power to block most new Marcellus Shale drilling in the state. The case, revolving around the oil and gas “rule of capture” principle, was appealed by Southwestern all the way to the PA Supreme Court. We are elated to report that yesterday the Supremes ruled supreme and found in favor of Southwestern–retaining the rule of capture in the Keystone State. This is seriously good news for both drillers and leased landowners. Below we explain what the rule of capture is, the background of the case, and what the Supremes said in yesterday’s important ruling.
Andrew Cuomo makes us puke. Literally. Cuomo, Governor of New York, became a dictator and stripped away the property rights of citizens living in NY in 2015 when he autocratically decided to prohibit shale fracking throughout the state (see 
Electric fracking (or e-fracking) continues to displace traditional fracking in the Marcellus/Utica. What’s the difference between the two? Traditional fracking uses diesel-fueled engines to produce electricity to power pressure pumps for hydraulic fracturing operations. Electric fracking uses natural gas from the well pad to power turbines to create electricity. Electric fracking fleets are roughly half the size of traditional diesel fleets–and a whole lot quieter.