Plum, PA House Explosion Investigation Expands to Local O&G Wells
Last Saturday, a house exploded in Plum, PA, causing two neighboring houses to burn to the ground. Plum is located in Allegheny County near Pittsburgh. Five people died in the blast and fires. However, a sixth person died yesterday from his injuries. We grieve with the families and friends of those who died or were injured. The incident is under investigation. Initial reports said the house that exploded had been “having hot water tank issues” (the hot water tank used natural gas). However, the house is part of a development built on abandoned mine land surrounded by shallow oil and gas wells, some of which have been abandoned. Two wells still producing gas are about 1000 feet from the home. So to be thorough, the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has launched its own investigation to see if nearby wells (active or inactive) or the pipelines that connect them could have contributed to the tragedy.
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Three weeks ago, MDN told you about the small community of Douglas, Massachusetts, that had outsmarted Big Green by getting Eversource to build a one-mile pipeline extension into Douglas to feed a mammoth new warehouse project (see 
A group of 28 House Democrats asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to deny a request from the developers of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to extend the project 75 miles into North Carolina, called MVP Southgate, arguing in a letter this week that Southgate’s construction would pose serious climate and environmental risks to affected states. Typical. Why do so many Democrats irrationally hate fossil energy?
We now have the perfect example of how the government corrupts science. In 2020, Pennsylvania’s then-Gov. Tom Wolf gave $2.5 million (via his Dept. of Health) to the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) with instructions to research whether or not a single cause, shale drilling, is linked to a small cluster of rare childhood cancers in southwestern PA (see 
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court breathed new life into a long-running lawsuit funded by Big Green groups using (abusing) a small group of uppity Virginia landowners who argue the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had no right to delegate authority to Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to use eminent domain to cross land, including the land owned by the small group of uppity landowners in Virginia (see 
Last week MDN told you that WhiteHawk Energy, headquartered in Philadelphia with ownership of mineral and royalty interests for 850,000 gross unit acres and over 2,500 producing horizontal shale wells between the Marcellus and the Haynesville, had proposed marriage to PHX Minerals, based in Fort Worth, Texas, owner of 75,000 leased mineral acres principally located in the SCOOP and Haynesville plays (see 
Folks new to the Marcellus/Utica may not know this, but Chesapeake Energy’s then-CEO Aubrey McClendon first “discovered” the Ohio Utica about 15 years ago. Under McClendon, Chesapeake spent over $2 billion acquiring rights to drill 1.3 million acres in Ohio–or roughly 5% of the state’s land area. McClendon pegged the value of the Utica for Ohio at half a trillion dollars. He famously said the Ohio Utica is “the biggest thing economically to hit Ohio, since maybe the plow.” McClendon was tossed out of the company he founded by corporate raider Carl Icahn, so he started a new company (to target the Ohio Utica) that eventually became Ascent Resources. Tragically, McClendon died in March 2016, so he never got to see his dream turn into reality (see 
We have U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (lib Dem from WV) to thank for passing the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) one year ago (see 
And so the end-game, the true insanity, begins. A group of brainwashed children (who are being mentally abused and used by adults, in our humble opinion) won a court case in Montana this week that says Montana state agencies are violating their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by allowing fossil fuel development. Yup. No more fossil fuel development in Big Sky Country unless you first obsequiously bow down and worship the GOD of Climate Change first, and pinky-swear promise you won’t emit any carbon dioxide or methane if you drill an oil or gas well. The decision came from an idiot judge who made his ruling while exhaling CO2 (violating his own edict). The judge finds that CO2 is evil. It’s burning up the earth. The new religion of Climate Change was just instituted by judicial fiat for all of Montana. (This would all be hilarious if not so tragic.)
No wonder our children are spaced out on anti-anxiety meds like Zoloft, Prozac, Paxil, and Ativan. They are force-fed (brainwashed) with global warming hysteria in schools all day long. The media convinces their unthinking parents to believe the lie too. The narrative in schools and on the airways says if we don’t stop producing so much carbon dioxide (and fugitive methane) right now, TODAY, we’re all history. Mankind will kill itself in about 20 years by making the Earth unlivable. If you drive a gasoline car or use natural gas for heat and cooking, you’re killing Mom Earth. Many people who believe the lie have given up hope that there is a future. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” That’s the very old-but-made-new-again philosophy. Predictably, many are becoming unhinged, and some are even violent. Leftists are now concerned that maybe they’ve gone a bit too far with all of this “end of the world” stuff, and they’re beginning to walk it back.
Yesterday we told you the liars of the left are doing their best to sew disinformation and fear about Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) and the installation of the remaining 6% of the pipeline that’s not already in the ground (see 
The latest monthly U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Drilling Productivity Report (DPR) for August issued yesterday (below) shows the EIA believes shale gas production across the seven major plays tracked in the monthly DPR for September will *decrease* production from the prior month of August. This is the second month in a row EIA predicts shale gas production will decrease for the combined seven plays. EIA says combined natgas production will slide by 147 MMcf/d (million cubic feet per day). The Marcellus/Utica, called “Appalachia” in the report, is predicted to slump by 22 MMcf/d in September compared with August.
In November of 2020, MDN told you about a deal Talen Energy cut with the odious Sierra Club, signing a pledge to convert several coal-fired power plants to use natural gas in both Maryland and Pennsylvania (see 
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Last December, Rice Acquisition Corp II, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) started by the Rice brothers (Danny, Toby, and Derek), announced a deal to acquire NET Power–an electric power developer with revolutionary new technology to capture every last molecule of carbon dioxide from natural gas-fired power plants (see 
Looks like the three Democrat judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Circuit) value their own jobs more than defeating the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. On Friday, the three-judge panel that has opposed MVP in just about every decision they’ve issued since 2018 dismissed the remaining two cases against MVP after being overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court two weeks ago (see