Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Health Impacts | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Research | Statewide PA
PA Dept. of Health to Release $2.5M Study on Shale & Kid Cancer
In December 2020, then-Gov. Tom Wolf announced a $2.5 million contract had been awarded to the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) Graduate School of Public Health to “conduct research on the potential health effects of hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania” (see Pitt Researchers Get $2.5M for Fake Study to Link Shale & Kid Cancer). As we have pointed out from the beginning, to study a single potential cause for cancer (fracking) and not any other causes (like a nearby abandoned uranium dump) is not real science. Next Tuesday, August 15, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Health and Pitt researchers will unveil their “research” in an in-person and online extravaganza.
Read More “PA Dept. of Health to Release $2.5M Study on Shale & Kid Cancer”
In 2015 Cunningham Energy, a small oil driller based in West Virginia, struck oil in the Big Injun sandstone formation in Clay County, WV (see 
At the end of May, 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, sent a letter to the board and management of PHX Minerals, based in Fort Worth, Texas, owner of 75,000 leased mineral acres principally located in the SCOOP and Haynesville plays. The letter proposes marriage–a combination of the two companies. WhiteHawk received no response and tried again about three weeks later. Still nothing. So WhiteHawk has gone public to catch the attention of PHX shareholders, hoping to convince them to pressure PHX’s board–the M&A equivalent of a shotgun wedding.
Yesterday MDN editor Jim Willis had a nice chat with a renewing MDN subscriber (a landowner with wells and leases in Ohio). The question arose, “What do you see happening right now?” Jim’s response: “As long as the price of natural gas stays below $3, not much!” Jim made the point that price drives this industry, and ongoing prices in the basement aren’t helping. Can we get an amen? Both Jim and the subscriber agreed that gas prices may be heading higher soon. That conversation seems to have been prescient. Yesterday the front-month Henry Hub NYMEX futures price rocketed to a six-week high, close to $3 (closing at $2.96/Mcf). Are we finally going to go above, and stay above, $3 gas?
In May, the Bidenistas at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a hellscape of new regulations (681 pages) aimed at forcing coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to close (see 
Once a month, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) analysts issue the agency’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), their best guess about where energy prices and production will go in the next 12 months. The latest monthly report, issued Tuesday, predicts that U.S. natural gas production AND demand will rise to record highs in 2023. EIA projected that dry gas production will rise to 103 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2023 and 104.12 Bcf/d in 2024. The current record high is 98.13 Bcf/d set in 2022.
Earlier this year, Roulette Oil & Gas LLC received approval from the federal EPA to build a shale wastewater injection well in Clara Township in Potter County, PA (see 
Greylock Energy is headquartered in Charleston, WV, with offices in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Wyoming and operations scattered throughout Appalachia and the Rockies. The company’s assets comprise more than 1.19 million acres, about 6,700 wells, including the operation of 4,000 wells throughout Appalachia (shale and conventional) and 2,600 miles of pipeline. Grelock has contracted with a company called Tachyus (headquartered in Houston, TX) to use its cloud-based greenhouse gas tracking and reporting service called Aurion. The purpose is, of course, to lower Greylock’s carbon and fugitive methane footprint–and to prove that it has lowered it.
One year ago, we reported the sad (and angering) news that U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a liberal Democrat from West Virginia, had betrayed his WV constituents and the entire country by secretly cutting a deal to vote for Joe Biden’s New Green Deal bill repackaged under the false and misleading name of the Inflation Reduction Act (see 
The left always twists language in its attempt to push its ideology and agenda–even in Christianity. The Pennsylvania-based Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), during its 15-year history, has supported every far-left environmental regulation proposed by the Democrat Party, and has criticized every conservative, Republican energy plan that allows for fossil energy to flourish in the Keystone State. That’s been our observation. They call themselves “Evangelical,” which is supposed to mean sticking to the teachings of the Gospel of Christ. Somehow they twist the word Evangelical into worshiping the mythology of man-made catastrophic global warming. They claim it is “creation care” to aggressively address global warming using anti-capitalist Marxist political ideology, like supporting the EPA’s plan to phase out all natural gas-fired power plants with new onerous regulations.
S&P Global Ratings is a credit rating agency and a division of S&P Global that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks, bonds, and commodities. S&P is considered the largest of the Big Three credit-rating agencies, including Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings. In what can only be characterized as an earthquake in the so-called ESG movement, S&P Ratings announced it is ditching its system of numerically ranking corporate borrowers on their ESG risk on a scale of 1 to 5–just two years after implementing it. Why?
On July 11, the federal EPA held an online hearing to accept comments on a draft permit it intended to issue allowing G2 STEM to drill a proposed new wastewater injection well in Fayette County, PA (see 
The League of [Liberal Democrat] Women Voters of Pennsylvania is “teaming up” with the leftist fanatics at Food & Water Watch to launch a zombie (i.e., form) letter-writing campaign, hoping to convince the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) NOT to award a $1 billion hydrogen hub contract for any application that includes the Keystone State (there are three such applications). Cause, you know, it would involve building more fossil fuel infrastructure in the state, and *everybody* knows that fossil fuels are Satanic. The Lib Dem groups are hoping if they can’t dazzle the DOE with brilliance, they can baffle them with mountains of Barbara Streisand form letters.
The so-called Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) is behind most of the lawsuits filed by municipalities around the country (cities, counties, states) against Big Oil & Gas companies, claiming fossil energy companies know and have known for years that using their products is toasting Mom Earth into oblivion. It is the most outrageous abuse of the justice system we know of. The lawsuits are instigated (and funded) by CCI and a litany of colluding nonprofits. Get ready in the Keystone State. CCI has partnered up with the Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council (CAC) and, by all appearances, is trying to convince government officials in PA to sue PA energy companies.
Equitrans Midstream, the builder of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project, proposed to extend the pipeline by an extra 75 miles from the current terminus in Pittsylvania County, VA, to Alamance County, NC, to provide natural gas for heating and electric generation. The extension is called MVP Southgate. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a liberal Democrat, is against it (see