Fed Judge Certifies Class Action Against Glenn O. Hawbaker, Inc.
Glenn O. Hawbaker, Inc., long known for providing stone quarries and asphalt plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio, also provides civil construction services for shale well sites. In August 2021, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced a plea deal with Hawbaker to pay back $20 million in alleged “stolen wages” from over 1,000 Hawbaker employees (see PA Construction Co. Glenn Hawbaker Pays $20M for “Stolen Wages”). According to Shapiro’s office, Hawbaker deposited retirement funds from one set of employees into a retirement fund account that benefits other employees, including Hawbaker management. Following the plea deal, three former Hawbaker employees filed a civil lawsuit against the company, asking a federal judge to convert their lawsuit into a class action (see Judge Asked to Certify Class Action Against Glenn O. Hawbaker, Inc.). On Tuesday, June 6, the judge granted their request.
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Here we go again. The shale-hating Democrats of the Pennsylvania legislature have floated a resolution to “study” how much money the Commonwealth is losing by not imposing an obscene severance tax on top of the existing impact fee (which is a severance tax by another name). Every single year Tom Wolf occupied the governor’s chair (eight loooooong years), his budgets insisted on including a Marcellus-killing severance tax. And every single year, the Republican-controlled legislature wisely refused. With a new Democrat governor, Josh “do nothing” Shapiro, and with the Dems now controlling the House (by a single vote), they are at it again–hoping to enact a Marcellus-killing severance tax. The first step is to “study” it…
Russia is not only an evil actor by invading a neighbor and murdering innocent civilians (Ukraine), for years, Russia has been an evil actor by funding Big Green groups that target U.S. domestic energy production. An expose running in RealClearEnergy details how Russia has funded organizations that have hired “journalists” to write propaganda against American energy companies. This one will make your blood boil…
In March, environmental radical Pat McDonnell of PennFuture, the former Pennsylvania Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), along with his best friend THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum, sued McDonnell’s former agency over permits the DEP issued to Williams to build the Regional Energy Access Expansion (REAE) project (see 
With a one-vote majority in the Pennsylvania House, the Democrats who run the House are stepping up their attacks on the oil and gas industry in the state. The latest attack is House Bill (HB) 652, which is aimed at blocking new permits to build or expand various projects–including gas-fired power plants and wastewater injection wells–in so-called environmental justice areas. The left defines environmental justice as any area with a certain percentage of blacks and Latinos, or an area with a lot of poor people (i.e., rural). So, environmental justice areas are pretty much anyplace in the entire state–because every location is either urban (with minorities) or rural (with poor folk). Heads I win, tails you lose.
Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) currently operates a gas-fired power plant in the Keasbey section of Woodbridge, NJ. The plant currently generates power for about 700,000 homes. In 2018, CPV proposed adding a second power plant at the same location (see 
Canadian-based Enbridge operates, among many other assets, the Dawn Hub in the Canadian province of Ontario. Located in southwestern Ontario, Dawn, with 288 Bcf (billion cubic feet) of gas storage, provides shippers with direct access to North America’s major supply basins–including the Utica and the Marcellus. The Dawn Hub is connected to a myriad of pipelines, including Rover and NEXUS (from the M-U region). The new news is that Enbridge has just launched an open season to expand capacity along the pipeline that runs from Dawn to both the Kirkwall and Parkway hubs near Toronto.
An advisory note from Citi analyst Paul Diamond, picked up by the Seeking Alpha investor website, says U.S. natural gas producers are “primed for a wave of consolidation” in the medium term. Near the top of the list of potential takeover targets is, according to Diamond, Southwestern Energy, which had concentrated mainly on the Marcellus/Utica region until 2021, when it went wandering into Haynesville drilling. Who might be interested in buying Southwestern?
Last week shale drillers could, for the first time, begin to apply for permits to drill under (not on top of) Ohio state lands and state parks under newly formulated rules established by the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management (OGLM) Commission (see 
In March, MDN brought you the news that New Fortress Energy (NFE) confirmed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it plans to apply for updated permits to build an LNG export plant in landlocked northeastern Pennsylvania (see 
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 
There is no doubt that LNG (liquefied natural gas) exports are a key and increasingly critical customer for our domestic natural gas–including gas produced in the Marcellus/Utica. The evil (and clever) minds of anti-fossil fuel zealots are always thinking up new ways to block domestic oil and gas production. Their latest strategy is to pressure (i.e., bully) Big Insurance companies into dropping insurance policies for LNG export plants. If the plants can’t get insurance to protect them against potential disasters, they can’t operate.