Accidents | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | MarkWest Energy | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Washington County
MarkWest Mails Spill Cleanup Notice to Wrong Township in SWPA
In late December 2022, piping at the MarkWest Imperial Compressor Station in Robinson Township, Washington County, PA, froze during Winter Storm Elliot. The frozen line burst, spilling roughly 10,000 gallons of condensate on the ground. On May 23, 2023, MarkWest Liberty Midstream & Resources LLC submitted a Notice of Intent (NOI) to the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to clean up soil and groundwater contaminated by the spill. MarkWest’s consultant Tetra Tech sent a copy of the notice to Robinson Township–except they sent it to the WRONG Robinson Township.
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An article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette tackles the issues of permit reform, environmental justice, and the intersection of the two. The article asks and attempts to answer the question, “How does one shape the other?” Based on quotes and comments in the story coming from the Shapiro administration, particularly from Acting Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), Rich Negrin, it’s obvious that Shapiro intends to redefine “environmental justice” so broadly that it will become meaningless. The aim seems to be to turn environmental justice into a blunt force instrument the left can use to deny any energy permit they don’t want to issue.
Those part of the environmental left were some of the biggest supporters of electing then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro as Pennsylvania’s next governor. But it seems the wacko environmental movement is not happy with their boy Josh. They have buyer’s remorse. It all started when, shortly after last November’s election, Shapiro announced a deal with Coterra Energy (formerly Cabot Oil & Gas) to settle a criminal case against the company for the decade-old matter of methane migration in Dimock, PA (see 
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse in New York, the “Empire State,” it does! In May, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (Democrat) signed a budget into law that includes provisions to ban gas stoves and furnaces in new residential buildings (see 
In the summer of 2021, Patterson-UTI Energy, which operates 21 active rigs in the Marcellus/Utica (out of 49 active M-U rigs, nearly half of all active M-U rigs!), announced it was buying a smaller competitor, Pioneer Energy Services Corp. (see 
Even as the Bidenistas at the Dept. of Energy are deciding which regional hydrogen hub proposals to fund, and even though Pennsylvania, with its parochial application that competes against a much better application from West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky, the Democrats in the PA House are attempting to force any new hydrogen projects in the Keystone state to NOT use fossil fuels–namely Marcellus Shale gas. Yes, they are insane! PA Dems (led by State Rep. Greg Vitali) are about to screw up PA’s already long shot at grabbing one of the 6 to 8 regional hydrogen hub projects and $1 billion in funding by promoting House Bill (HB) 1215–written by the radicals of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Talk about dumb. Wow!
The Bidenistas have put their anti-freedom, pro-tyranny agenda into overdrive. On Tuesday, the administration released its semi-annual Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, a report on the actions administrative agencies (part of the Executive Branch of government) plan to issue in the near- and long-term. Both the Interior and Energy departments are moving full speed ahead to try and lock in some of Biden’s most restrictive and punitive (to fossil energy) policies they can before the election, hoping to make it impossible to undo the damage after they lose the next election.
We’ve written about the sleazy practice of “sue and settle” in the past–a practice whereby government agencies like the EPA get their friends in the radical environmental movement to sue them, then they quickly settle the case and say, “See, we HAVE to do this because the court is making us do it.” (
The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) recently released production numbers for the first quarter of 2023, and wow! What a surprise! Oil production in the northern Utica Shale skyrocketed, led by wells drilled by Encino Energy. According to an analysis by the Youngstown Business Journal, four shale wells drilled by Encino in Columbiana County have “shattered previous production figures in the county.” Adding up all oil production by all drillers, Encino had the most oil production in the state, with 53.7% of the total oil produced in the Utica/Point Pleasant during the first quarter. It certainly looks like Encino has cracked the oil code in the Buckeye State!
Business leaders in Pennsylvania are keeping the pressure on Gov. Josh “do nothing” Shapiro–hoping to get him to keep an implied promise to remove the state from the odious carbon tax scheme called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). During the gubernatorial campaign, Shapiro expressed doubts about RGGI, implying he would not support PA’s participation, a campaign lie we warned you about at the time (see 
We’re laughing our considerably fat rear-ends off at the Democrat leftists in Pennsylvania who continue to spit and sputter over a proposed name change for the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). PA State Sen. Gene Yaw recently floated a bill (that has since passed a first committee vote) to change the name of the DEP to the Dept. of Environmental Services, as an indicator that the DEP should be less about policing and more about serving the public (see 
We’ve called attention to this for years now: The Marcellus/Utica, THE largest producing play in the U.S., is now stalled with respect to increasing production of natural gas. Why? Because we can’t build and complete any major new pipelines. Without more pipelines, the M-U is limited in how much it can produce. The situation is widely known. Yet another fact is evident: The U.S. continues to increase natural gas production. How? Other “non-core” plays (plays that don’t focus on gas) are seeing an increase in gas production from “private players,” according to a speaker at this week’s LDC Forum Northeast in Boston.
On June 8, the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection issued a renewed Section 401 water quality certification for the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. In a court filing by MVP that shoves the news in the faces of the corrupt Democrat three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the judges are told as soon as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issues a Section 404 water permit (deadline is June 24), construction will resume to finish up the final 6% of the MVP project. And there’s not a darned thing the 4th Circuit can do to stop it. Sweet victory. Sweet justice.
Two weeks ago, 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