Whatever Happened to the PA DEP Air Study Started in 2012?
In July 2012 MDN told you about a one-year study of air quality in and around Chartiers Township in Washington County, PA being conducted by the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (see PA DEP Announces 1 Year Study on Air Quality in Marcellus). The aim of the study is to determine whether or not Marcellus drilling, pipelines and the MarkWest natural gas processing plant in the Chartiers area causes an unhealthy increase in various air pollutants for residents. What did the research find? In 2013 the DEP said testing so far showed “no levels of any pollutant that would violate federal ambient air quality standards.” However, the DEP decided to extend the study until Spring 2014 (see DEP Marcellus Air Study in SW PA Extended Extra Half Year). Then all the wheels came off the cart. The DEP didn’t finish the report, and the good citizens of Pennsylvania made a huge mistake by installing Tom Wolf as their governor. Along with Wolf came an anti-driller as the head of the DEP, John Quigley, who looked over the report and told the DEP to do it over again because it didn’t find enough bad stuff to suit him…
Read More “Whatever Happened to the PA DEP Air Study Started in 2012?”
We’ve previously reported on a number of LNG (liquefied natural gas) export projects planned for the eastern shore of Canada. There are four to five such projects, depending on how you count them. However, one of those projects–Bear Head LNG in Nova Scotia–seems to have the most momentum. Such projects needs loads of permits and approvals before the first shovel ever hits the dirt. It seems like Bear Head has most of its ducks in row, ready to begin. Importantly, both the U.S. (because the gas will come from the U.S.) and Canadian regulators have signed off on the project. But there are, as we are learning, still more permits and approvals needed. Bear Head just scored another important approval. The government of Nova Scotia has just granted Bear Head its approval of their Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Management Plan. Silly, we know. Adults with brains have to pretend that leaking CO2 or methane into the atmosphere is somehow endangering Mother Earth. But these are the games that people play in order to get business done. The Bear Head LNG project is important for the Marcellus/Utica because our gas will feed it via the Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline, making it an important new market for northeast natgas…
PA’s very liberal Governor, Tom Wolf, has been obstinate in demanding onerous new drilling rules for the conventional, as well as unconventional (shale) drilling industry since he took office. Reworked drilling rules were done and ready to go under previous Governor, Tom Corbett. Then Corbett lost to Wolf, and Wolf demanded to change common sense rules everyone had already agreed to (see 
MDN has previously told you about the temper tantrum by radical environmentalists and the idiot kids they foment to try and get universities to divest from owning stock in fossil fuel companies. The very liberal Cornell University didn’t fall for it (see 
What happens to the regulatory environment for the energy industry, in particular oil and gas, should Donald Trump win the presidency? What if (perish the thought) Hillary Clinton wins? What can we expect under each administration? That was the theme for comments by Tom Sansonetti, partner with the Holland and Hart law firm, at the recent Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) 86th Midyear Meeting, held in Colorado Springs two weeks ago. The IPAA knows a number of people could not make the meeting and wants to disseminate Sansonetti’s comments, so they sent along a copy of his “what if?” analysis. We found it interesting and think you will too…
Is this the future of engines for large gas-hauling ships? Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding Co. announced two weeks ago they have completed the world’s very first ethane-operated two-stroke diesel engine. The engine is one of three the company is building to power three LEG (liquefied ethylene gas) tanker ships for Hartmann Schiffahrt of Germany and Ocean Yield of Norway. The ships are being built in China. Why ethane as fuel? For one thing, it’s cheaper than heavy fuel oil (HFO), the traditional fuel source for ship engines. Plus it burns a whole lot cleaner–something increasingly important with new emissions regulations coming along. But the obvious reason is that a tanker full of ethane can always tap into that ethane as fuel for the ship, should the need arise. The Marcellus/Utica produces ethane in abundance and ethane exports now regularly take place via ship from the Marcus Hook refinery near Philadelphia. Might we one day see an ethane-powered ship hauling ethane leaving Marcus Hook for Norway? Maybe, since some of the Marcus Hook exports to date have gone to Norway (see 
The electric power and natural gas sectors are increasingly joined at the hip, as we observed in January (see 
This pipeline project has been, until now, completely off our radar screen. As pipeline projects go, it’s pretty small. But building even a single square inch of new pipeline, or expanding a compressor station, is anathema to anti-fossil fuel nutters. So we expect this project will be in the headlines starting this week, with a pair open house meetings in the Philadelphia area (and one in Delaware) where the project will get built. The project is being built by Eastern Shore Natural Gas and is called the 2017 System Expansion project. In March 2015, Eastern Shore ran a non-binding open season to see if customers want more natural gas in the Delmarva Peninsula area (includes most of Delaware and portions of Maryland and Virginia). It looks like Eastern Shore’s customers expressed enough interest that they plan to move forward with an expansion project that will bring new sources of natgas from an interconnection Eastern Shore has with the mighty TETCo (Texas Eastern Company) pipeline near Philadelphia. Below we have details on the expansion project, and details for the open house meetings scheduled for this week in PA and DE…
It’s not all doom and gloom in the Marcellus/Utica. Seems like for the best part of a year we’ve only heard about layoffs and companies filing for bankruptcy, due to the major slowdown in drilling in our neck of the woods. But that’s not an accurate picture. Take an old steel plant in the Wheeling, WV area that had been closed for 30 years. A new business now occupies the old Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp. plant in Benwood, WV. JLE Industries has set up shop in the old plant with (so far) 25 full-time workers to inspect and repair metal tubes used in shale drilling. Chris Harris, the owner/operator, believes the company will continue to grow…
We’re starting to crack a smile of hope that drilling has once again picked up. Our first bit of evidence that the tide is turning came last week when we reported that Patterson-UTI Energy’s rig count had gone up by two in June (see 
Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas is out with their Mid-Year Job Cut Report (full copy below). Overall, across all sectors, it seems that job cuts are slowing down–a good sign to be sure. But what about job cuts in the energy industry? The news there is mixed. While the pace of job cuts in the energy industry is slowing as the year progresses (a good sign), if you look at the raw numbers for the first six months of 2016 versus 2015, the news is not so good. For the first six months of 2015 the energy industry cut 60,500 jobs. For the same period in 2016, the number of jobs cut was 77,211, a 28% increase this year over last. Oy vey! Will the cuts never stop?…
In May 2015 MDN brought you news of a then-newly released “study” from “scientists” at Oregon State University and the University of Cincinnati that reportedly found people living near fracking sites in Ohio were being exposed to “deadly” air pollution (see 
In May MDN told you about a sham lawsuit brought by two radical environmental groups–Homeowners Against Land Taking – PennEast Inc. (HALT PennEast) and the New Jersey Conservation Foundation–against the PennEast Pipeline (see