PA Gov Wolf Signs Acid Mine Water for Fracking Law
It’s a miracle! Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf actually did something right–he signed Senate Bill (SB) 875 into law yesterday. You may recall on Tuesday we told you that the PA Senate and House had passed SB875 and sent it on to Wolf for his signature (see PA Acid Mine Water Bill Passes, Waiting for Gov. Wolf’s Signature). The bill legally protects Marcellus Shale drillers should they decide to use acid mine water (AMW) as a source of water for fracking. Anti-drilling groups will only be too happy to launch frivolous lawsuits against drillers should they use AMW. This bill prevents those shenanigans from happening. It is a win/win for the environment–helping to lessen the amount of fresh water needed in fracking, and cleaning up a huge problem in the state of millions of gallons of AMW flowing out of abandoned coal mines. Congratulations to State Senator Camera Bartolotta (Republican) for writing and sponsoring the bill, and for making it happen. Too bad she isn’t the governor of PA right now…
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In January 2014, anti-drilling “researchers” jumped the gun at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in Philadelphia by announcing “preliminary” results of research in which they claim they can show a connection between shale drilling and low birth weights in newborn babies in Pennsylvania (see 
We’ve written plenty over the years about the silly nutters who make up the Sierra Club. It’s a joke of an organization, and that was evident for the world to see earlier this week when U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz questioned the president of the Sierra Club, Aaron Mair, at a Congressional hearing. Using simple, direct and non-bullying questions, Cruz exposed Mair as an empty-headed fraud only capable of regurgitating a few canned responses to Cruz’s questions about man-made global warming. The standard line was to repeat over and over that “97 percent of scientists agree” on man-made global warming. That particular statistic comes from a small, flawed study of hand-picked scientists back in 2013. Mair and others hope by repeating the lie over and over enough times, everyone will believe it. Cruz didn’t fall for it. There is a video (below) that you MUST watch. It exposes Mair as a fool–not able to defend his own statements about global warming. Nearly every question Cruz asked Mair would have to lean back to have his advisers feed him the answers. Mair is an empty suit–nobody home upstairs. Empty-headed. It’s a beautiful example of the entire organization, showing it as nothing more than a political advocacy group, ignorant of real science. Yes, we do revisit the important topic of global warming from time to time because the issue is at the heart of the movement to ban fracking and end the use of all fossil fuels–a dangerously naive and stupid movement supported by organizations like the Sierra Club…
In the end, it was PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s own Democrat Party House members that sunk his latest high tax budget proposal. Nine Dems voted against the Wolf budget, showing bipartisan support for defeating Wolf’s high taxes, including lack of support for a high severance tax. Every single Republican, even the RINOs, voted against Wolf’s unpopular budget proposal. Trying to spin his humiliating defeat as some sort of plus, Wolf said he was “encouraged” that “so many Democrats” actually voted yes for his budget. Talk about chutzpah. Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, has some big cojones–he equated Wolf with a thug trying to mug somebody, taking all of their money at gunpoint. Wow! It’s about time there was some frank talk about the bully Wolf has become in ten short months–and some push-back against it. Time for Republicans to pass a budget and get a few of those Dems to go along and override a Wolf veto. Time to govern without Wolf if he refuses to do his job…
Don’t look now but Utica/Marcellus condensate being produced at a MarkWest Energy processing plant in Cadiz, OH is being exported out of the country via a ship docked on the Hudson River at Perth Amboy, New Jersey–just across the river from Manhattan! The condensate is transported to NJ via railroad in specially designed rail cars. A second ship is being loaded up and will leave with Utica/Marcellus condensate from MarkWest, according to the Reuters story below. The first ship loaded with condensate left Perth Amboy one month ago heading to the Netherlands. No word yet on where the second load is heading, but sources say exporting condensate from Perth Amboy is now set up to become a routine thing, which is fantastic news for drillers in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia that produce condensate…
Oilfield service giant Baker Hughes released their venerable monthly rotary rig count report yesterday for September 2015. After posting gains in the overall land-based U.S. rig count number for two straight months in July and August, the September numbers dropped like a rock. September U.S. active land-based rigs averaged 848, down 35 from the average of 883 in August and down 18 from July’s average of 866. Rig counts for the Marcellus/Utica also continued to drop, showing another four rigs were idled during September across the combined PA/OH/WV. It’s getting bloody out there…
On Tuesday a Medina County, OH judge ruled that the NEXUS pipeline does have a right to enter private land to survey it for possible routes for the pipeline. The judge said Ohio laws allow private companies to survey land for eventual appropriation (including eminent domain) as long as the company can prove it is an energy or utility company. The judge said the law is quite clear on that point–plain and simple to understand. The judge’s decision didn’t sit too well with the CORNballs of CORN (Coalition to Reroute Nexus pipeline). We’ve written plenty about CORN and their effort to “reroute” the NEXUS (
One of the arguments sometimes trotted out by anti-drillers is that heavy trucks lumbering up and down rural roads will destroy them. And indeed, sometimes it does–when the road is old or not constructed to handle heavy truck traffic. Typically drillers will repair the roads to better-than-new condition–we’ve seen it in some PA counties. But here’s something you don’t often hear: Gulfport Energy is about to spend $8 million on road repairs to roads BEFORE they use them, not after. The repairs will be done over the next six weeks in Belmont County, OH, and it delights Belmont County Commission members. Somebody else footing the bill for rebuilt roads will put a smile on any county commissioner’s face…
California company Capstone Turbine Corporation, on the left coast, continues to land new sales in the Marcellus/Utica region. We first told you about Capstone selling their microturbine energy systems in 2014 (see 
In September MDN told you that the 711-mile ET Rover Pipeline, costing an estimated $3.7 billion to build, had awarded a contract to an Ohio company to build 39 compressor stations (see 
Once again PA Gov. Tom Wolf is proving himself to be a partisan hack, and certainly not up to the job the good people of Pennsylvania elected him to do. He’s a typical tax and spend liberal (voted the most liberal governor in America by the non-partisan InsideGov, see 
Shell is currently spending an undisclosed amount of money (millions of dollars) to build a bridge to a site they now own where they may one day build a $2-$3 billion ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, PA (see 
As a general rule, professional actors are some of the most clueless people on the planet. Mark Ruffalo, one of the most clueless of the clueless, was honored at a Pennsylvania college because of it. Ruffalo was honored by Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA (near Harrisburg) with the Sam Rose ’58 and Julie Walters Prize for his environmental cluelessism, er, a, activism. Hey, Ruffalo does a decent job with acting (we enjoy the Avengers movies)–we’ll grant him that. But have you ever noticed the lights are all on with Ruffalo–but nobody’s actually home? Anywho, the awarded Ruffalo, who calls himself “an accidental environmentalist,” will make a trip to Harrisburg today to deliver a letter from “100 organizations” and “25,000 concerned citizens” to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf. The letter will ask Wolf to immediately enact a fracking moratorium in the state. What…radical? No way that will ever happen? Pipe dream? You may have forgetten (but we didn’t) that the Pennsylvania State Democrat Party, before they nominated Wolf to be their leader, adopted an official plank in the party platform calling for the same identical thing (see 
Last week we told you how heartbreaking it is to see well-meaning (but ignorant) county officials in Stokes County, NC pass a three-year moratorium on fracking–repeating the same mistakes made in New York State (see