Cenergy Expands in WV for 4th Time; Gov Tomblin Celebrates
Founded in 2006, Cenergy is a West Virginia-based contractor for the natural gas industry providing turn-key facility and equipment engineering and fabrication for natural gas producers in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The Cabell County company last week held a grand opening for an expansion at its Milton, WV facility. Special guest of honor: WV Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. Gov. Tomblin was there to brag that WV held on to Cenergy and the extra jobs that come with the new expansion. The young-but-rapidly-growing company has expanded four times in Milton and currently employs 170 people, many of them welders…
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The Chief of the Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management for the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (currently Rick Simmers) is a man with a lot of power. He has the power, according to a ruling just handed down on August 12, to make his own decisions about suspending permits to operate in the absence of specific violations of a law or regulation. In September 2014 Simmers suspended permits for two wastewater injection wells in Trumbull County, OH after a very low level earthquake was detected close to those wells (an earthquake that couldn’t be felt at the surface and caused no damage of any kind). American Water Management Services sued saying they hadn’t violated any laws or regulations on the books and their permits could not just be arbitrarily revoked like that. But the Ohio Oil and Gas Commission said nope–Tom Cruise, er, a, Mr. Simmers can arbitrarily do what he wants when there is no specific rule or guideline or law–because he has the best interests of the people at heart…
Where does the Pennsylvania budget negotiation/standoff stand? Depends on who you ask. There have been some intense negotiations over the past few days (a room with a bunch of men hollering at each other). When he emerges from the meetings, PA Gov. Tom Wolf, the most liberal governor in the United States, paints a smile on his face and mouths unspecific platitudes about making progress. When Wolf’s top surrogate emerges, State Sen. Vincent Hughes (Democrat from Philadelphia), Hughes says they aren’t any closer to getting Republicans to cave on a Marcellus Shale-killing severance tax. And that irks him. And Hughes blusters that there will be NO budget without a severance tax as part of it. Good luck with that Sen. Hughes. We applaud Republicans for preserving the Marcellus industry–what’s left of it in this low price environment. Let’s hope Republicans don’t cave to the bluster and deceit being pedaled by the Democrats in Harrisburg. We certainly understand the Dems are in a real bind. They PROMISED the teachers unions big money in return for their support. This is a payoff–shaking down the Marcellus industry to give the money to overpaid teachers and union bosses. And if Wolf doesn’t pull it off–he can kiss a second term good-bye as far as the unions are concerned. They play for keeps and Wolf knows it. Here’s the latest in the ongoing budget battle…
Major changes are on the way for Pennsylvania’s conventional (vertical) and unconventional (shale/horizontal) drillers. In 2011 PA began a process that’s gone on way too long, to update certain regulations that apply to oil and gas drillers known as Chapter 78 of the 1984 Oil and Gas Act. Along the way the PA legislature decided there should be separate rules governing conventional and unconventional drilling–so Chapter 78 has become Chapter 78 (conventional) and 78a (unconventional). PA was close to adopting the new rules at the end of the Tom Corbett administration but then he lost his bid for re-election, throwing the process into turmoil once again with newly elected Tom Wolf and his PennFuture buddies wanting to put their own stamp on drilling regulations in the Keystone State (see