PA Democrat In-fighting re Member of Wolf’s Pipeline Task Force
This story is amusing–PA Democrat infighting over the composition of the PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s Pipeline Infrastructure Task Force. You’ll recall we brought you Wolf’s announcement that the PennFuture Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection, John Quigley, would head a new task force to oversee (i.e. slow down) the development of local shale gas gathering pipelines (see Disaster on the Horizon: PA Gov Wolf Creates Pipeline Task Force). In July the DEP announced the list of 42 members of the Task Force, one-third of whom work for Wolf in state government jobs (see PA Gov Wolf Packs Pipeline Task Force with His Own Minions). What we didn’t know is that apparently there was at least one anti-fossil fueler who is so extreme, not even PennFuture’s own John Quigley wanted him on the task force. Scott Cannon, from Luzerne County, PA, was originally invited to be a member of the task force. Cannon is well known as an anti-driller in NEPA, running around with a video camera shooting anti-fracking propaganda films. It seems Cannon’s name somehow got on the list to be invited, and then, suddenly, he was uninvited. All signs point to Quigley, a fellow liberal Democrat, as the one who did the uninviting…
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The Philadelphia-based anti-fossil fuel group Clean Air Council has announced through their media/public relations mouthpiece (the taxpayer-funded PBS StateImpact Pennsylvania) that they’ve launched yet another frivolous lawsuit–this time against Sunoco Logistics and their Mariner East 2 pipeline plan. Clean Air Council has launched so many lawsuits against the oil and gas industry we’ve lost count of the number. The Clean Air Council, once called The Delaware Valley Citizens’ Council for Clean Air, is a non-profit (i.e. non-taxed) group engaging in political activity in violation of their non-profit charter–yet government officials ignore those violations. The Clean Air Council, without standing, filed a lawsuit in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas (the lowest trial court, essentially what other states call county court), charging that Sunoco Logistics, contrary to decades of accepted recognition as a public utility in Pennsylvania, is not actually a public utility and therefore cannot assert eminent domain against a few holdout landowners who refuse to allow the Mariner East 2 pipeline to be placed next to the existing Mariner East 1 pipeline already crossing their land…
Natural gas production in the mighty Marcellus Shale has dipped over the past several months–for the first time ever. As MDN has previously reported, the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Drilling Production Report (DPR) in June was the first time the EIA predicted Marcellus production would fall, from June to July, from 16,522 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) to 16,494 MMcf/d (see 
It’s bad enough when anti-fossil fuel zealots gang up, like a pack of hyenas, to try and defeat a much-needed pipeline like Dominion’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (see 
A pipeline upgrade project in western Pennsylvania is making excellent progress. In February 2014 National Fuel Gas Company (NFG) filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for the Line N West Side Expansion and Modernization Project in Washington, Allegheny, Beaver, Venango and Mercer Counties, PA. The project calls for building some 23 miles of new pipeline next to an existing NFG pipeline in Washington and Beaver counties, along with compressor station and other upgrades along other portions of the existing Line N pipeline. NFG previously signed Range Resources and NFG’s own subsidiary, Seneca Resources, as customers for an increase in capacity to flow an additional 175,000 decatherms per day, Dth/d (175 million cubic feet per day, MMcf/d). The extra capacity allows Range and Seneca to move of the Marcellus Shale gas they produce in western PA to market. Although construction is still underway, NFG has asked FERC to begin partial service now, two months ahead of schedule…
In April MDN reported on a successful open season (time when new customers sign up) for the Michigan/Ohio Pipeline Expansion Project–a pipeline expansion project that will deliver “refined petroleum products” (things like gasoline, kerosene and heating oil) from Woodhaven and Detroit, Michigan, and from Toledo and Lima, Ohio, to destination points in both Ohio and Western Pennsylvania (see 
In June 2014 Dominion filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to construct and operate new compression facilities at existing compressor stations in Marshall County, WV and Monroe County, OH, and certain other facilities, collectively called the Clarington Project (see 
We have to chuckle. Anti-drillers are so predictable. As we’ve said going back as far as an event we attended in Binghamton when the former mayor of DISH, Texas, Calvin Tilman (in 2010), we observed that many in the audience are 60s hippies with a new cause in life–to oppose drilling/pipelines/fossil fuels in general (see 
The gloves are now off and everything is out in the open: President Barack Hussein Obama wants to destroy the oil and gas industry in the United States of America. Yesterday Obama’s preferred tool of destruction, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), released a plan that brings the jackboots of the federal government down on the necks of the industry–forcing them to “reduce” methane emissions by 40-45%. Methane, you may recall, is what drillers actually extract from the ground and sell. Methane is what they get paid for–the very thing they are incentivized to capture so they can sell it. Drillers have reduced their methane emissions–the stuff leaking out around the edges–by at least 40-45% over the past few years. In other words, the industry is already doing what the EPA wants them to do. Which means this action is a blatant attempt at stifling drilling in this country. Let us be crystal clear: This action by the EPA is illegal. This is an outright attempt to regulate the oil and gas industry, contrary to the U.S. Constitution which reserves such regulation to the individual states. Just have a look at the so-called “rule” the EPA has published (all 591 pages of it). It is a top to bottom set of unlegislated regulations that will put all oil an gas drilling in the regulatory hands of the EPA.
As for the good guys, the guys in the white hats who support clean-burning natural gas and fossil fuels, they also weighed in on the EPA’s lawless new methane reduction rule, otherwise known as 40 CFR Part. Here’s what the good guys from ANGA, API, Marcellus Shale Coalition, WVONGA and even what three U.S. Senators had to say…
If you wonder whether or not a new regulation is good or bad, you can always tell by who supports it and who doesn’t. In the case of the EPA and their lawless new methane reduction rule, otherwise known as 40 CFR Part 60, national radical environmental groups like Earthjustice and the Sierra Club, along with regional and local radical groups like the Ohio Environmental Council and the Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council, are applauding the action taken by the Obama EPA…