Can Josh Shapiro Regulate PA’s Fracking Industry as Governor?
You know what we think of Pennsylvania’s foolish decision to elect the state’s current Attorney General, Josh Shapiro, to its next governor. If you care anything about the Marcellus industry in PA, you should be VERY concerned that Shapiro will attempt to scale back shale drilling in the state. He made a career out of trying to shake down and shut down Marcellus drillers over minor accidents–relabeling accidents as crimes (see these stories). What kind of power will Shapiro have to make mischief as governor, come January 1st? A left-leaning (very partisan) “news” organization tackles that question.
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Most New Yorkers are clueless about a law passed in 2019 called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (or “Climate Act”), which limits carbon dioxide emissions to zero (an impossibility) by 2050 (see 
The Bidenistas continue their drive to kill fossil energy production in this country. The latest attack comes from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a part of the Dept. of Interior. Earlier this week, the BLM released a new draft regulation to “address the waste of natural gas during the production of oil and gas on federal and Tribal lands.” Sounds like a good thing, right? The regulation will force expensive new equipment to be purchased, enforce new methods to reduce methane emissions, and in general, bury both new drillers and existing producers under mountains of paperwork required to prove wells aren’t leaking methane. One of the places this proposed new reg will affect is the Allegheny National Forest (ANF) in northwestern Pennsylvania.
In January of this year, MDN reported on Pennsylvania State Senate Bill (SB) 806, aimed at providing clarity in the royalty payment statements landowners receive from oil and gas drillers (see 
According to insiders in the D.C. swamp, the deal that U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (from West Virginia) made with Sen. Chuck Schumer (from New York) to get a “permitting reform” bill passed that would, among other things, allow the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), currently 94% built and in the ground, is on “life support.” The bill proposed by Manchin would bypass the clown judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals who are blocking it. The bill supposedly would allow MVP to finish and go online. However, Republicans are being falsely accused of blocking it.
The same three radicalized environmental groups that previously attacked the Renovo Energy Center (REC), a Marcellus gas-fired power plant planned for Clinton County, PA, are at it again. On November 22, the Clean Air Council, PennFuture, and the Center for Biological Diversity (all completely radicalized fossil fuel bigots) announced they had appealed an extension of time for an air pollution permit granted to REC by the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP).
Last week the Pennsylvania Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) voted to approve the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) and its Environmental Quality Board’s (EQB) rammed-through (in a rush) regulation to control volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and by extension methane, for conventional drilling sites throughout the state (see 
The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) released a notice of intent to prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) that will focus on the construction of a 32-inch buried pipeline under 3.5 miles of forest service land in the Jefferson National Forest. This is the third time around for the same permit. The first two EIS/permits were rejected by the clown judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. There’s no reason to believe the clowns will not reject it a third time, but Equitrans (the builder) and the USFS must go through the motions anyway.
MDN previously reported that in October, Joe Nolan, the CEO of New England’s largest utility company, Eversource, sent a letter to President Biden urging him to assemble a panel and figure out how to ensure natgas flows to New England (via LNG) this winter–because if it doesn’t, this IS the year rolling blackouts become reality (see 
In his first two days in office, Joe Biden declared war on the oil and gas industry. One of the first things he did was to revive an interagency working group on the “social cost” of greenhouse gas emissions and directed the issuance of an “interim” cost (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced that CNX Resources has paid two civil penalty assessments totaling $200,000 for violations at two different well sites in Richhill Township, Greene County. According to the civil penalty assessment paperwork, CNX spilled “production fluids” (wastewater, drilling mud, etc.) and didn’t clean it up quickly enough. Tallying all of the spills, CNX inadvertently spilled 2,170 gallons of production fluid at two sites, and ended up removing roughly 3,400 tons of “contaminated” soil.