PA Gov. Wolf Instructs DEP to Draft New Regs Following Act 96
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, controlled by the extreme left in the Democrat Party, allowed PA House Bill (HB) 2644 to become law without his signature (see today’s companion story, New PA Act 96 Helps Boost Plugging Orphan Wells – Left Goes Nuts). Wolf took a big hit from the lunatics in his own party following his inaction on 2644. Now he’s trying to make up for it. Over the weekend, Wolf published a notice in the Pennsylvania Bulletin to justify his action of allowing 2644 to become law (now called Act 96), and to instruct the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to enact new regulations clamping down on how it regulates conventional oil and gas wells to prevent new abandoned wells. In other words, expect the DEP under Wolf (and Shapiro, if he wins in November, God forbid) to generate all sorts of onerous new regulations in the name of preventing new orphaned wells from popping up.
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Yesterday MDN brought you the sad and tragic news that West Virginia U.S. Senator Joe Manchin has sold out. He put his party and whatever secret offer they made him above the good of the country and agreed to a Green New Deal bill Chuck “the schmuck” Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are pushing (see 
In October 2020, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) finally, after months of dithering, approved TC Energy to begin construction on its Louisiana XPress project to beef up flows along the existing Columbia pipeline system by an additional 850 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) by adding three new compressor stations and expanding a fourth compressor in Louisiana (see 
Anti-fossil fuel activists are agitating in Pennsylvania to get the state Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) to drop a $5,000 initial (and subsequent $500 annual) fee to access what is called the Exploration and Development Well Information Network (EDWIN) database. The EDWIN database contains details about oil and gas wells throughout the state, including data on the location, ownership status, construction information, and completion reports. DCNR uses the Dept. of Environmental Protection’s database as a starting point and cleans it up, making it more useful.
Increasingly ours is a world run by computers. Even in-the-ground pipelines are monitored and controlled by computers. The ransomware attack last year against Colonial Pipeline, a pipeline that flows a significant amount of refined products (gasoline and diesel fuel) from the Gulf Coast where it’s refined as far north as New Jersey, was a wake-up call for all pipelines. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) heard the call and responded. Last July, the TSA issued an initial “security directive” requiring pipelines, including natural gas pipelines, to do certain things to protect themselves and the public they serve (see 
Gulfport Energy has successfully wiggled out of legally-signed and binding long-term contracts with multiple pipeline companies, including deals that move Marcellus/Utica gas through the Rover and Rockies Express (REX) pipelines. In 2020 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) told Gulfport a very loud NO in breaking those contracts (see 
What’s fair is fair. If a county blocks drilling under county-owned land, as the Allegheny County Council recently did (see 
The leftist members of the Allegheny, PA County Council have proven just how leftward they have lurched (and how unhinged they have become). Last night the Council voted to overturn the veto of a ban on drilling for natural gas under (never on top of) county parks. The Council’s action denies taxpayers millions of dollars in revenue to fix and repair and expand county parks. County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, a Democrat himself, vetoed the idiotic ban, but the Democrats of the County Council just couldn’t help themselves. They voted to override Fitzgerald’s veto. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Welcome to the People’s Republic of Allegheny County.
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat from West Virginia, did the country (and his own party) a huge favor when he pushed the temporary pause button on committing trillions of dollars of new inflationary spending on Big Green programs called the Biden Build Back Better bill (see 
Given the record of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) with blocking new natural gas pipeline projects (and harassing already-built pipelines), Congressional Republicans are questioning the role FERC should play in approving hydrogen pipelines. The U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing yesterday, and Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming expressed concerns that FERC may use blending hydrogen with natgas in pipelines as an excuse to impose new restrictions on existing natgas pipelines.
Last week MDN reported that Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, in a final act of thumbing his nose at the prolific Marcellus industry in his own state, vetoed a bill, Senate Bill (SB) 275, that would have prohibited municipalities from banning the use of natural gas (see 
Bitcoin mining is becoming an important customer for Marcellus/Utica natural gas. Gigantic computer server farms run complex mathematical computations and the result of those computations is a blockchain. When a blockchain is formed, the server farm doing the computations gets compensated with bitcoins, a form of digital money. Bitcoin (the generic term is cryptocurrency) mining uses huge amounts of electricity to run all of those computers. That’s where natural gas comes in. Natgas is used to generate the electricity used to power the computers. A bitcoin “miner” in Clearfield County, PA, recently paused operations at the facility. Why?
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s foolish plan to force PA’s coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to begin paying an obscenely high tax on carbon dioxide emissions as part of the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) got blocked on July 1 by PA Commonwealth Court (see