O&G Pipe Builders in OH can Bypass EPA, Get Permit from Army Corps
Here’s an interesting twist on building new oil and gas pipelines in Ohio. Due to a late filing made by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (Ohio EPA), from now on interstate pipeline builders will *not* need to seek and receive a federal section 401 water permit under the Clean Water Act from the Ohio EPA to build the pipeline. Instead, the pipeline builder can just ask the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a Nationwide Permit 12 (NWP12). Ohio EPA has been problematic for pipelines in the past (see Ohio EPA Takes One More Swipe at Rover Pipe with FERC Notice). Perhaps the days of EPA interference are now gone in the Buckeye State?
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It’s nice to see Pennsylvania’s Republican legislators playing hardball with the out-of-control governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Wolf. Yesterday PA Senate Republicans wrote a letter to Gov. Wolf to advise him they will reject all future nominees to the state Public Utility Commission (PUC) until he withdraws his executive order joining the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon tax scheme aimed at shutting down coal and natural gas-fired power plants in the state.
Yesterday our illustrious president, Joe Biden, shot off his mouth announcing plans to cut so-called greenhouse gas emissions by 50% in the next 10 years while creating millions of “good-paying, union jobs.” It’s an anti-fossil fuel pig in a poke. Biden announced his latest brainstorm during a “climate summit” with some 40 other world leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. We’re pretty sure both Xi Jinping and Putin were snickering at the prospect of America committing energy suicide, something they have no intention of doing.
It’s now obvious to even the dullest person that Andrew Cuomo and his completely corrupted Dept. of Environmental Conservation has one mission in mind with respect to the state’s oil and gas industry: Kill it. It began when Cuomo first placed a moratorium, later a permanent ban on hydraulic fracturing in the state (see 
State legislators in Pennsylvania are attempting to restore some sanity to overregulation inflicted by unelected bureaucracies in the state, like the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). Republicans have introduced and are pushing along a couple of bills that will reign in the DEP (and other overzealous agencies) in PA. One bill requires the legislature to approve any new regulation that impacts a regulated community by more than $1 million. Another bill allows third parties to assist the DEP in reviewing and approving certain permits. The DEP can’t seem to get its act together and there are always loooong delays in approving new permits.
The American Energy Alliance (AEA) is raising the alarm of a conspiracy by Democrat Attorneys General from deep blue states colluding with Big Green groups to bypass Congress with a new round of sue-and-settle lawsuits. It is the equivalent of an overthrow of the legislative branch of the federal government. Here’s how the conspiracy works…
Have you ever heard the trite but true phrase, “words mean things”? Never has that been more true than in Pennsylvania and the simple word called “royalty.” Somewhere along the way the word “royalty” got watered down and changed. A new bill being introduced by PA State Rep. Eric Davanzo (Republican from Westmoreland County) will clear up the confusion and bastardization of the term royalty, making it easy for everyone to know what can and cannot be deducted from royalties with respect to oil and gas leases.
When you see the words “environmental justice,” that’s just another way of saying racist–or the new shorthand “woke.” Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax scheme assumes all fossil fuel-powered electric generating plants in the state are built in communities of color or in communities that are economically poor and therefore those communities can’t fight back against the injustice of being “polluted.” RGGI presumes fossil power plants are racist and sets out to correct the injustice by eliminating those power plants via taxing them out of existence.
When key players in our industry support killing the industry they work for, is the end near? That’s what we sometimes ponder. Last Friday we told you that the biggest natural gas producer in the country, EQT Corporation, has gone over to the dark side and is publicly supporting the reinstatement of Lord Obama’s draconian and onerous (and completely unnecessary) so-called methane rule that forces companies to capture every last molecule of methane, no matter how expensive and impossible and unnecessary it is (see 
Last October Energy Transfer (Sunoco Pipeline) pushed back against a demand by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) that the company’s Mariner East 2X pipeline project be rerouted one mile around Marsh Creek State Park (in Chester County, PA) following a drilling mud spill in August (see 
Just as we predicted, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) under Democrat Chairman Richard “Dick” Glick, his sidekick the former NRDC lawyer (Democrat) Allison Clements, and backstabbing, swamp-dwelling RINO Neil Chatterjee, is effectively killing off new pipeline projects. The three FERC commissioners have colluded to fundamentally change the way natural gas and oil pipelines are evaluated by including mythological man-made global warming as one of the criteria for approval.
We’re not big fans of U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (Democrat). He hails from Republican-leaning West Virginia, so he has to pass himself off as a “moderate” Democrat. When push comes to shove, we’ve noticed Manchin falls into line and obsequiously obeys Chuck Schumer’s commands. Yet perhaps, hope against hope, Manchin will show some spine and refuse to sign on to the $2 trillion shale energy-killing “infrastructure” plan Biden is pushing.