New PA Strategy on Post-Prod. Deductions – Bill Defines “Royalty”
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.
Read More “New PA Strategy on Post-Prod. Deductions – Bill Defines “Royalty””

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
This year’s 60-day session of the West Virginia legislature, which ended at the stroke of midnight on Sunday, saw a flurry of oil and gas-related bills. Perhaps the most important such bill for the industry, to expand forced pooling, failed (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.
Last MDN told you that the West Virginia House of Delegates had passed House Bill (HB) 2581, which changes how the State Tax Department values producing oil and gas wells for property tax purposes (see
Prepare for some mental gymnastics. Limber up your brain so you can follow this story. As you know, some big pension funds and investment firms have been on a “divestment” kick, eliminating their investments in filthy fossil fuel companies (see
Last week we brought you the earthshattering news of a resurrection–the resurrection of the Williams Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project in the New York City area (see
The headline of this post and indeed the post itself (below) is not our view or opinion. It was authored by an oil and gas industry veteran, David Blackmon, writing on the Forbes magazine website. Yes, we previously covered the absolute disaster that Biden is pedaling as an “infrastructure” plan (see