Huge Bipartisan Majority in PA House Votes to Block Carbon Tax
Yesterday the Pennsylvania House of Representatives voted 130 to 71 (with overwhelming bipartisan support) to pass House Bill (HB) 2025 which would block Gov. Wolf’s attempt to force PA into a northeast carbon tax scheme. We’ve written plenty about Wolf’s plan to force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI (see Gov. Wolf Goes Bonkers: EO Destroying Gas-Fired Elec, Carbon Tax).
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Are you surprised that Pennsylvania’s big money nuclear power lobby loves PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to tax nuke plants’ biggest competitor, natural gas-fired plants, out of existence? We aren’t surprised. Nuclear Powers Pennsylvania, lobbying group for PA’s nuclear power plants, is urging PA legislators to drop a bill that will block Wolf’s insane attempt at forcing the state to join a group of liberal northeastern states in something called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). RGGI forces its members to slap high taxes on energy that produces carbon dioxide–the stuff you breathe out with every single breath you take. Ludicrous.
Earlier this week MDN brought you the news that Chesapeake Energy is asking a bankruptcy court in Texas for permission to break valid and legal contracts with several pipeline companies as part of its financial reorganization plan (see 
Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (DC Circuit) handed down a decision that was expected, but sad nonetheless. The court told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) it can no longer use “tolling orders” to stretch out the time to respond to a “rehearing” request when a FERC decision has been challenged. It sounds complicated. The simple version is FERC no longer has the ability to prevent anti-fossil fuel Big Green groups (with loads of money) from challenging each and every pipeline decision FERC makes in court, tying up those decisions for years at a time. Antis now have free rein to game the system and shut down new pipelines from getting built.
McCandless, a township in Allegheny County, PA (near Pittsburgh) is attempting to block any and all shale drilling within its borders by getting creative. The town is in the process of adopting changes to its zoning laws that make it illegal to drill a well in land zoned for commercial development. Since towns have to allow drilling in at least one zone, McCandless will allow it only in “institutional districts.” That means drilling will only be allowed on land with schools, hospitals, universities, and parks. Fat chance any drilling will ever happen in those places!
Last October PA Gov. Tom Wolf, in a naked power-grab, said he would try to force PA to join the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a group of northeastern states attempting to assassinate coal and gas-fired power generation by taxing it to death with an insane carbon tax (see 
Equitrans Midstream’s 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project is now 92% complete and will be done and online in early 2021 (see 
New Fortress Energy, which likes to build and own as much of the LNG supply chain as possible, has built and recently finished an LNG import terminal in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Just one teeny, tiny problem: New Fortress didn’t get permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) before building it. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory and subject to U.S. laws and regulations, including the regulation that requires FERC approval *before* building such a facility. Luuuucy, you have some ‘splainin to do!
In April 2019 President Trump issued an Executive Order directing the Secretary of Transportation to write a new rule allowing specially constructed tanker cars for railroads (DOT-113 tank cars) to ship LNG, i.e., liquefied natural gas (see 
Not even Andrew Cuomo, as grossly corrupt as he is, has thought up something this vile and evil–using the currently toxic environment of race relations across our country as a means to block all new fossil fuel energy projects–specifically pipelines, compressor stations and power generating plants–by declaring such projects racist by definition. That’s what will happen in New Jersey if a new bill, Senate Bill 232, becomes law.
In Ohio, it costs drillers $5,500 to file for and receive a permit to drill a new shale well. In West Virginia, the cost is $10,150. In Pennsylvania, it has cost drillers $5,000 for a new shale well permit. Following a meeting yesterday of the PA Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC), PA’s permit fee is about to zoom to the top of the M-U list: $12,500 (2 1/2 times the previous fee). In fact, the cost of a shale permit in PA will become the highest in the country.