Revisiting PA Bill to Allow Shale Drilling Across Multiple Units
Two days ago MDN brought you news about a new bill in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, HB 247, which would allow fully leased parcels that are part of one drilling “unit” to be combined with parcels in a different unit (see PA Floats Bill to Allow Shale Drilling to Span Multiple Units). “Cross-unit drilling,” if you will. We connected a few dots and made some observations that maybe were not quite on the mark. This post presents “the other side” of the HB 247 issue.
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The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is conducting a series of four public meetings (called scoping sessions) for both the Williams Leidy South Project (see 
Last May, Liberty Utilities, located and operating in New Hampshire, announced a new pipeline project called Granite Bridge–27 miles of new natural gas pipeline to be buried along Route 101 from Stratham to Manchester, along with an LNG storage facility located midway along the pipeline (see 
Witch hunts take a loooong time when it’s the U.S. government doing the hunting. We told you back in 2015 that the U.S. Dept. of Labor was unfairly targeting the Marcellus industry, looking at every time slip, to see if they could bag companies violating federal overtime regulations–not paying their workers overtime (see 
Some Pennsylvania landowners have recently been approached by the companies they’re leased with, asking landowners to sign amended leases to allow cross-unit drilling. We personally know of one case in which a driller requested such an amendment in northeast PA. So it is with great interest we notice a new bill has been introduced in the PA House, specifically to allow cross-unit shale drilling.
In February MDN told you about an important decision by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals that has the potential to override New York State and allow both the Constitution Pipeline and Northern Access Pipeline projects to get built (see 
In December, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) released a draft of onerous new regulations that focus on reducing volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions and so-called fugitive methane (see 
Big Green groups are asking the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a case it recently decided that says when the federal Clean Water Act gives states one year to review requests for 401 water crossing permits, they have one year (365 days)–not two or three years by gaming the system (see 
Diversified Gas & Oil has been on a mission to buy as many non-shale (conventional) oil and gas wells as it can in the Appalachian Basin. It owns over millions of acres and tens of thousands of wells–many of them located in Pennsylvania. Last fall the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) told Diversified it wants 1,000 of its nonproducing wells plugged in the next five years. Diversified countered it would like to plug 2,000 wells, but over the next 20 years. They ended up compromising.
Two weeks ago MDN told you that New Jersey radicals had succeeded in scuttling a plan to convert an old coal-fired electric plant into using natural gas (see 
Last September MDN told you that a new natgas-fired electric plant planned for the People’s Republic of Rhode Island in Burrillville was on life support, with antis reaching to pull the plug (see 
Anti-fossil fuelers are once again riding their high horse “demanding” that the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County block any more shale drilling on county-owned property located near Beaver Run Reservoir. Even though CNX’s shale drilling has been going on there since 2011 with zero impacts on the reservoir and its water supply.
In early 2018, the federal EPA approved a new Marcellus wastewater injection well for the Pittsburgh suburb of Plum Borough (see