Sixth Circuit Court Stops EPA from Implementing WOTUS Anywhere
Thank God for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit! Last Friday the Sixth Circuit issued a stay on the odious and overreaching Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)/Army Corps of Engineers’ (ECA) so-called update that redefines Waters of the United States (WOTUS) to include just about everything, including mud puddles (see EPA Power Grab: Redefines Waters of the U.S. to Include Everything). The new rule will have a profoundly negative impact on the oil and gas industry. Some 13 states sued the EPA/ACE to stop this draconian rule from going into effect. In August a federal judge temporarily blocked the new WOTUS rule to give the lawsuit brought by the 13 states a chance (see EPA’s Draconian WOTUS Rule Blocked by Federal Judge). However, the EPA, acting like petulant children, said they would move forward with implementing the rule in the other 37 states anyway. The Sixth Circuit on Friday put an end to that plan. Now WOTUS is not enforceable by the EPA, at least until the lawsuit plays out…
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Early last week MDN told you about NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s disastrous new pick to run the Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC), the agency that oversees oil and gas drilling in the Empire State (see 
The oil and gas industry is far better at self-regulation and self-policing than any government agency can provide. Governmental regulators take forever to inflict new regulations–and they take even longer to lift those regulations when they’re no longer necessary or useful (witness the ban on crude oil exports in place since the early 1970s that the House of Representatives voted to lift last Friday, but Obama has promised to veto). A great example of self-regulating and self-policing is the American Petroleum Institute (API). Last week the API issued updated hydraulic fracturing standards with an aim to continuously improve well integrity, groundwater protection, and environmental safety. While API’s recommended practices are not binding on drillers, API standards are highly respected and used by many drillers–those who care about doing it right…
It’s a miracle! Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf actually did something right–he signed Senate Bill (SB) 875 into law yesterday. You may recall on Tuesday we told you that the PA Senate and House had passed SB875 and sent it on to Wolf for his signature (see 
Last week we told you how heartbreaking it is to see well-meaning (but ignorant) county officials in Stokes County, NC pass a three-year moratorium on fracking–repeating the same mistakes made in New York State (see 
In June MDN told you about an idea “whose time has come”–legislation in Pennsylvania that will allow drillers to use acid mine water (AMW) from abandoned coal mines as fracking fluid, reducing the need for using fresh water sources (see 
It appears to us that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has just made it harder for drillers and pipeline companies operating in Pennsylvania to do their job–although we’re not 100% sure. Last week the USACE issued a public notice about revisions to the Pennsylvania State Programmatic General Permit – 4 (PASPGP-4). According to the legal beagles at Babst Calland, “PASPGP-4 authorizes the discharge of dredged or fill materials and the placement of temporary or permanent structures that result in impacts to one acre or less of waters of the United States, including jurisdictional wetlands.” The USACE has added more threatened and endangered species, as listed on the Pennsylvania Natural Diversity Inventory (PNDI), to the PASPGP-4, meaning there’s more bats and bugs and other critters drillers and pipeliners must avoid when moving earth and cutting down trees. At least that’s what we think is happening. The USACE says it’s “streamlining” the review process. Looks to us like what they’re doing is adding more hoops the oil and gas industry must jump through…
It’s kind of funny to hear anti-drilling liberal NPR reporters interview each other and present it as news. Hilarious, in fact. They do their dead-level best to sound objective (which they aren’t) and knowledgeable (which they sometimes are) and haughty (which they always are). Here’s what precipitated the latest round of self-interviews. In July, MDN told you that the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission (PUC) had given preliminary approval to Liberty Utilities (a NH utility company) to purchase firm capacity on Kinder Morgan’s proposed Northeast Energy Direct extension of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline (see 
On Monday MDN told you about an accident in Sweden Township (Potter County), PA where JKLM Energy released soap into a water aquifer while trying to fish out a broken drill bit from a Utica Shale bore hole (see 
Last November, MDN told you about an innovative plan by PECO, a utility company based in Philadelphia serving some 500,000+ natural gas customers in southeastern PA, to allow customers to sign up for its natural gas service and spread the cost over 20 years (see 
Finally a spot of good news in the never-ending battle to keep the federal government out of the business of regulating oil and gas drilling. Going all the way back to 2012, the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an agency that sits under the umbrella of the U.S. Dept. of Interior (DOI), proposed draft rules for fracking on federally-controlled land (see 
Countless times MDN has told you that in rare cases, injecting fracking wastewater into a deep, underground Class II injection well (for disposal) can cause earthquakes–if the injection well is located over a fault. When you inject fluids under high pressure into rock formations with a fault it can act like a lubricant, allowing the rocks to slip and slide–causing a low-level earthquake. It’s happened in Ohio. It’s happened (a lot) in Oklahoma. It’s happened in Texas. And in other states too. Thirteen oil and gas states joined together with the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC) and Ground Water Protection Council (GWPC) to form the StatesFirst Initiative, a working group to pool their knowledge and try and figure out how, and under what conditions, injection wells cause earthquakes. Co-heading the initiative is Ohio’s Chief for the Division of Oil & Gas Resources Management (Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources), Rick Simmers. Rick and the working group have just released a 150-page Primer (copy below) to help regulatory agencies evaluate and develop good policies to mitigate and prevent earthquakes from injection wells…
Looking like he’d had his morning Ensure drink, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush had plenty of energy as he talked about energy policy in a speech he delivered yesterday at the headquarters of Rice Energy in Washington County, PA. As predicted, Bush said things the oil and gas industry can stand up and cheer for: lift the ban on exporting crude oil, make it easier to export natural gas, and repeal some of the onerous regulations now on the books. He would also roll back Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan regulations that target coal (and natural gas) with a regulatory death sentence. Below is how it was reported, followed by Bush’s policy paper on how he would handle energy policy if he were to get out of single digits in the polls and get the nomination (something not very likely)…
Your beliefs matter. For example, if you believe in the fairy tale of man-made global warming (see 
It’s heartbreaking, but not surprising, to see residents in a North Carolina make the same mistakes made by residents in New York State. Monday night the Stokes County (NC) Board of Commissioners voted to enact a three-year moratorium on potential shale drilling in the county. Well-meaning but completely ignorant residents agitated and cajoled the commissioners into voting for no drilling. Stokes, located in northern NC, is part of the Dan River sub-basin, which in turn is part of the larger Triassic Basin. Earlier this year the state cleared the way for fracking to begin (see