PA Dem Seeks Severance Tax Break for 2 P&G Wells in His District
One of the unsung hero stories we’ve told a few times on MDN is about the only Proctor & Gamble manufacturing plant in the world that is 100% energy self-sufficient. It’s located in Wyoming County, PA (see PA P&G Plant: 100% Energy Self-Sufficient from Marcellus Gas and P&G Plant in NEPA Adds Marcellus CNG Filling Station). The reason the P&G plant is energy self-sufficient and in fact the reason it sells energy back to the local power utility is because it drilled and operates two Marcellus Shale wells on company property. The gas from those wells feeds an electric generating plant that produces more electricity than P&G can use at the plant. It’s a very cool story. But now, here comes Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf who wants to tax the shale gas industry into oblivion. The severance tax he’s proposing would apply to the two wells on P&G’s property–even though they don’t sell the gas for a profit. So local PA Rep. Mike Carroll, a Democrat from Avoca (who supports Wolf’s tax and spend policies), is trying to carve out an exception for the two P&G shale wells because…well because P&G is in his district employing lots of Carroll’s voters and no doubt a big contributor to his campaign coffers, either directly or via the salaries P&G pays to people who work at the plant and contribute to Carroll…
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Well well. It seems by giving out the consolation prize of putting PIOGA (the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association) and other industry reps on the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection’s newly created conventional board isn’t working out quite as well as expected for Acting DEP Sec. John Quigley (see 
Sometimes the CURE is worse than the disease. Such is the case with the anti-drilling Communities United for Responsible Energy (CURE) in eastern OH. The group agitated and squawked and carried on with such histrionics that they’ve gotten the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) to order an oilfield services company to shut down a satellite location in Jefferson County, OH. The offense? Depends on who you ask. The company, Anchor Drilling Fluids, says it didn’t have a permit to store excess drilling mud–the stuff used by drillers to keep a drill bit cool and lubricated and free of bacteria. The ODNR says Anchor was recycling at that site and lacked a proper waste recycling permit. Question: If you mix drilling mud at a well site but don’t use all of it, and you then truck it back to HQ to store it for a few days or weeks before taking it somewhere else, is that “recycling”? Apparently it is for the ODNR…
Pennsylvania’s Acting Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary, John Quigley, continues to come under fire from PA Republican legislators over his (so far) less-than-transparent operation of the department–especially over firing the former Oil & Gas Technical Advisory Board members and replacing them with his own people, including so-called “non-voting” members (see 
The Marcellus industry in Pennsylvania is none too happy with the performance thus far of Acting Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection, John Quigley. As MDN has noted, Quigley first fired the members of the DEP’s Oil & Gas Technical Advisory Board (see