PA DEP Issues New Deadline re Methane Reports for Conventional Wells
Both conventional and unconventional (shale) drillers in Pennsylvania were required to submit a new annual report to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on December 10, 2023, detailing volatile organic compound (VOC) and methane emissions from their operations over the previous year. Shortly before that deadline, the DEP suspended the due date and set a new due date of June 1, 2024 (see Due Date for PA DEP Report re Methane Emissions Slips 6 Months). Shale drillers mostly complied (86% filed the report), but conventional drillers did not (less than 1% filed). Conventional drillers sued to block the new regulation, which required the report. The two sides have finally settled their differences, and the DEP has set a new deadline for conventional drillers to file the report: June 1, 2025. Read More “PA DEP Issues New Deadline re Methane Reports for Conventional Wells”
Every three years, the Pennsylvania Dept of Environmental Protection (DEP) is required, by state law, to produce an update to the state’s so-called Climate Action Plan. The fact that they have such a plan boggles the mind—a plan to address global warming (the operative word being “global”) from one state. To be fair, many states and even large cities also have such plans. These plans are all arrogant nonsense. No entity, especially not a single state, can do a darned thing to affect the temperature of Mom Earth, but they pretend they can. And they use the existence of such plans as a manipulative political tool to force policy changes that inflict significant economic harm on their citizens, all in the name of saving the planet. The wackadoodle left has brainwashed our children into believing we’ll die if we don’t give up fossil fuel use. The DEP recently released its triennial “dump fossil fuels” update, and it’s as crazy as ever. 
Corporate welfare—the transfer of taxpayers’ money to businesses—is ugly, no matter if the money goes to large or small businesses. True to form, Pennsylvania’s Democrat Governor, Josh Shapiro, and his political operative at the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), “Acting” Secretary Jessica Shirley, yesterday launched a program to try and spread nearly half a billion dollars of taxpayer’s money from the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (Biden’s Green New Scam) to businesses large and small in the Keystone State. They euphemistically call the program RISE PA (Reducing Industrial Sector Emissions in Pennsylvania). It should be called “Spread Taxpayer Dollars to Buy Votes” (STD BV). 
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has found some willing accomplices among PA House Democrats to introduce six bills to implement Shapiro’s nutty, very partisan energy plan, called the “Lightning Plan.” Shapiro claims his so-called Lightning Plan is “a comprehensive, all-of-the-above energy plan to secure Pennsylvania’s energy future.” Except his plan puts the thumb of the government on the scales in favor of wind, solar, and hydro, and purposely disadvantages natural gas. Our observation: If it takes six (or more) bills to adopt his energy plan, something is seriously wrong. 
The highly functional and responsible Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), unlike its completely dysfunctional and irresponsible cousin, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), continues to support the shale energy industry by approving water withdrawals and consumptive use for responsible and safe shale drilling. The SRBC published a notice in the April 19 Pennsylvania Bulletin that the Executive Director of the SRBC gave his approval to or renewed 58 general water use permits in March for individual shale gas well drilling pads in Blair, Bradford, Clearfield, Lycoming, Susquehanna, Tioga, and Wyoming counties in Pennsylvania. 
This is TOO funny! Donald Trump so rattles the fascist climate left, they’re now imagining things that haven’t and won’t happen. Someone on the environmental left spread a rumor last week that the Trump administration was about to issue an executive order revoking the tax-exempt status of so-called “green” groups, those that employ lawfare to attack the U.S. and its energy industry. You know, groups like the Sierra Club, 350.org, Food & Water Watch, National Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund, and others. They’re jumpy, like they’re on drugs. (Well, some of them probably are.) The rumor spread like wildfire among the guilt-ridden groups that Trump was coming for their tax-exempt status. And then the White House said nope, it’s all just a fantasy of the jumpy left. 
In January, MDN reported that the PJM Interconnection electrical grid operator, covering Pennsylvania (along with all or parts of 12 other states and the District of Columbia), had caved to the political demands of PA Gov. Josh Shapiro to artificially cap the prices of the next capacity auction scheduled for July 2025 (see 
Reuters is reporting that the European Union (we call them ‘Euro weenies’) is looking at ways to make it easier for U.S. LNG exports to comply with its onerous new methane emissions regulations. The EU is earnestly trying to avoid a trade war with President Trump, according to sources speaking to Reuters. What’s happening is that Europe is trying to figure out how it can not block U.S. LNG based on its cockamamie new regulations and save face at the same time. 
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), and its Regional Entities recently issued a report stating that the country’s bulk-power system performed well during successive cold weather events in January 2025, without major issues in either the natural gas or electric systems. The system’s performance, according to the joint report, demonstrates the benefits of actions taken in response to recommendations from prior winter storm reports and the need for continued coordination between natural gas and electric systems in preparing for and responding to extreme cold weather. No word in the report on unreliable renewables because, well, they don’t matter. Natural gas power is what really matters. 
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) was created to help advance clean-energy infrastructure and technologies that allegedly had the potential to be adequate energy resources but struggled to secure private investment. In reality, LPO is a taxpayer-backed ATM for unreliable energy technologies and infrastructure that can’t compete without federal funding. It’s a Biden-era boondoggle, and it’s time to scrap it. 
Local townships, whether governed by a majority of Republicans or Democrats, typically reject proposals to install massive, ugly, bird-killing (and filled with toxic chemicals) solar farms, no matter where they are tried (red or blue states). It’s a problem for the tone deaf environmental left. Solar farms are even rejected in blue New York! Another such installation tried to gain approval in Stark County, Ohio, recently. The Ohio Power Siting Board, citing local opposition, rejected a permit for a 150 megawatt solar farm that would have gobbled up 860 acres in Washington Township. 
Donald Trump’s new EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin (from Long Island), has been a smash hit in his new role. He continues to delight and surprise. Zeldin is aggressively rolling back many of the over-the-top regulations adopted during the evil Biden years, regulations that don’t improve the environment but only serve to destroy American businesses. In a recent interview with the New York Post, Zeldin did not hold back on the lunacy of New York’s climate law and how it hurts the most vulnerable in the state. He called NY’s policies “delusional” and a “catastrophe.”