PA PUC Publishes Fee Schedule for Marcellus Impact Fee/Tax 2023
In December, Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office (IFO), the agency charged with providing revenue projections along with impartial and objective analysis of fiscal, economic, and budgetary issues for the citizens and legislature of Pennsylvania, provided its best guess as to how much revenue the PA impact fee (i.e., severance tax) will generate from shale wells drilled or flowing in 2023 (see PA IFO Predicts Impact Tax Revenue to Drop 38% in 2023). The IFO bases its projections on the number of wells and the assessment for each well according to how many years it has been drilled. The agency that publishes the fees to be assessed for each well is the PA Public Utility Commission (PUC). The PUC published the official list of impact fee charges for 2023 in last Saturday’s PA Bulletin.
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The American Energy Alliance and the Committee to Unleash Prosperity recently sponsored a survey of 1,600 likely voters equally divided among eight “battleground” states (Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Missouri, and Ohio) conducted by MWR Strategies in December 2023. The total sample margin of error is 2.45%. The survey results confirm that there has been little change in sentiment and attitudes on energy and climate change. Many of the responses in the survey are either consistent with or more emphatic than what they found in previous surveys.
The Bidenistas unveiled a new regulatory proposal targeting natural gas on Friday that would introduce an obscene new tax on the fossil fuel industry, punishing natgas producers that exceed a certain level of methane emissions. The Biden EPA, which took point on introducing the new federal methane tax, said it will help “tackle wasteful methane emissions” from the oil and gas sector, encouraging facilities with the highest emissions levels to meet or exceed higher levels of performance. The proposed rules would create a so-called Waste Emissions Charge, which begins at $900 per metric ton of wasteful emissions in 2024, and increases to $1,200 for 2025 and $1,500 for 2026 and beyond. Bonkers!
Well, you knew it was just too good to be true, right? When Santa Biden promised *billions* of dollars of “government” (i.e., your) money to prime the pump on establishing regional hydrogen hubs, with at least one of those hubs using natural gas as the primary feedstock to produce the hydrogen (
The left in Ohio is up in arms again. It’s always up in arms. Everything is a crisis. Everything is a climate tragedy. Everything is a conspiracy — so says the environmental left. Last Thursday, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed House Bill (HB) 201 into law. A provision was tacked onto HB 201 late in the legislative process, several weeks before it was passed, that allows natural gas utility companies to charge customers a piddly $1.50 per month ($18 per year) to help fund new pipelines that will get built in rural areas to industrial sites — areas without existing natgas pipes. The aim is to attract new businesses to locate in the Buckeye State. Many companies won’t consider a potential site without cheap, easy access to natural gas already installed. HB 201 helps make it much more likely a business will consider a site in Ohio, given access to cheap Utica Shale gas. Cue the enviro left’s shrill response.
Friday afternoon, CNX Resources issued a press release to announce it is officially pulling out of the previously announced multi-billion-dollar clean ammonia manufacturing facility in southern West Virginia, part of the ARCH2 (Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub) project. Adams Fork Energy, Haldor Topsoe, and CNX announced the project in April with much fanfare (see 
Pennsylvania assesses an impact fee (PA’s version of a severance tax) on shale drillers, raising revenues that are paid to local municipalities and to the black hole of Harrisburg politicians. Yesterday, the PA Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) issued an estimate for how much the impact tax will raise this year, to be distributed next year. The IFO says it thinks, based on the price of low natural gas and number of new and existing wells, that PA will generate $174.0 million from the impact tax in 2023, a decrease of $104.8 million (38%) from 2022. What the heck happened?
Last Wednesday, before heading out the door for the Thanksgiving holiday, MDN brought you the sad (but not unsurprising) news that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro had decided to appeal a Commonwealth Court decision striking down his predecessor’s attempt to force the state to implement a multi-billion-dollar carbon tax, called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (see 
We’ll say it right up front: We told you so. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced yesterday that he will appeal a decision by the Commonwealth Court that blocks PA’s entrance into the obscene Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax scheme. Are you surprised? Shocked? We certainly aren’t. Shapiro has just revived a huge threat to the future of the Marcellus Shale industry in the Keystone State. Still happy you voted for Shapiro? No, we didn’t think so.
Yesterday, the Intermediate Court of Appeals for West Virginia issued an opinion in a case that had (until now) escaped our radar. Equinor, Norway’s state-owned oil and gas company (previously known as Statoil), said it had overpaid its severance tax bill in West Virginia for the years 2014 and 2016. Equinor said WV miscalculated the value of propane, butane, ethane, and methane produced by the company. A WV judge agreed, also granting Equinor a further 15% safe harbor deduction for transportation and transmission costs.
In 2019, when then-Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced he would unilaterally force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon tax scheme aimed at forcing coal- and gas-fired plants out of business, he claimed the tax would only amount to a few dollars per short ton of CO2 (see 
In a court case that stretches back to 2019, Antero Resources, the biggest driller in West Virginia, challenged how its wells had been valued for tax purposes in Doddridge and Richie counties for 2016 and 2017. Antero said the combined value of its wells for those years should have been $1.488 billion. The state tax commissioner reckoned the value to be $1.513 billion. The controversy over well valuations, not only for Antero but other drillers, led to a reworking of how the state law values shale wells (see 
With all of the good news about WV (and OH, and PA) winning the Biden Hydrogen Hub Hunger Games contest by scoring $925 million for the WV-led Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2) (see today’s lead story), there is a potential black cloud on the horizon. Investments in ARCH2 might not actually come to pass unless the IRS resolves the 45V hydrogen tax credit. Yes, an obscure rule part of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has the potential to scuttle most of the planned investments in ARCH2 and other hydrogen hub projects.
We remember (years ago) hearing Rush Limbaugh postulate this observation about liberals: “Liberalism is spreading misery equally.” Instead of cutting taxes, which boosts economic prosperity for everyone, including those at the bottom of the economic ladder, liberals seek to make more people pay more taxes. Spread the misery. Instead of allowing people to choose their form of energy, force them to use only certain (very expensive) forms, or force them to cut back on the energy they use (Jimmy Carter’s “throw a sweater on in the winter” comment in the late 1970s). Spread the misery. We now see this truism playing out with liberal Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro concerning the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) — a clever name for an obscene carbon tax.