Allegheny County | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Merrion Oil & Gas | Pennsylvania | Regulation
PA DEP Suspends Permit Review for Pittsburgh Steel Mill Shale Well
This is rich. The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) took its sweet time reviewing a permit application to drill a series of Marcellus Shale wells on the property of U.S. Steel Corp.’s Edgar Thomson steel mill. Because the DEP delayed its review for so long, in October the East Pittsburgh Borough Zoning Board revoked a local permit previously granted for the project in 2017 (see Town Rejects Permit to Drill Shale Well at Pittsburgh Steel Mill). Now the DEP says they won’t continue their years-long permit review until the driller regains the lost local zoning permit. The DEP caused the problem in the first place!
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Last week Pennsylvania issued 11 new shale well drilling permits, all but one of them in the northeastern (dry gas) part of the state. Ohio issued one new permit, and West Virginia issued 2 new shale well permits.
We’re speechless (which doesn’t happen often). The liberal, anti-shale Democrats who write and manage the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have endorsed Donald J. Trump for president! They had plenty of criticism for Trump in their lukewarm “endorsement,” but the fact they did endorse Trump is, well, big news. The Post-Gazette editors, who haven’t endorsed a Republican for president since 1972, say “Mr. Biden is too old for the job, and fragile.” We agree.
In June MDN told you that the East Pittsburgh Borough Zoning Board, bullied by anti-fossil fuel radicals, had revoked a permit allowing a series of Marcellus Shale wells to be drilled on the property of U.S. Steel Corp.’s Edgar Thomson steel mill, the oldest still-operating steel mill in the country (see 
Evolution Well Services, headquartered in Houston with a regional office in Pittsburgh, specializes in “electric” fracking–using natural gas from the well pad (instead of diesel fuel) to power turbines to create electricity that drives fracking pumps. Evolution fracks for at least one Marcellus/Utica E&P (see 
McCandless, a township in Allegheny County, PA (near Pittsburgh) is attempting to block any and all shale drilling within its borders by getting creative. The town is in the process of adopting changes to its zoning laws that make it illegal to drill a well in land zoned for commercial development. Since towns have to allow drilling in at least one zone, McCandless will allow it only in “institutional districts.” That means drilling will only be allowed on land with schools, hospitals, universities, and parks. Fat chance any drilling will ever happen in those places!
In April of this year, MDN told you that the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) had finally, after more than two years of evaluation, granted a permit to build a shale wastewater injection well in Plum Boro in Allegheny County (see 
Last December Chevron announced it was writing down the value of its Marcellus/Utica assets and putting those assets up for sale (see 
This is getting ridiculous. Does anyone really believe that a single pipeline project already built and now getting a redo could possibly have racked up 680 “violations” during construction work over the past five months? We certainly don’t believe it. Yet that’s what the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) alleges. Energy Transfer (ET), the builder and fixer of Revolution, has their own allegation: The DEP itself is “not in compliance with its own guidelines.” Who inspects the inspectors for compliance?
Energy Transfer’s Revolution Pipeline runs through Bulter, Beaver, Allegheny, and Washington counties in southwest PA. The 24-inch gathering pipeline shifted and exploded in September 2018, just as it was entering service (see 
Yesterday MDN told you that miracle of miracles, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has finally, after more than two years of evaluation, granted a permit to build a wastewater injection well in Plum Boro in Allegheny County, near Pittsburgh (see 
In early 2018, the federal EPA approved a new Marcellus wastewater injection well for the Pittsburgh suburb of Plum Boro (see 
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a leftist Democrat who wants to succeed Tom Wolf as governor, likes to investigate accidents related to the shale industry to see if he can turn them into crimes (