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PA Bulletin Shale Roundup: Shell Title V, 3 Pads, 4 Erosion Permits
Week two of MDN’s weekly trip through the Pennsylvania Bulletin, and this one has a whale in it: Shell’s Beaver County cracker plant is finally getting its permanent air permit. The Nov. 7 edition (Vol. 56, No. 45) ran 184 pages. Beyond Shell, DEP signed off on three well pad air permits, four erosion permits, a pair of new gas pipelines in Tioga County, and three frac water recycling setups. A second gas-powered “compute center” also got its permit in Clearfield County. Here’s what matters to the shale crowd… Read More “PA Bulletin Shale Roundup: Shell Title V, 3 Pads, 4 Erosion Permits”
Four years after Shell’s Beaver County ethane cracker started up, it’s about to get a permanent air permit. In Saturday’s Pennsylvania Bulletin, DEP announced it intends to issue the plant’s first Title V operating permit. Until now, the $14 billion complex has run on a string of temporary permits that DEP kept extending. The public can comment until January 19, with a meeting on December 17 and a hearing on January 7. Expect the usual suspects to show up. Expect plenty of union hard hats too. 
The Marcellus/Utica region received a paltry 4 new shale well permits last week, Oct. 26 – Nov. 1, down 5 from the anemic 9 the week before. Pennsylvania issued 2 new permits, Ohio issued none, and West Virginia issued 2. The drillers who received new-well permits last week were: CNX, EQT, and PennEnergy Resources. It was a sleepy week. Ohio didn’t issue a single horizontal shale permit of any kind: no new wells, no deepens, no location changes. Maybe somebody went on vacation at ODNR? The busier paperwork was on older permits: 11 modifications across PA and WV, eight of them for one EQT pad in Wetzel County. 
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) says it plans to approve the air permit for Aligned Data Centers’ giant “Project Phoenix” campus at the former Bruce Mansfield coal plant site in Shippingport (Beaver County, PA). The campus will run on Marcellus/Utica natural gas, but it won’t burn the gas. Aligned plans to make its own electricity with solid oxide fuel cells, which turn gas into power through a chemical reaction instead of combustion. DEP published its notice in Saturday’s Pennsylvania Bulletin and scheduled a public hearing for Thursday, December 3, in Shippingport. Get the popcorn ready. 
Shell CEO Wael Sawan had warm words yesterday for the company’s Beaver County ethane cracker plant, calling it “the 800-pound asset” in Shell’s chemicals business and saying it has been performing very, very well. Then, in the same breath, he repeated what he’s been saying for more than a year: Shell is not the “natural owner” of chemical assets, and it is in “deep discussions” to sell or partner them, with news expected in the coming months. Sawan’s comments came during Shell’s third-quarter 2026 earnings call. There’s one new wrinkle. If Shell can’t get the price it wants, the more likely outcome may be folding its chemicals business into someone else’s and keeping a minority stake, rather than selling outright. We read through the call transcript and Shell’s 3Q documents to see what they tell us about Monaca and the chemicals division. 
Every Saturday, the Pennsylvania Bulletin publishes pages of DEP permit notices that almost nobody reads. We read them so you don’t have to. Taken one at a time, most look routine: an erosion permit here, an air permit there. Lined up side by side, they tell you which drillers are building, and where. Last weekend’s edition (Oct. 24) shows Expand Energy busy across the Northern Tier, Repsol and Seneca/NFG working in Tioga County, Devon still building in Susquehanna County, and XTO getting a new pad ready in Butler County. 
Shell Chemical Appalachia wants a federal judge in Pittsburgh to throw out a lawsuit Philadelphia-based Big Green group Clean Air Council filed more than three years ago over air emissions at Shell’s ethane cracker plant in Monaca (Beaver County), PA. Shell’s main argument is simple: the PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has already gone after Shell for the very same violations, not once but twice, collecting nearly $25 million in penalties and “community” payments. Federal law, says Shell, doesn’t let a private group pile on when the state is already on the case. Shell also argues the Council never showed that a single member was actually harmed. Shell filed its motion last Friday, Oct. 9, and the Council has agreed to pause the case while the judge decides. 
Back in April, we told you the PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) had once again extended the three “temporary” air permits for Shell’s ethane cracker plant in Monaca (Beaver County) while the agency slogs through Shell’s full Title V permit application (see 
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) last Wednesday, Sept. 16, released its final report on the June 4, 2025, explosion and fire at Shell Polymers Monaca, the ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, PA (see 
In a companion post today, we told you that of 22 proposed data center campuses in Northeastern Pennsylvania, exactly one plans to build its own gas-fired power (see Only 1 of 22 NEPA Data Centers Plans Its Own Gas Plant). The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette hands us the mirror image. Reporter Anya Litvak counted 10 new natural gas power plants proposed within an hour’s drive of Pittsburgh — more than 20 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity, most of it chasing data center demand, all of it aimed at the next five years. Pennsylvania’s entire existing generating fleet, every power plant and wind turbine and solar panel in the state, adds up to about 45 GW. Southwestern PA alone is proposing to add 22 GW. That is not an expansion. That is a second Pennsylvania grid. 
Shell Chemical Appalachia signed a consent order and agreement (COA) with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) last Friday, Sept. 4, agreeing to hand over $15 million to settle three years’ worth of air, storage tank, and water violations at its Monaca (Beaver County) ethane cracker. Half of it — $7.5 million — is an actual civil penalty. The other half is a “contribution” to a brand-new community fund. If that arrangement sounds familiar, it should. It’s the same two-bucket structure the Shapiro administration used to squeeze nearly $10 million out of Shell back in May 2023. 