Dela. Riverkeeper Loses Martian Case to Stop Rex Energy Drilling
THE Delaware Riverkeeper (i.e. Maya van Rossum) and a small group of anti-drilling parents from the Mars School District (“Martians”) in Butler County, PA, have just suffered a crushing defeat in their years-long battle to prevent Rex Energy from drilling wells “near” a local school. Backed by money and legal help from Philadelphia Big Green groups Delaware Riverkeeper and Clean Air Council, the Martians filed frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit. The effort is aimed at denying landowners in Middlesex Township revenue from legally permitted drilling. The lawsuits have cost the taxpayers of Middlesex Township over $80,000 in legal fees. Even amid the back and forth lawsuits, at least two of the wells were permitted and drilled by Rex Energy, despite the bleatings of the Martians (see Martian Victory! 2 Wells Near Mars School Nearly Done Drilling). But that didn’t stop the frivolous lawsuits. Using legal assistance from THE Delaware Riverkeeper, the Martians appealed a town ordinance that allows the wells to be drilled about 3/4 of a mile from the local Mars School. A panel of three western PA judges in Commonwealth Court heard arguments in the case last November (see Martians Use Riverkeeper to Continue Court Battle Against Rex). This week the three-judge panel ruled–against Riverkeeper and the Martians… Read More “Dela. Riverkeeper Loses Martian Case to Stop Rex Energy Drilling”
In April, Rex Energy, a driller focused mainly on the Marcellus/Utica (headquartered in State College, PA), issued an operational update (see 
MDN spotted an announcement issue by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) stating they’ve assessed a $185,000 fine on the Constellation Pipeline and its builder EM Energy (i.e. EdgeMarc) for a series of violations when building the pipeline in 2014-2015. That sent us digging. We don’t recall a Constellation Pipeline (and we’ve been writing MDN since 2009). What is the pipeline? Where, in PA, is it located? What is its purpose? We think we found most of the answers…
The sharp folks over at the Pittsburgh Business Times have been looking through data from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and have compiled a list of 20 drillers who have at least a dozen shale wells in the southwest PA region. And they ranked them from lowest to highest. We’ve grabbed the list below. The interesting thing for MDN is that there is one name in the list not familiar to us, and we’ve been watching this space since 2009. Always fun to learn something new. Here’s the list of southwest PA’s “Top 20” Marcellus drillers…
On Monday Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced PA taxpayers are forking over $5 million to Steamfitters Local 449 union for use in their Butler Training Facility project. The union training facility trains welders. The Shell ethane cracker plant, when it gets built, will need a LOT of welders. Right now the facility graduates 170 new welders a year. With the grant money, they will expand it to train and graduate 270 welders a year…
This is so unusual, it qualifies as news: Supervisors in Buffalo Township (Butler County), PA have approved a new compressor station to be built by Mountain Gathering–a subsidiary of XTO Energy. The reason it’s news is for how the approval process was handled. Town residents who live near where the station will be built understandably had some concerns. Those concerns were aired. Town officials visited other compressor stations built by Mountain Gathering. They had XTO officials in to answer questions. There was no bleating and blatting, no parading in front of cameras and microphones, no “die-ins” and radical protests. Just deliberative, calm, adult discussions. And at the end of it, the supervisors voted to grant permission for the compressor station to get built. Unusual!…
A year ago MDN told you about a new gathering pipeline project in Butler County, PA. Rex Energy contracted with Stonehenge Energy Resources to build a gathering system in Butler County (see