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Weekly Shale Drilling Permits for PA, OH, WV: Nov. 23-27
Last week Pennsylvania issued 12 new shale well drilling permits with a mix of permits issued in both the southwest (wet gas) and northeast (dry gas) regions of the state. Ohio issued 7 new permits, all of them except one in the same county (Jefferson). West Virginia was a goose egg–no new permits issued last week.
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Here’s a new one for us: The Leach XPress pipeline project has a teeny tiny presence in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania. We did not know that! Just 1.74 miles of the pipeline runs through PA, but that small section has earned the builder, Columbia Gas, a big fine.
Equitrans Midstream, which used to be part of EQT as EQT Midstream, is still EQT’s main squeeze when it comes to gathering pipelines connected to its wells. The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced yesterday it has fined Equitrans $427,650 for “slips, stabilization, and erosion and sedimentation violations at pipeline sites in Greene, Washington and Westmoreland counties.”
Last July MDN broke the news that LOLA Energy had filed a lawsuit in Greene County, PA against EQT for allegedly drilling shale wells under property EQT formerly leased, but property for which the leases had lapsed and were subsequently scooped up by LOLA Energy II (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) says CNX Resources failed to prevent soil erosion at seven of the company’s well pad sites in Washington and Greene counties in 2017/2018. The failure, says DEP, resulted in the release of soil and sediment, including a few cases of sediment-laden water being released into nearby streams. CNX corrected the violations and has struck a deal with DEP regarding compensation. Instead of paying a fine to the DEP, CNX will pay $180,000 to restore a trout stream in a Washington County park.
Last July MDN broke the news that LOLA Energy had filed a lawsuit in Greene County, PA against EQT for allegedly drilling shale wells under property EQT formerly leased, but property for which the leases had lapsed and were subsequently scooped up by LOLA Energy II (see 
This post catches you up on both some old and some new news. In February of this year Chevron signed a lease with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) to lease 1,028.4 acres of land *under* the Monongahela River in Greene and Fayette counties (southwestern corner of the state). That’s the old news. The new news is that Chevron has just added another 235.6 acres to the original lease for a grand total of 1,264.3 acres. Chevron is paying DCNR just over $5 million in lease signing bonuses for the entire deal.
In a speech delivered October 31 to the P4 Climate Action Summit in downtown Pittsburgh, Mayor Bill Peduto declared his hatred for the petrochemical industry. He doesn’t want any more Shell crackers junking up his regional backyard. The highly negative reaction to Peduto’s idiotic (and pandering) remarks was swift. What petchem company wants to build in a region where the mayor of its largest city is trash talking the industry? In a bid to counter Peduto’s economically damaging remarks, some 20 county officials from Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Lawrence, Mercer, Washington and Westmoreland counties issued a joint statement on Wednesday to show their support for the petrochemical and shale industries in the region.
Pittsburgh Business Times ace reporter Paul Gough has done it again–breaking big news related to ExxonMobil and their very active search to locate a site in the Pittsburgh region to build a gigantic ethane cracker plant. This time Paul’s sources are telling him Exxon has widened their search. A few weeks ago we told you Exxon was looking for potential locations in Beaver County, PA, near where Shell is building their $8 billion cracker plant (see