Armstrong County | Ascent Resources | Bradford County | Carroll County | Chesapeake Energy | Clay County | CNX Resources | Coterra Energy (Cabot O&G) | Encino Energy | Energy Companies | EQT Corp | Greene County (PA) | Gulfport Energy | Harrison County | Marshall County | Monroe County | Mountain V O&G | Ohio | Olympus/Huntley & Huntley | Pennsylvania | Seneca Resources | Snyder Brothers | Southwestern Energy | Susquehanna County | Tioga County (PA) | Tug Hill Operating | Washington County | Weekly Permits | West Virginia | Westmoreland County
40 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Feb 6-12
New shale permits issued for Feb. 5-12 in the Marcellus/Utica increased nicely last week. There were 40 new permits issued in total last week, including 25 new permits for Pennsylvania, 11 new permits for Ohio, and four permits issued in West Virginia. The week before, there were only 26 new permits issued. Last week the top receiver of new permits was Seneca Resources, with six new permits for Tioga County, PA. Coterra Energy received five permits for Susquehanna County, PA. In Ohio, Encino Energy and Ascent Resources both received four new permits–in Carroll and Harrison counties, respectively.
Read More “40 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Feb 6-12”
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced that CNX Resources has paid two civil penalty assessments totaling $200,000 for violations at two different well sites in Richhill Township, Greene County. According to the civil penalty assessment paperwork, CNX spilled “production fluids” (wastewater, drilling mud, etc.) and didn’t clean it up quickly enough. Tallying all of the spills, CNX inadvertently spilled 2,170 gallons of production fluid at two sites, and ended up removing roughly 3,400 tons of “contaminated” soil.
Earlier this year, Equitrans Midstream announced it had filed a new pipeline expansion project with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (see 
We’ve heard of vegetable gardens. We’ve heard of flower gardens. We’ve heard of rose gardens. Remember the Lynn Anderson song, “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden”? We’ve also heard of rock gardens, raised gardens, herb gardens, and indoor gardens. One garden we hadn’t heard about until today is a “rain garden.” Ever heard that term? Rice Energy (now part of EQT Corporation) is paying a big fine, $147,250, for work done at a well site in Greene County, PA, in 2019 that allowed erosion and soil to contaminate not one but three rain gardens. I beg your pardon!
What if we gave the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) a $2.5 million grant to study a link between peanut butter and childhood cancer? Researchers could only use the money to study any potential link between peanut butter and kids getting rare cancers. Sounds absurd, right? What if there is NO link between peanut butter and cancer in kids? What if there IS a link to some other environmental factor like, say, an old uranium dumpsite nearby? But the remit is to ONLY research peanut butter. Sound silly? Sound stupid? Substitute “shale drilling” for “peanut butter,” and you can see how absurd it is for Pitt to study a single potential cause for rare childhood cancers in southwestern PA. Yet they are. Pitt is studying a link solely between fracking and cancer in kids. They are now trying to recruit local families to participate in this sham they call science.
The same old issue keeps returning in Pennsylvania for landowners and rights owners. The Pennsylvania Minimum Royalty Act guarantees payments to all rights owners of at least 12.5% of the value of the produced gas. Yet contracts signed by many landowners allow for post-production deductions, and those deductions sometimes (often?) result in landowners receiving less than 12.5% in royalty payments. This issue has been a thorn of contention between landowners and drillers for years–two groups that are normally allies. Farmers/landowners from several western PA counties gathered yesterday at the Washington County Farm Bureau’s annual legislative meeting to discuss, among other issues, minimum royalties.
In early 2018, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) collected a whopping $1.7 million fine from Energy Corporation of America (ECA) for violations at 17 well sites in Cumberland, Jefferson, and Whiteley Townships in Greene County, and Goshen Township in Clearfield County (see 
EQT CEO Toby Rice is and has been on a mission–to spread the gospel of LNG (see