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Top 20 Marcellus Drillers in Southwest Pennsylvania

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…
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MSC Says Marcellus in Indiana County, PA Will Rise Again

indiana-county-paDave Spigelmyer, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, was the keynote speaker last week at the Indiana County Chamber of Commerce annual luncheon. Spigelmyer told the 400+ people who attended that although the natural gas industry in the county is dormant, there is hope. Spigelmyer said he believes the gas industry in the county will thrive again, for a number of reasons, including: (1) Donald Trump and coming policies favorable to the gas industry, (2) new pipelines getting built in the area, (3) the Shell ethane cracker and the manufacturing plants that will locate near it. Here’s what Dave had to say…
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Federal Court Denies CELDF’s Re-Hearing Request in Grant Twp Case

exclusiveWe believe this bit of news is exclusive to MDN–we’ve not seen it anywhere else, yet. In early August MDN reported that the novel legal argument offered by the radical leftist PA-based group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) in Grant Township (Indiana County), PA claiming to represent a local ecosystem had failed (see CELDF Loses Case to Represent Ecosystem – Turtles Disappointed). The CELDF tried to claim the Little Mahoning Watershed, an ecosystem, is a “person” under the law–an asinine notion. The CELDF had hoodwinked local anti-drillers in Grant who are opposed to a legally-permitted injection well, attempting to block the well from getting built and operated by Pennsylvania General Energy (PGE). Claiming they speak for the ecosystem was the legal shenanigan the CELDF tried to pull–and it didn’t work. The federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected their arguments, clearing the way for PGE to build the injection well and continue with a $1 million lawsuit against Grant for causing economic harm to the company. Here is the new and exclusive news: The CELDF, masquerading as the Little Mahoning Watershed (the “ecosystem”), along with CELDF’s sibling organization called East Run Hellbenders Society, immediately petitioned the full Third Circuit (all of the justices) asking for a rehearing–something called a Sur Petition for Rehearing. The CELDF wanted another bite at the apple–a chance to prove to other justices that the Little Mahoning Watershed is a “person” under the law and should be represented by the crazies at the CELDF. The justices of the Third Circuit unanimously and swiftly rejected the petition for rehearing. It’s the end of the road for the CELDF and Grant Township in this case, which means the PGE injection well will now get built, and Grant Township taxpayers will have to pony up $1 million (if PGE wins their lawsuit, as we expect they will)…
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CONSOL Fined $184K for Sloppy Pipeline Construction

finedThe Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has fined two CONSOL Energy subsidiaries, CNX Gas (the drilling division) and CONE Midstream (co-owned by CONSOL and Noble Energy) for coloring outside the lines when they built some gathering pipelines in four western Pennsylvania counties. CNX was fined $139,000 and CONE was fined $45,000 for veering off the path officially filed with the DEP. According to DEP spokesman John Poister, the numskulls didn’t pay attention and were sloppy (our words, his sentiment). Here’s the official announcement from the DEP, along with comments from Poister…
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CELDF Loses Case to Represent Ecosystem – Turtles Disappointed

Gavel-falling.jpgScore an important victory against the forces of darkness. The radical leftist PA-based group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) does its best to trick townships into passing illegal bans on fracking and injection wells. In 2013 the CELDF fooled Highland Township in Elk County, PA into passing a ban on wastewater injection wells. They also tricked Grant Township in Indiana County, PA to do the same thing. Both towns are in court defending their illegal actions. One of the idiotic legal tactics used by the CELDF in both cases is to claim that an ecosystem is a “person” under the law–a person who can file to join the town’s lawsuit in an effort to protect itself (see It Speaks! An “Ecosystem” has Filed to Join a Lawsuit in PA). Of course the CELDF appoints itself as the representative of said ecosystem. It’s an asinine notion. Will the tree in my front yard sue me for cutting a branch off it? Will my gravel driveway sue me if I decide to pave it? Get real. Back to declaring victory. Pennsylvania General Energy (PGE) filed a lawsuit against Grant Township for $1 million for blocking construction of PGE’s legally permitted injection well. That CELDF has already said it won’t help Grant taxpayers foot the bill if they lose the lawsuit–after adopting the CELDF’s very own ban language (see Anti Group CELDF Won’t Help Grant Twp Pay $1M Judgement). Last week the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in PA ruled that a so-called ecosystem (the Little Mahoning Watershed) does NOT have standing in the case, completely rejecting the CELDF and their arguments. Grant Township taxpayers should be prepared to open up their wallets, they’re about to get soaked (note that the CELDF has already snuck out of town)…
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What can a PA Oil & Gas Equipment Auction Tell Us?

auction-gavel.jpgMDN editor Jim Willis grew up going to auctions. Sometimes it was a farm auction–equipment like tractors and balers and manure spreaders. Sometimes a livestock auction–cows and horses and pigs and goats. But most often it was attending the local bric-a-brac auction on Saturday nights in South New Berlin (NY)–at Toby’s Auction Center. If we close our eyes and imagine it, we can still “see” the sights and sounds (and smells!) of the auction, where everything from cassette players to zucchini squash to antique Japanese pottery was sold. You can tell a lot about economic conditions from the local auction–including equipment auctions in the oil and gas industry. At a recent o&g equipment auction in Indiana County, PA, a couple of things were apparent: (1) the conventional drilling industry in PA, NY and elsewhere is struggling, and (2) it’s still a buyer’s market for drilling equipment–which indicates the turnaround hasn’t arrived quite yet…
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Anti Group CELDF Won’t Help Grant Twp Pay $1M Judgement

Question: How will Grant Township (Indiana County, PA), a town with 741 people in it, pay a lawsuit it may lose awarding Pennsylvania General Energy (PGE) $1 million? Going by the law of averages, less than half of the 741 people actually pay taxes (the other half are welfare slugs). So the question is, how can something like 200 families come up with enough money to pay such a large lawsuit? Answer: they can’t. The town goes bankrupt. That is the very real situation facing the residents of Grant Township. You may recall we’ve written about this before. Grant tried to block PGE from building a wastewater injection well in the township by passing an illegal law stirred up and proposed by the odious Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, or CELDF (see Fed Judge Overturns Grant Twp, PA Ban on Injection Wells). The town has now tried to reorganize in order to avoid the judge’s ruling (see Grant Twp, PA Reorganizes to Avoid a Court-Ordered Injection Well). PGE has sued the town claiming (truthfully) they’ve suffered at least $1 million in damages. That case goes to trial in March. If the town loses, the town pays. The cowardly CELDF has admitted they won’t contribute a penny toward the $1 million fine if the case goes against the town. Nice friends the people of Grant have made in the CELDF, wouldn’t you say?…
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Grant Twp, PA Reorganizes to Avoid a Court-Ordered Injection Well

In October MDN told you about Grant Township in Indiana County, PA. The town had attempted to illegally block a permitted injection well from being drilled and used inside the town’s boundaries. The town folk have been whipped into an irrational frenzy by the radical leftist PA-based group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). As usual, the CELDF-promoted so-called Community Bill of Rights failed in court, costing Grant Township taxpayers big bucks to defend (see Fed Judge Overturns Grant Twp, PA Ban on Injection Wells). People without jobs (like those infesting CELDF) have lots of time to be creative–so here’s the latest. They talked enough town folk into passing another/new plan on the November. The town voted to convert itself from being a PA Second Class Township form of organization to being PA Home Rule Charter form of organization–in an attempt to do an end-run around the judge’s ruling last month. Will it work? Probably not, but here we go again–another delay for Pennsylvania General Energy and their plan to drill an injection well. You know the old saying? Justice delayed is justice denied. When will the courts step in and stop this madness?…
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Fed Judge Overturns Grant Twp, PA Ban on Injection Wells

court gavelThe radical leftist PA-based group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) does its best to trick townships into passing illegal bans. In 2013 the CELDF fooled Highland Township in Elk County, PA into passing a ban on wastewater injection wells. They also tricked Grant Township in Indiana County, PA to do the same thing. Both towns are in court defending their illegal actions. One of the idiotic legal tactics used by the CELDF in both cases is to claim that an ecosystem is a “person” under the law–a person who can file to join the town’s lawsuit in an effort to protect itself (see It Speaks! An “Ecosystem” has Filed to Join a Lawsuit in PA). It’s an asinine notion. Will the tree in my front yard sue me for cutting a branch off it? Will my gravel driveway sue me if I decide to pave it? Get real. A federal judge has just ruled in the Grant Twp case and found (a) the town’s ban on injection wells is illegal, and (b) the ecosystem’s “interests” have been well-represented by the town in the case with no need for the ecosystem to join the lawsuit. The judge, in sidestepping whether or not an ecosystem is actually a person, kind of laughed at the notion–if you read between the lines…
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Grant Twp, PA Calls DEP “Chicken $h*t” re Injection Well Permit

potty mouthGrant Township in Indiana County, PA has a problem: They’ve hired a potty mouth lawyer to represent them who has a HUGE conflict of interest. Grant’s town attorney is also the lawyer for (and executive director of) the litigious and extreme left-wing group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), a group committed to ending the use of fossil fuels. We’ve written plenty about the antics of the CELDF, including their lawsuit on behalf of an ecosystem (see It Speaks! An “Ecosystem” has Filed to Join a Lawsuit in PA). CELDF/Grant Twp. attorney Thomas Linzey is calling the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) “chicken shit” for their decision to delay a decision on whether to grant a permit for an non-controversial injection well in the township…
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PA DEP Meetings on Injection Well, Marcellus Landfill Expansion

The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) will hold two public meetings, one tonight and one two weeks from tonight, with implications for the Marcellus Shale industry in the state. The first meeting, tonight at 6 pm in Indiana County, will be a question and answer session followed by a public hearing on an application from Pennsylvania General Energy Company (PGE) to convert an old production well into a wastewater injection well. The well is located in Grant Township, Indiana County. The second meeting, on June 15 at 6 pm in Lackawanna County, will consider Keystone Sanitary Landfill’s permit application to expand its facility located in Dunmore and Throop Boroughs. That expansion would mean accepting more waste in general, including Marcellus drill cuttings (leftover rock and dirt from drilling). The details for both meetings…
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PA DEP Nixes Previously Permitted Wastewater Injection Well

The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection under Acting Sec. John Quigley (formerly from the anti-drilling organization PennFuture) has reversed a decision made by the DEP just last October to permit a rare/new wastewater injection well in Indiana County. Most Pennsylvania wastewater that gets injected travels out of state–to either Ohio or West Virginia–for disposal in their injection wells. It would be nice if PA handled a little more of its own wastewater. The DEP under previous Gov. Tom Corbett fully vetted a well Pennsylvania General Energy (PGE) planned to use as an injection well in Grant Township. The DEP issued a permit for the well. Now they’ve welshed on their decision and rescinded the permit they issued last October. The only thing that seems to have changed in the past five months is leadership at the top of the DEP. Ergo, Quigley didn’t want this injection well…
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Change in PA DEP Tone Toward Marcellus Industry Noticeable

The newly reconstituted Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection has taken on a decidedly more antagonist tone with the Marcellus drilling industry, unfortunately. You can detect this new tone, no doubt fostered by its new Acting Secretary, John Quigley (formerly from the anti-drilling PennFuture), in its press releases. Like the one below. The story is that there is a coal refuse site in Indiana County, PA used to process and store waste from coal mining. Close to that site is a wastewater impoundment where leachate (nasty water coming from the coal refuse site) was collected and stored, creating a somewhat toxic sludge under the impoundment. In addition, some shale drilling wastewater was stored in that same impoundment. It appears that most of the environment hazards come from the coal waste leachate, but notice how shale brine is intertwined, mixed in, subsumed and painted with the same toxic brush as the coal waste leachate–as if brine has the same (or worse) toxicity (which it doesn’t)…
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Little Mahoning Watershed to Testify in Court Case (??)

You have to give the silly anti-fossil fuel nutters one thing–they sure are creative. The latest nonsense to come from the extreme left is that artificial constructs like watersheds now have “rights” and can somehow speak for itself. At least that’s what’s being claimed in a “first of its kind” motion by–yes–the Little Mahoning Watershed (Indiana County, PA). We wonder, what does the Watershed’s voice sound like? And where, precisely, did the Watershed scribble down its statement that was recently delivered to the court? We’d like to see that place and behold that miracle. This would all be rolling-on-the-floor funny if extremists weren’t so hellbent on bastardizing our laws and the U.S. Constitution–to the point our legal system becomes meaningless. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), which hangs its hat in Mercersburg, PA, says Little Mahoning Watershed spoke to it and whispered it doesn’t want to be polluted by nasty frack wastewater…
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Halliburton Fined $1.8M for Storing/Treating HCl at W PA Facility

got caught red handedIn one of the biggest (perhaps the biggest) fines levied by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), Halliburton has been fined $1.8 million for storing and treating hydrochloric acid (HCl) at a facility in Homer City, PA (about 50 miles from Pittsburgh). The HCl shipped and treated at the Homer City site happened over a 13-year period of time from 1999-2011, meaning most of it came from conventional natural gas well sites, although some it likely came from Marcellus Shale sites too (the conventional/unconventional split is not identified in the DEP paperwork). Marcellus drilling in PA didn’t ramp up until around 2006-2007. The DEP says Halliburton had claimed exemption from the state’s Solid Waste Management Act of 1980 for their Homer City facility, saying they were shipping and storing very small amounts of HCl at the facility when in fact that was not the case. Based on their false claim, Halliburton was given a pass on inspections, paperwork filing, signage, and the requirement to use certified hazardous waste haulers on more than 250 truck trips in and out of the facility–hauling HCl. Halliburton was in the wrong, they now acknowledge it (having been caught), and they’ve been levied a steep fine.

Both the DEP and Halliburton stress that there “is no evidence that Halliburton’s handling of the hazardous waste caused any actual harm to the public or the environment.” However, Halliburton violated both the spirit and the letter of the law and have now been caught. Shame on them. Below is the announcement from the DEP, a copy of the consent order signed by Halliburton admitting guilt, and an article providing important details about this story not found elsewhere…
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Fire Destroys Building at Marcellus Driller in Indiana County, PA

A sad story to report. A fire at the headquarters of Marcellus drilling company Northeast Energy in Indiana County, PA destroyed their vehicle maintenance garage on Christmas Eve–a $2 million loss. Fortunately no one was injured in the blaze. The company has other buildings at the site that were not affected and so business will continue.

The details we know about the fire and its possible cause:
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