Interior Sec. Burgum Visits Lackawanna College in Scranton, PA
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum visited Lackawanna College yesterday to observe how students are trained for energy-focused careers in natural gas, petroleum, and robotics. He emphasized that these students will contribute to the growth of key industries, creating significant career opportunities. Burgum, joined by Congressmen Rob Bresnahan and Dan Meuser, commended the college’s programs and shale industry-donated equipment, highlighting their role in an American renaissance driven by energy, innovation, and manufacturing. He also discussed how data centers, or “AI manufacturing,” could utilize Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale natural gas to generate electricity, bringing economic benefits and lowered utility costs, drawing parallels to his experience in North Dakota. Read More “Interior Sec. Burgum Visits Lackawanna College in Scranton, PA”
Although there are legitimate concerns over data centers locating in populated communities (noise, water use, etc.), make no mistake: The anti-data center movement is nothing more than the anti-fracking movement in new clothes (see 
In early September, MDN told you that UGI Corporation, one of PA’s largest utility companies, plans to store trailers of LNG in the parking lot of a storage facility near Scranton, PA, and is seeking a zoning variance to do so (see 
UGI, a diversified energy company with midstream (pipeline) operations in the Marcellus and one of PA’s largest utility companies, wants to store trailers of LNG in the parking lot of a storage facility near Scranton, PA, and is seeking a zoning variance to do so. UGI needs extra supplies of natural gas to inject into its utility system during peak periods in the winter months. The company says it will be a temporary situation. 
The weather has been fantastic for those of us living in the northeastern U.S. over the past few weeks. Clear blue skies (when they aren’t clouded with wildfire smoke from Canada), really warm temperatures, and absolutely no rain to spoil outdoor activities. Here in the Binghamton, NY area, we went from a surplus of rain and swollen rivers and lakes just a month ago to a rain deficit today. Lawns and fields and beginning to turn brown. Hey, we’re not complaining! But we do need some rain. The lack of rain in the Susquehanna River Basin has triggered water withdrawal restrictions for 42 oil and gas drillers and four other large water users (46 in all) by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC). In many cases, the SRBC order is to “cease withdrawal.”
For the past seven years a privately-owned dump near Scranton, the Keystone Sanitary Landfill, has sought to expand in order to accept more garbage. The dump is also authorized to accept Marcellus Shale drill cuttings–rock and soil leftover after drilling. Yesterday the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced after seven years of study, hearings, meetings, and whatever else the DEP does to fiddle away the time, they have finally approved Keystone’s request to expand.
MDN has been writing about a privately-owned dump near Scranton, the Keystone Sanitary Landfill, for the past decade (
It might help anti-fossil fuel radicals if they at least got a few of their facts right. Facts are typically missing from their hysterical proclamations. Case in point: An anti addressed the Ransom Township board earlier this week (Scranton, PA suburb) to try and convince the board to pass a resolution against trucks hauling LNG from traveling through the community on the way to Interstate 81. Her wild claims were false.
The anti-fossil fuel zealots at the Scranton Times-Tribune (in Lackawanna County, PA) are doing their darnedest to try and stop an $800 million LNG liquefaction plant (generating hundreds of jobs) planned for nearby Bradford County. On Monday we told you the zealots were attempting to whip up a frenzy of opposition to the plant, based on trucks that would travel through the borough of Clarks Summit, a suburb of Scranton (see 
The leftists who run and write the Scranton Times-Tribune are at it again–doing anything and everything they can to destroy the Marcellus industry that singlehandedly has created more new jobs and raised the standard of living for more people in northeastern PA than any other industry in the past generation–the Marcellus industry. The new target for Times-Tribune is a proposed $800 million LNG liquefaction plant in Wyalusing, PA (in nearby Bradford County). The Times-Tribune editors say the plan to build the plant and transport the LNG via rail is too “risky” and northeast PA will be just fine without an extra $800 million and hundreds of jobs. Dopes.
Pennsylvania’s largest natural gas-fired electric plant, Invenergy’s 1,480 megawatt, $1 billion project called the Lackawanna Energy Center, has been completely done and fully online since earlier this year (see 
Invenergy’s 1,480 megawatt, $1 billion Marcellus gas-fired electric plant, called the Lackawanna Energy Center (located near Scranton, PA), is now 100% done with construction. Yesterday the company celebrated the end of construction with a special ceremony and tour.
Yesterday two northeast Pennsylvania legislators–state Representative Aaron Kaufer (Republican) and state Senator John Yudichak (Democrat)–hosted a rally to promote proposed new bipartisan legislation aimed at luring a “world-class” petrochemical manufacturing plant to the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area. A big plant, on the order of the Shell cracker plant in southwestern PA. But no, not an ethane cracker. The kind of plant the two legislators want to attract in northeastern PA would leverage the huge volume of locally extracted Marcellus dry gas (i.e. methane).
A landowner in Jessup Borough (Lackawanna County, PA, near Scranton) has filed a lawsuit against the Borough Council as a whole (and the individuals who serve on it), claiming they rezoned the landowner’s property, cutting them out of millions of dollars, as retribution because the landowner had the audacity to sell property to the Marcellus gas-fired Lackawanna Energy Center (LEC) power plant.