Anadarko Indicted for Killing 165 Salamanders in Lycoming County
BREAKING NEWS, BREAKING NEWS: Anadarko well pad site leaks wastewater and kills 165 salamanders. Funeral services are being arranged. This would almost be funny, if it wasn’t real. No, not funeral services for salamanders (although it’s not beyond believable in this day and age). In 2014 Anadarko drilled a shale well in Lycoming County, PA. In February 2015, a storage tank at the well pad–used to temporarily store produced water coming from the well (wastewater storage happens at ALL shale well sites)–either experienced a leaky valve, or was overfilled, depending on whom you ask. About 1,000 gallons of produced water leaked out of the tank and subsequently out of containment and into a drainage ditch (i.e. “unnamed tributary”) and found its way into a local creek, killing 165 (or 169, depending on the source) salamanders. And now (no lie), the Environmental Crimes Unit of the PA Attorney General’s office is hauling Anadarko and their contractor into court, charging them with environmental crimes. A PA Fish and Boat Commission biologist estimates the dead salamanders were worth $6,156–or ~$37 each. Careful where you step! If you step on a salamander in PA and accidentally kill it, the state will charge you $37 and somebody from the AG’s office will pay you a visit. It can get expensive walking along a creek in PA….
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In August 2013 an extensive investigative article about a then-director for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, William A. Capouillez, appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer (see 
One of the issues that isn’t going away is the demand by landowners in some Pennsylvania counties, like Bradford, for lawmakers in the state to pass a bill that guarantees them what they believe they are already guaranteed–a 12.5% minimum royalty, based on a 1979 law that states they should get such a royalty. We’ve extensively covered what we call a civil war between two parties who are otherwise friendly toward each other–landowners and shale drillers. Last year the issue came to a head with House Bill (HB) 1391 (
In June 2015 MDN told you about a really cool plan by a Pennsylvania company to establish a CNG (compressed natural gas) terminal in Lycoming County, PA as a way to get natural gas to manufacturers, fleets and businesses where no pipeline infrastructure now exists (see 
One of the country’s largest oil drillers is calling it quits in the Marcellus natural gas play. Earlier today Anadarko announced it has cut a deal to sell all of its Marcellus acreage and wells to Alta Resources for $1.24 billion. The deal is big, including 195,000 acres and daily production from wells that averages 470 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d). That’s the news you’ll get everywhere else. Here’s the part of the story you’ll read exclusively here on MDN: Anadarko has a partner in the Marcellus–Mitsui–which is also selling their interest in the PA Marcellus to Alta, for $207 million. Also, background on the deal you won’t read anywhere else: Alta was an early investor in the Marcellus, but sold out all of their acreage in 2010. Now they’re back. Anadarko and Mitsui sold for far less than the acreage was valued at in 2010–we’d call it getting taken to the cleaners. MDN sorts it all out below…
Over the past two months Panda Power Funds has brought online the first two built-from-scratch-to-use-Marcellus-gas electric plants, both in northeast Pennsylvania (see 
A Williams Transco Leidy pipeline ruptured in Lycoming County, PA in June 2015 (see 
Imagine this: a backhoe sinks its bucket into the ground, scoops out some dirt, and the dirt is used to build a road. No big deal. Now imagine this, a very long drill goes down into the earth and digs out dirt. Because the dirt comes from deep down, some of it may be mixed with minerals not found near the surface, so a company processes the deep down dirt to remove any extra minerals, and the dirt is then essentially the same chemical composition as the dirt from near the surface–and it’s used to build a road. The dirt from deep down is called drill cuttings. Environmental Nazis repeat the magical incantation, “It’s been fracked!” and therefore they begin to hyperventilate that “fracked waste” is being used to build a road. Our example illustrates antis’ intellectual dishonesty about what drill cuttings are. When we spotted a story that a private hunting club in Lycoming County (Williamsport area) in PA will build a new road using processed drill cuttings, and the spin job done by the anti-drilling shills at the taxpayer-funded PBS StateImpact Pennsylvania, we had to laugh…
Guess who’s back with a case now before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court? Yep, the odious nutters from Big Green Groups PennFuture, THE (arrogant) Delaware Riverkeeper, and the Peters Township gang. You may recall we reported last September of the humiliating defeat suffered by these groups in the “Gorsline” case (see 
Just prior to going on trial for committing felonies while in office, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane (Democrat) needed something, ANYTHING, to distract the press from focusing on her own crimes. Since she took office in January 2013, Kane has targeted the Marcellus industry. One of the first high profile cases she manufactured (out of nothing) was to accuse XTO Energy of committing a crime in an accidental spill of a few thousand gallons of frack wastewater–an accident in Lycoming County, PA that happened years before she took office and didn’t have any long-term effects (see 
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania has sided with landowners in a dispute with Shell’s shale drilling arm, called SWEPI (Shell Western Exploration Production Inc.). SWEPI signed a lease with two landowners who own a collective 1,036 acres in Lycoming County. SWEPI promised a $4,000 per acre signing bonus, but a few months after signing SWEPI decided they didn’t want the acreage after all and tried to cancel the lease and the bonus payment. The judge ordered SWEPI to pay $2,072,000 to each of the two landowner families…
In August 2013, Moxie Energy of Vienna, VA sold the permits/rights to build a new Marcellus gas-powered electric generating plant in Bradford County, PA to Panda Power Funds of Dallas, TX (see 
In June 2015 then-Secretary of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), John Quigley, slapped Range Resources with an $8.9 million fine–the largest such fine ever levied by the DEP (see 
Be careful who you bank with. That’s the lesson from welding/fabricating company NuWeld Inc., headquartered in Williamsport, PA, NuWeld does a lot of business with the oil and gas industry, and lately that industry has been in decline in the Keystone State. The decline led to NuWeld’s bank, BB&T, getting skittish. BB&T, according to NuWeld, cleaned out their bank accounts. Took all of the money in them–and without money, NuWeld had to lay off all 150 employees. Apparently the money was the bank’s to take–but the reason they took it (cold feet instead of unpaid bills), is what grates. And the way they took it, without any warning, really grates. Here’s the story of “be careful who you bank with”…