Bethlehem Marcellus-Fired Power Plant Kept PA Lights on During Xmas
In a modern twist on an old story, the little town of Bethlehem (this one in Pennsylvania) provided a savior this past Christmas–in the form of a natural gas-fired power plant. The Bethlehem Energy Center, owned by Calpine, received permission (indeed, strong encouragement) from the U.S. Dept of Energy (at the request of the PJM grid operator) to “ramp up production” of electricity while other gas-fired power plants that are part of the PJM system began to fail due to the super-cold weather. Bethlehem powered up, keeping the lights (and heat) on Christmas Eve. Otherwise, Pennsylvanians living in the Lehigh Valley would have frozen their derrieres off. Marcellus gas as savior. Has a ring to it, eh?
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The Better Path Coalition is a mish-mash of the some of the most radical leftwing “environmental” groups in Pennsylvania, including THE Delaware Riverkeeper, 350 Philadelphia, EcoJustice Working Group, Freshwater Accountability Project, and many more. Some of their members are not beyond committing crimes in the name of supposedly saving the planet (see 
Residents living in the vicinity of Energy Transfer’s Revolution Pipeline cryogenic plant in Bulger (Washington County), PA, got a nasty “present” on Christmas morning. Around 7:30 am, residents report hearing an explosion, followed by a fire, at the plant used to separate NGLs (natural gas liquids, including ethane, propane, and butane) from the raw gas stream that flows through the Revolution gathering pipeline (see 
Olympus Energy wants to drill six wells on a single pad in rural Elizabeth Township, a borough in Allegheny County on the east bank of the Monongahela River. The pad would sit about 2,400 feet (nearly half a mile) away from Elizabeth Forward High School. Some of the parents of students, and some of the administration, pushed back against Olympus’ drilling plan, using the kiddies as an excuse (see 
Last November, the state of Pennsylvania decided to endorse a private industry application (by Shell and Equinor) instead of doing the hard work of submitting its own official application to attract a $1 billion hydrogen hub (see 
We’re catching up the permit report for the past two weeks (since we were off all of last week). Permits issued for Dec. 19 through Jan. 1 in the Marcellus/Utica included 19 new permits in Pennsylvania, 7 new permits in Ohio, and 12 new permits in West Virginia.
Yesterday MDN brought you the news that the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) held a hearing in December to explain new regulations coming from the PUC, based on directives from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), to begin regulating previously unregulated natural gas gathering pipelines (see 
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) has traditionally not regulated nor overseen low-pressure natural gas gathering pipelines in the state because it’s not required to (nor allowed to) by the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). That has changed. The PHMSA published new standards that bring gathering pipelines under its regulatory umbrella. The PA PUC held a public hearing in early December and subsequently published material from that hearing in the Pennsylvania Bulletin in late December–material that discusses how the change in PHMSA’s gathering pipeline regulations affects PA.
Last July, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, controlled by the extreme left in the Democrat Party, allowed PA House Bill (HB) 2644 to become law without his signature (see 
Last Thursday, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) published its 2021 Oil and Gas Annual Report (about five months late). This is the sixth year in a row the DEP has published the report in an interactive, electronic (i.e. online only) format. Don’t worry, we’ve turned the report into a convenient PDF for MDN readers. What does the 2021 report show? Permits issued went down, but the number of new wells drilled went up. Natural gas production has gone up (again)–to another new all-time record high.
The best gifts we give to each other during this holiday season are intangible: Time spent with family and friends, a kind word, attending a church service. But hey, toys and gadgets and gear are a close second! 🙂 Have you ever stopped to ponder what Christmas morning without fossil energy would look like? We’ll tell you what it would look like–men and women wearing animal skins sitting around a wood or dung fire in a cave. There would be no gifts. Just about every (physical, tangible) gift you either give or get this holiday season will have plastic as part of it, and plastic comes from oil and gas. No fossil fuels, no gifts. The Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA) has put together a holiday gift guide to remind you of the importance of oil and gas this holiday season.
Kevin Sunday, director of government affairs with the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, recently published an op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette pointing out how the mighty Shell ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, PA, is the result of business and government (bipartisan government) working together. He makes the case that we need more of this type of thing, especially with many new faces coming to Harrisburg in January. We frankly wonder if hoping for bipartisan cooperation on fossil energy projects in the current political climate is just spitting in the wind.