Brainwashed Kids Go Militant at UPenn Football Game, Demand Divest
Last week we told you about a group of brainwashed children at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), who were behaving like spoiled rotten brats, demanding UPenn divest from any company with a whiff of oil or natural gas about it (see Brainwashed Kids Pressure UPenn to Divest All Fossil Energy Cos.). Apparently, the selfish brats weren’t getting enough attention, so they went militant. A group of 75 or so Fossil Free Penn students rushed onto the football field during half-time on Saturday, holding up the restart of the UPenn vs. Yale game (a homecoming game!) by over an hour. The athletes and fans were not amused. People in the bleachers chanted, “Get off the field!” and booed the protesters.
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In June, seemingly out of nowhere, a plan to build an LNG export facility on the banks of the Delaware River south of Philadelphia made big headlines in Philly (see 
According to law firm Houston Harbaugh, P.C., deducting fuel costs from landowner royalties continues to be an ongoing and widespread practice. Some leases allow the use of a portion of the raw gas recovered at a well to “fuel” well-pad operations (processing of the gas). Not only are landowners denied a royalty on the fuel gas volume, they also have that same “cost” deducted from their production royalty! According to Houston Harbaugh, this practice of deducting fuel costs must be closely monitored by all landowners.
Republicans in the Pennsylvania Senate have, since April 2021, refused to appoint new members to the five-member Public Utility Commission (PUC) in response to Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf’s unilateral push to force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax scheme (see 
Permits issued for new shale wells last week got a bit better from their pathetically low numbers. From Oct. 10-16 there were eight new permits issued in Pennsylvania, and four each issued in Ohio and West Virginia. All of the PA permits were issued in northeastern PA, with four going to BKV Operating (i.e. Banpu) in Wyoming County, two to Chesapeake in Bradford County, and two to Beech Resources in Lycoming County. Encino Energy scored all four permits for Ohio, all of them in Harrison County. In WV, Tug Hill (soon to be EQT) received three permits, and Southwestern Energy received one permit, all four in Marshall County.
In September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that the state senators who represent Pennsylvania landowners living in the Delaware River Basin, primarily in Wayne and Pike counties in the northeastern corner of Pennsylvania, don’t have “standing” to sue the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to overturn its ban on fracking (see 
The Pennsylvania Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee was busy yesterday. In a companion post today, we told you about opposition to a bill by Sen. Carolyn Comitta that would do nothing more than study the concept of exporting LNG from the Philadelphia region (see PA Sen. Carolyn Comitta, Anti from Philly, Confuses LNG and NGL). A second bill that Comitta and her pal on the Environmental Committee, Sen. Katie Muth (also a left-wing Democrat), opposed yesterday is a bill that withholds impact fee (tax) revenue from counties that ban fracking on or under public lands, like parks.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has assessed a $670,000 fine plus extra “cost recovery” charges of nearly $30,000 against the Shell Pipeline Company for work done between 2019 and 2021 on Shell’s Falcon ethane pipeline project. The DEP says that a series of inspections showed “failure to comply” with this paperwork requirement and that paperwork requirement. There were a few instances of erosion into “waters of the commonwealth.” But in the end, the DEP acknowledges, “no visual aquatic impacts were observed.” No muddy water. No dead fishies. No dead salamanders. No dead nothing. In other words, the DEP fined Shell for nothing–no lasting impacts on the environment from the work done to construct the Falcon pipeline.
In March 2019, MDN told you about a new Williams plan to beef up the Transco pipeline in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to deliver an extra 829 MMcf/d (originally 1 billion cubic feet per day) of Marcellus gas to PA, NJ, and Maryland (see 
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) and its Environmental Quality Board (EQB) rammed through (in a rush) a set of regulations to control volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and by extension methane, for conventional drilling sites throughout the site. The DEP has had SIX YEARS to get these regulations done, and has missed deadline after deadline. Now, with a Dec. 16 deadline approaching to finish up the regs or risk losing half a billion dollars in federal highway funds, the DEP is trying to bully the conventional drilling industry into accepting its onerous regulations with no comment period, no feedback, no nothing–under threat of risking half a billion dollars. It’s DEP blackmail, plain and simple. What will the conventional industry do? Take it lying down? Or fight?
ShalePro Energy Services, headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA but with five regional offices scattered across seven states (including offices in each of the three Marcellus/Utica states), announced it has just closed on a deal to acquire Tight Line Services, based in Hickory, PA (Washington County). Tight Line, which provides civil construction services to the natural gas industry, is the fifth company acquired by ShalePro. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Tight Line’s seven full-time employees, along with the company’s current CEO, have joined ShalePro.