Peoples Gas & Pitt Team Up to Test Hydrogen/NatGas Mix
The natural gas industry is apparently not satisfied with being in the natural gas business anymore. Increasingly, local distribution companies (LDCs, or utilities) are investigating, and in some cases experimenting with, introducing highly explosive hydrogen into the natural gas stream they flow to homes and businesses. Peoples Gas in Pittsburgh is teaming up with the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) to figure out how to mix hydrogen with the natural gas it serves to its customers in Pennsylvania and beyond.
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Last week the three states with active Marcellus/Utica drilling, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, issued a collective 21 new drilling permits, down from the 30 permits issued the week before, and down from the 40 permits issued the week before that. The trend is not our friend right now. PA issued 13 permits, and OH and WV issued four permits each.
Pennsylvania State Senator Katie Muth’s attempt to block a proposed frack wastewater treatment plant in Dimock (hours away from her own district) is failing spectacularly. Muth tried to challenge and block a permit for the plant, an effort which was mostly rejected in court back in June (see 
Anti-fossil fuelers at Penn State are trying their hardest to spin the results of a recent study by university researchers to say it shows a link between “elevated levels of chloride in groundwater” and fracking in Pennsylvania. As we read a summary of the study appearing on Penn State News, it was obvious the study proves just the opposite–that THERE IS NO LINK between the two!
Never believe that the government can do anything quickly–except destroy an economy. Nearly a year ago, President Biden signed into law the so-called Infrastructure bill, some $1.2 trillion in pork barrel spending, passed with the help of turncoat Republicans (see 
In early August, MDN reported that Marcellus driller Coterra Energy had made $1.2 billion in profit during the second quarter of 2022 (see 
A Democrat-led, partisan nonprofit calling itself Energy Future PA was launched yesterday. The anti-drilling former PA Auditor General, Eugene DePasquale (Democrat), is co-chair. The new group is also co-chaired by a RINO (Republican in Name Only)–former State Rep. Marguerite Quinn. Don’t get snookered by the fluffy platitudes from this organization. Make no mistake, Energy Future PA is partisan with a bent against shale energy.
A group of roughly 60 landowners located in Fayette County, PA, have received a $5.5 million settlement from what was Chief Exploration and Development (now called Cyprus Exploration and Development) to compensate the landowners for leases signed in 2008. The landowners filed a class action lawsuit in 2011, claiming bonus and rent payments were not made.
In a brilliant move aimed at boxing in the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), two northeastern Pennsylvania State Senators–Gene Yaw and Lisa Baker–along with members of the PA Senate Republican Caucus (27 Senators in all), filed a lawsuit in January 2021 against the DRBC accusing the quasi-governmental agency of “taking” the property rights of PA residents without just compensation under the law over the DRBC’s ban on fracking (see 
EnergyNet
The Catholic nuns of Lancaster County’s Adorers of the Blood of Christ are still, all these years later, trying to shake down Williams for more money because of a pipeline that runs underneath a cornfield owned by the sisters (hence our nickname for them). Using lawyers from Big Green groups, the nuns are arguing their “religious beliefs” were offended by the pipeline because it flows a nasty, filthy fossil fuel that causes global warming. Even though the sisters own and operate a home heated by natural gas at the same location! Williams should be suing the nuns, not the other way around.
Pennsylvania is stubbornly continuing to pursue a $2 billion hydrogen hub (part of the Biden infrastructure bill) on its own, without partnering with other Marcellus/Utica states. As we continue to point out, doing the application process alone jeopardizes attracting the project to our region. Yesterday the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held a public hearing on hydrogen’s potential as an energy source. The opening presenter, Richard DiClaudio, president and CEO of the Energy Innovation Center Institute in Pittsburgh, made the case that hydrogen and the hydrogen hub is important to the future of southwestern PA.