CNN Calls Out PA’s John Fetterman for Lies re Support of Fracking
CNN is a well-known fake news purveyor. We don’t trust a thing CNN “reports” as news. So we were a bit conflicted to see what appears to be a pretty fair and balanced story that calls out Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is running for the U.S. Senate, for his openly contradictory statements on whether or not he supports fracking. CNN appears to somehow have swerved into reporting the truth–some real, honest-to-God journalism. Call it a random act of journalism on the part of CNN to publish an article that quotes Fetterman’s openly contradictory statements.
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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.
There are eight so-called Ivy League institutions: Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University. At this point, most of them have made moves to divest their massive endowments from any company that is even remotely connected to the fossil energy industry. One of them has not, yet: the University of Pennsylvania. A group of brainwashed children at UPenn are behaving like spoiled rotten brats, demanding UPenn divest from any company with a whiff of oil or natural gas about it. They even want the school to ban fossil energy companies from recruiting on campus (no free speech at UPenn).
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.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) published an article yesterday to say that according to their data, the U.S. hit a new record high for natural gas production in 2021. As part of the article, EIA points out that the Marcellus/Utica region now accounts for nearly one-third of all U.S. dry natural gas production! The chart included with the article (below) shows gas production by source, including both the #1 source (Texas) and #2 source (Pennsylvania).
As we told you last week, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) was long ago supposed to have reintroduced a new set of regulations for the conventional oil and gas industry in the state to control methane emissions (see 
We’ve heard of vegetable gardens. We’ve heard of flower gardens. We’ve heard of rose gardens. Remember the Lynn Anderson song, “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden”? We’ve also heard of rock gardens, raised gardens, herb gardens, and indoor gardens. One garden we hadn’t heard about until today is a “rain garden.” Ever heard that term? Rice Energy (now part of EQT Corporation) is paying a big fine, $147,250, for work done at a well site in Greene County, PA, in 2019 that allowed erosion and soil to contaminate not one but three rain gardens. I beg your pardon!