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26 New Shale Well Permits Issued for PA-OH-WV Nov 14-20
Last week (Nov. 14-20) saw a total of 31 new shale permits issued across the Marcellus/Utica, up slightly from 26 permits the week before. Pennsylvania received the most permits, with 26 new permits issued. Ohio received five new permits, and West Virginia got skunked with no new permits last week.
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On Friday, MDN reported that one of the ten natural gas storage wells at the Equitrans Rager Mountain Gas Storage Area in Jackson Township, Cambria County (in Pennsylvania) that was leaking roughly 100 MMcf/d of gas had finally been plugged (see 
These days we don’t often see the contract details for new leases signed by landowners to allow shale drilling. We used to see and report on large landowner coalitions and the deals they had struck back in the earlier days of the Marcellus/Utica. But today, about the only time you get any kind of insight into deal amounts comes when municipalities lease land for drilling, given that the business dealings of a municipality must be disclosed publicly. We’re always on the lookout for such deals. Allegheny Township in Westmoreland County (near Pittsburgh) has just approved a shale lease with Olympus Energy to drill under (not on) 27.7 acres of the Tredway Trail. The terms of the deal are…
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced that CNX Resources has paid two civil penalty assessments totaling $200,000 for violations at two different well sites in Richhill Township, Greene County. According to the civil penalty assessment paperwork, CNX spilled “production fluids” (wastewater, drilling mud, etc.) and didn’t clean it up quickly enough. Tallying all of the spills, CNX inadvertently spilled 2,170 gallons of production fluid at two sites, and ended up removing roughly 3,400 tons of “contaminated” soil.
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) voted to approve the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) and its Environmental Quality Board’s (EQB) rammed-through (in a rush) regulation to control volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and by extension methane, for conventional drilling sites throughout the state (see 
Earlier this week, Shell announced its mighty ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, PA (near Pittsburgh) is finally, ten years after first announcing, fully operational and producing plastic pellets (see 
Two separate but related cases concerning Pennsylvania’s entrance into the interstate carbon cap-and-trade program known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which we call a carbon tax, had their day in court yesterday. Judges from PA’s typically conservative Commonwealth Court heard oral arguments and, according to leftists, zeroed in on the issue of whether the so-called RGGI “fee” assessed by the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) is really a fee, or instead is really a tax. It makes a difference. The DEP can, constitutionally, assess a fee, but it cannot unilaterally slap a new tax on coal- and natural gas-fired power plants (as it is trying to do).
The leftist members of the Allegheny, PA County Council have proven just how leftward they have lurched (and how unhinged they have become). In July, the Council voted to overturn the veto of a ban on drilling for natural gas under (never on top of) county parks (see 
Yeah, well, that didn’t take long, did it? Pennsylvania Governor-elect Josh Shapiro, just a few days after he won the election, has vowed to further restrict fracking with huge new setback regulations. He’s also promising new regulations for gathering pipelines. In other words, he’s about to screw over the Marcellus industry and pretty much stop new drilling in the state. Still glad you voted for Shapiro?