PA IFO Predicts 2022 Impact Tax Will be Highest on Record – $258M
Just yesterday MDN told you about this year’s distribution of last year’s (2021) impact fee revenue to local municipalities and to the black hole of Harrisburg politicians (see PA Pays Out $234M in Impact Tax for 2021 – 2nd Highest Ever). Impact fee revenues for last year were the second-highest ever. The Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) is fresh out with an estimate for how much the impact fee will raise this year (to be distributed next year). The IFO says it thinks, based on the price of natural gas and pickup in drilling, that PA will land its biggest impact fee haul ever.
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In March MDN told you that the Deputy Chief Administrative Law Judge of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) issued a ruling against the now completed Mariner East 2 pipeline project, assessing a $51,000 fine on the project (see 
PennEnergy Resources recently reapplied (for a second time) for a permit to draw water from Big Sewickley Creek–but this time the request is cut in half, to just 1.5 million gallons of water a day (see 
A few days ago MDN received a phone call from the Harrisburg Patriot-News, from a reporter asking editor Jim Willis for comments on the latest activity in the Pennsylvania Marcellus. Are royalties doing better? Has there been more drilling activity? Jim tackled the question about drilling activity this way: Yes, there has been a *slight* increase in drilling activity, but not a huge increase. The reporter talked with multiple sources and published an article yesterday.
The Marcellus/Utica is still struggling to get permit numbers into higher brackets. Three weeks ago a pathetically low six new permits were issued to drill shale wells across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia (see 
Two days ago Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee (ERE) Majority Chairman Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler) issued a co-sponsorship memo asking for other House members to sponsor a resolution with him calling for the impeachment of outgoing Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Patrick McDonnell. Metcalfe calls the measure his “parting gift” to McDonnell who is leaving the agency on July 2nd (see 
Last weekend the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) published a notice in the weekly (Saturday) edition of the Pennsylvania Bulletin to announce final guidance (i.e. regulations) on handling radioactive waste going to solid waste processing and disposal facilities from unconventional shale gas drilling operations and other sources. Last year MDN told you about a plan by the Wolf administration to require quarterly testing at landfills that accept shale drill cuttings (see 
Since 2013 anti-fossil fuel zealots–people with an irrational hatred of fossil fuels–have tried to ban drilling under (not on) public parks in Allegheny County, PA (near Pittsburgh). A small group of 100 radicals gathered outside the City-County building in downtown Pittsburgh last week to throw a collective temper tantrum, demanding Allegheny County Council ban any new drilling under county-owned parks (see 
In early 2018, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) collected a whopping $1.7 million fine from Energy Corporation of America (ECA) for violations at 17 well sites in Cumberland, Jefferson, and Whiteley Townships in Greene County, and Goshen Township in Clearfield County (see 
One of the big promises of building a multi-billion dollar ethane cracker plant project is its ability to act like a magnet attracting other petrochemical and manufacturing plants to locate near it, using the outputs of the ethane cracker as their inputs. According to an article appearing in the Pittsburgh Business Times, the great promise of attracting more businesses to the southwestern PA region with the construction of the Shell cracker plant has not, so far at least, resulted in a big influx of new businesses.