Gov. Wolf Comes Under Withering Attacks for Refusing More Shale Dev
Although he’s a lame duck and heading for the exit door later this year (being term-limited, thank God), Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has come under withering attacks from many different sources for his reluctance to clear away obstacles that would encourage more shale gas drilling (and exporting) from the Keystone State. PA House Rep. Daryl Metcalfe calls Wolf’s response to expand the state’s natural gas industry “pathetically weak.” Ouch. Matthew Brouillette, president and CEO of Commonwealth Partners Chamber of Entrepreneurs, says Wolf’s green agenda is “fueling Putin’s war machine.” Double ouch. Wolf himself is flailing about, not knowing how he should respond to being outed as a Big Green lackey.
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In early 2013 the Pittsburgh International Airport and Allegheny County, PA signed a deal with CONSOL Energy (now CNX Resources) to lease 9,000 acres surrounding the airport for natural gas drilling (see 
Even though construction is completed for the Mariner East pipeline system, anti-fossil fuelers are still lying about the project and its status. Energy Transfer said during its recent quarterly update that Mariner East is in the process of being commissioned, i.e. tested (see 
In June 2020, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (Democrat) announced an indictment of Cabot Oil & Gas for allegations of methane migration going back more than a decade, long before he was elected as AG (see 
Last week saw a flurry of sniping back and forth between Pennsylvania House Republicans and Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf over the issue of whether Wolf should be doing more to promote PA natural gas production as a solution to help Europe out of its current pickle with Vlad Putin. Russia keeps jerking Europe’s chain by slowing and even stopping natural gas flows to the Continent in retaliation for Europe engaging in sanctions against Russia over its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Apparently, the House Republicans got under Wolf’s skin, as he retorted with some rather testy language of his own.
An interesting conversation was held on Tuesday during the Pennsylvania Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the budget for PA in 2022. Secretary of the Dept. of Conservation & Natural Resources (DCNR) Cindy Dunn was there to talk about her agency’s financial needs in the coming year. Also there was PA Sen. Gene Yaw and PA Sen. Joe Pittman, both Republicans. Yaw and Pittman asked Dunn why her agency doesn’t lease another 22,000 acres of state land for natural gas drilling as a form of “self help” to help fund DCNR’s budget. Great question…
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia are all scrambling to form working groups or other alliances in an attempt to be THE state chosen for one of four regional hydrogen hubs funded by the recently passed so-called Biden infrastructure bill. The new law provides $8 billion for four regional hubs. It’s a safe bet one of those hubs will be located in either PA, OH, or WV. The race is now on to attract that investment money. On Friday, WV’s new Hydrogen Hub Working Group held its first meeting to plot a strategy to snag the project. However, PA and OH are in the hunt too, with their own dedicated groups.
Using investment capital from Preferred Capital Securities, WhiteHawk Energy is buying mineral and royalty rights in southwestern Pennsylvania, primarily in Washington and Green counties, for $52.5 million. The assets include production and cash flow from over 950 horizontal Marcellus Shale wells. The wells are operated by EQT, CNX Resources, and Range Resources.
Two Pennsylvania Senators, Gene Yaw (Lycoming County) and John Yudichak (Luzerne County) have sent a letter to the state’s Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) asking the IFO to audit the modeling done by the inept Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) with respect to the price of credits being sold under the RGGI carbon tax scheme. PA Gov. Wolf intends to force the state, against the will of the people (i.e. the legislature that represents the people) to join RGGI, which slaps in insanely high carbon tax on all coal- and Marcellus gas-fired power plants. Yaw and Yudichak believe the DEP fudged the numbers with their original estimates of how much so-called RGGI credits cost. The senators want a neutral, independent third party to analyze the analysis done by the DEP.
In May 2017, Murrysville Township (Westmoreland County) struck a zoning compromise with local drillers on the distance of setbacks (see 
In late October Nacero announced a $6 billion gas-to-liquids (GTL) refinery, to be built on the site of a former coal mine in Newport Township and Nanticoke in Luzerne County, PA (see 
Gene Barr, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, unloaded on Joe Biden and his inept energy policies in a recent op-ed in which Barr says it’s time for U.S. energy policy to stop empowering Russia. In addition to more oil drilling and oil pipelines, Barr advocates for more natural gas drilling and more natural gas pipelines here in the Marcellus/Utica. Do you want to help Europe? Stop blocking American oil and gas, President Biden!
The Washington County, PA Chamber of Commerce held its State of The Economy event yesterday. One of the speakers, Denise Brinley (former executive director of Pennsylvania’s Office of Energy) said that southwestern Pennsylvania and the Pittsburgh region is a prime prospect to take advantage of establishing a $2 billion hydrogen hub. Western PA is in the “bullseye” of why funding was included in the recent federal infrastructure bill to establish four such hubs nationally, according to Brinley.
Penn State has launched a new research project to see if it can prove there is a link between water contamination in southwestern Pennsylvania and fracking. We’ve seen this movie before…or have we? In 2018 PA Gov. Tom Wolf, a liberal Democrat who sometimes supports the shale gas industry (as long as he can tax it) caved to demands from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to launch a “study” in a bid to “prove” cases of rare childhood cancer in southwestern PA can be tied to shale drilling in the region (see