EQT Launches Endowments for Greene, PA and Wetzel, WV
The EQT Foundation was established in 2003 as a dedicated resource for financial, in-kind, and volunteer support to communities where EQT works and has a presence. Since its inception, the EQT Foundation has awarded more than $60 million to nonprofits throughout the operational footprint of EQT. That is an amazing number! In honor of Giving Tuesday, yesterday EQT announced the launch of two new giving programs to support the communities of Greene County, PA, and Wetzel County, WV.
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It seems as if Pennsylvania has been on a yo-yo lately. Three weeks ago PA issued just two permits to drill new shale wells. Two weeks ago PA issued 15 permits! And now, for last week (Nov. 22-28), PA flipped back to just two new permits again. What’s going on? Did the DEP take most of last week off for the Thanksgiving holiday? Perhaps. Ohio pulled our region’s bacon out of the fire by issuing 11 new permits last week for Utica shale wells. West Virginia drillers got skunked with zero new permits last week. All totaled there were just 13 new permits issued last week in the M-U, down from 32 the week before.
Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) is expanding its drilling program in Upper Burrell, in Westmoreland County, PA, near Pittsburgh (see 
Earlier this month we shared the exciting news that Nacero Inc. will build a $6 billion refinery on the site of a former coal mine in Newport Township and Nanticoke in Luzerne County, PA (see 
The environmental radicals on the left continue their push to defeat the construction of an $800 million liquefaction plant in Wyalusing (Bradford County), PA, meant to liquefy and ship LNG to a planned facility on the Delaware River, for exporting to other countries. The left’s latest ploy? Antis are proclaiming a special permit issued during the Trump administration that allows LNG from the Wyalusing plant to be shipped via special rail cars is about to expire at the end of this month and almost certainly won’t get renewed. In addition, antis have stirred up some of the liberal locals near the port facility where the LNG would get safely loaded onto ships. It is a continuing, coordinated two-pronged attack against the project.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) latest Monthly Electric Generator Inventory, between 2022 and 2025 (the next three years) some 27.3 gigawatts (GW) of new natural gas-fired capacity is scheduled to come online in the United States. Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania–states with pipeline access to natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale plays–account for a combined 43% of the natural gas-fired capacity planned to come online. Yes, our molecules will feed almost half of all new gas-fired power plants!
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) published a notice in the November 20 Pennsylvania Bulletin that it has signed an oil and gas lease agreement with BKV Operating, LLC (Banpu, Thailand’s largest coal mining company and an investor/operator drilling shale wells here) covering 198.5 acres of the Susquehanna River located in Mehoopany and Washington Townships in Wyoming County.
Is the glass half empty, or half full? Last Friday MDN told you that the Pennsylvania State Public Utility Commission (PUC) issued a list of 14 new requirements for the Mariner East Pipeline projects, for all three pipelines–ME1, ME2, and ME2X (see 
Double or nothing? More like double “or else.” In July we told you that Energy Transfer’s (ET) Revolution Pipeline in southwestern Pennsylvania was fined an additional $1 million by the PA Public Utility Commission (PUC) on top of previous fines totaling over $30 million because of an explosion (an accident) when the pipeline first went into service (see 
Anti-drilling zealots have hounded the Mariner East (ME) pipeline project from its beginning, attempting to block the completion of the third and final pipeline (ME2X), due to be done by the end of this year. One of the ways the zealots have attacked is via repeated charges brought to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC), the agency that oversees and regulates the intrastate ME system. In addition to unloading on Energy Transfer’s (ET) Revolution Pipeline system yesterday (see today’s lead story), the PUC also issued an order yesterday with some 14 actions (we call them todos) that ET must complete with regard to finishing construction of the ME system. Some of the todos deal with the ongoing operation of the ME system.
Yesterday MDN told you that the Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board (EQB), a division of the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), has accepted the petitions of rabid anti-drilling zealots aimed at boosting bonds to drill new conventional and unconventional (shale) wells (see 
WT Data Mining and Science Corp. wants to set up a bitcoin mining operation at a compressed natural gas (CNG) facility owned by Geopetro in Darlington Township (Beaver County), PA. WT Data Mining proposes to build an electric generator at the CNG site and use natural gas to generate massive amounts of electricity required to power the company’s computers that mine bitcoin. Some of the neighbors are concerned about noise.