Accidents | Delaware County (PA) | Energy Services | Energy Transfer Partners | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Sunoco Logistics
Apartments Without Drinking Water After ME2 Breaks Water Line
More negative press that Energy Transfer (and subsidiary Sunoco Logistics) doesn’t need for their Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline project. Last Wednesday construction workers were replacing backfill near the Glen Riddle Station apartment complex in Media (Delaware County, PA) when apparently they broke a water line to the apartment complex. The pipeline break left about 250 people in the complex without drinking water for more than a day.
Read More “Apartments Without Drinking Water After ME2 Breaks Water Line”
Last fall MDN told you that a Marcellus-fired power plant planned for Clinton County, PA called the Renovo Energy Center, had come back to life as an even bigger project that will produce 1,240 megawatts of electricity when it gets built (see 
It’s been ten long years since Windfall Oil and Gas first floated a plan to drill a shale wastewater injection well near Dubois, in Brady Township (Clearfield County), PA. The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a permit for the well in 2015. The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection approved the project in March 2018 (see 
The state treasurers from all three actively producing Marcellus/Utica states, including Stacy Garrity (PA), Robert Sprague (OH), and Riley Moore (WV), along with the state treasurers from 11 other oil and gas producing states, sent a letter to John Kerry, Biden’s so-called Climate Envoy, telling Kerry and other Biden officials to stop pressuring banks and other financial institutions to divest from fossil fuel companies. The treasurers also issued a warning to those banks and financial institutions letting them know their states (all 14 of them) will collectively pull their money out of those banks and financial institutions–BILLIONS of dollars–if the banks and financial institutions persist in divesting from fossil fuel companies. Fossil fuel haters: BACK OFF!
Gordon Tomb, a senior fellow at the Commonwealth Foundation (Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank) has some strong words for those want to put all of PA’s energy eggs into the so-called renewables basket: “‘Green’ energy proposals are no economic therapeutic for Pennsylvania. They’re snake oil miracle cures that ignore the realities of physics–and people’s needs.” So begins a column by Tomb. It’s a verbal slap across the face to get the attention of people who either won’t, or can’t, think for themselves about the glaring failures of a policy to convert to all-renewable energy, and what a total conversion would mean for the state (a complete disaster).
In theater of the absurd, yesterday a bunch of sleazy politicians, headed by the grandmaster sleazoloa himself, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, unveiled proposed new anti-Marcellus legislation based on a ginned-up, fake anti-shale grand jury report that Shapiro manipulated and orchestrated last year (see 
All three M-U states received permits to drill new shale wells last week, but the numbers were all down. Pennsylvania issued just 8 permits with 6 in the northeastern part of the state and 2 in the southwestern region. Ohio issued four permits, all for the same driller on the same well pad in the same county. And West Virginia issued just one new permit for last week.
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) released their latest quarterly Natural Gas Production Report for January through March 2021 (full copy below). The main indicators are moving in the right direction. In 1Q21 the number of new wells spud (begun to be drilled) was 133 new shale wells. That’s less than the 153 spud wells in 1Q20, which happened prior to the pandemic, but more than the spud numbers for the second, third, and fourth quarters of 2020. Even with less new drilling over the past few years, production numbers continued to soar, hitting a brand new, all-time high of 1.863 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) during 1Q21.
The judge in a lawsuit initiated by Cabot Oil & Gas against a Susquehanna County, PA landowner and his lawyers has had it up to here with the ongoing stonewalling and delay tactics by the landowner’s lawyers. “Four years we’ve been spinning our wheels on this nonsense,” the judge said. “The court is extremely frustrated, to put it politely.” The judge bordered on being impolite at a hearing last Thursday…
MDN has been writing about a privately-owned dump near Scranton, the Keystone Sanitary Landfill, for the past decade (
Last Wednesday the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA) held its Spring Meeting for 2021–in person! The meeting convened at Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh. The several hundred who attended got the pleasure of hearing people talk positively about oil and gas and fossil fuels in general. PIOGA President Dan Weaver said, “Don’t be afraid to stand up and speak out.” CNX CEO Nick DeIuliis said, “This industry is a noble one. You are doers that should be celebrated by all and appreciated by the informed.” God bless them both! Isn’t it great to be affirmed for the good work you do, rather than smeared and lied about?
We’re devastated. We know you’re not supposed to have favorites, but we do. Our favorite Marcellus/Utica driller for years has been Cabot Oil & Gas. We know some great folks who work for Cabot. It has been a peerless operator in the northeast Marcellus–making money when nobody else could. Cabot treats its landowners well, cares about the environment, gives big money to local nonprofit causes, and in general is the best kind of corporate citizen anybody could wish for. We suppose it was only a matter of time before Cabot became a target in this merger mania we’re currently going through. This morning Cabot announced a “merger of equals” with Cimarex, a big driller in the Permian and Midcontinent. The truth is Cimarex is buying out Cabot.
Headquartered in Philadelphia, PECO (a subsidiary of Exelon Corp.) is Pennsylvania’s largest electric and natural gas utility, delivering power to more than 1.6 million electric customers and more than 532,000 natural gas customers in southeastern Pennsylvania. Last fall PECO floated a plan to build a natural gas reliability station in Marple Township (Delaware County, PA) to allow the company to distribute more natural gas into Delaware County through 11.5 miles of new natural gas main lines. As you might expect, the neighbors in the densely populated area of the reliability station are up in arms over the plan (see 
Back in March MDN told you about supposed violations by Chesapeake Energy of the federal Clean Water Act and the Pennsylvania Clean Streams Law and Dam Safety and Encroachments Act by failing to identify and protect swamps (i.e. wetlands) at a number of oil and gas well sites in Pennsylvania (see 
In March 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to enter the public consciousness, some 500 people from labor unions and industry met in Pittsburgh to launch an organization called Pittsburgh Works Together (PWT), dedicated to fighting back against those who want to end southwest PA industries including steel, natural gas, and petrochemicals (see