5 Men Get Probation for Years-Old Marcellus Truck Emissions Scam
We finally come to the end of a saga that began nearly three years ago, in Sept. 2018 when six men were charged with conspiring to illegally alter emissions systems on 30+ trucks with heavy-duty diesel engines, trucks used to haul water and wastewater to and from Marcellus Shale wells (see 6 Charged with Bypassing Emissions Controls on Marcellus Trucks). All six pled guilty. One of the six did jail time. The other five were finally sentenced last week–to probation.
Read More “5 Men Get Probation for Years-Old Marcellus Truck Emissions Scam”
A small group of extremist left-wing Democrats in Pittsburgh are demanding Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, himself a Democrat and long-time supporter of the Marcellus Shale industry, turn against shale. Last week around 30 fossil fuel haters delivered a petition signed by 300 fellow haters to Fitzgerald’s office. He didn’t cave to the pressure, so the haters became more aggressive, going to Fitzgerald’s house yesterday in their attempts to bully him into submission. The cops told them to clear out or get arrested.
Last night the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) held a virtual hearing on a compromise plan between Energy Transfer/Sunoco Logistics and the DEP to allow ET/Sunoco to complete construction of the Mariner East 2 pipeline project in the Marsh Creek State Park area (Chester County) where there have been some “issues” that halted work in the area. Given the buildup by the anti-fossil fuel left to turn out and mouth off at the hearing, we’re struck that (so far) it is radio silence in mainstream media about the hearing. We can’t find a single story about the hearing. We do, however, have a report on more than two dozen pro-pipeline speakers who turned out for the virtual hearing. Perhaps that’s why the media is silent?
Adelphia Gateway, a plan to convert an old oil pipeline stretching from Northampton County, PA through Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester counties, terminating in Delaware County at Marcus Hook, recently received permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to begin final the final bits of construction (see 
A federal court in Pennsylvania upheld the findings of a U.S. Dept. of Labor investigation that oil and gas contract worker Henkels & McCoy Inc. owes big money in back wages and overtime to 362 workers at 11 worksites in five states, including Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Connecticut, Georgia, and (yes) even in New York too. The company must now pay $1,085,830 in back wages and damages.
Two of three Marcellus/Utica states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania issued just 4 new permits, spread all around the state, all in different counties. Ohio issued 8 new permits, split equally between Encino Energy (EAP) and Southwestern Energy (Eclipse). West Virginia’s shale industry got skunked last week with no new permits for a second week in a row! We can’t remember that ever happening.
“A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.” (See below for the full quote.) Yesterday Pennsylvania Democrats unveiled their latest “generous gifts” they’re promising to bestow on Pennsylvanians from the public treasury if Gov. Wolf gets his way and imposes a Marcellus-killing carbon tax on electric power generation. The Dems figure they can raise about $300 million a year via a carbon tax and they have a wish list bigger than your wildest dreams for where they’ll spend it. One tiny problem for the Dems…
Keystone Clearwater Solutions, a company that provides water services for shale drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, is buying the Pennsylvania operations of competitor ECM Energy Services. Keystone, which operates primarily in Pennsylvania, is picking up ECM’s Williamsport, PA operation and rebranding it under the Keystone name. ECM says the sale frees them up to concentrate on their operations in Ohio and West Virginia.
In a brilliant move aimed at boxing in the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), two northeastern Pennsylvania State Senators–Gene Yaw and Lisa Baker–along with members of the PA Senate Republican Caucus (27 Senators in all), filed a lawsuit in January against the DRBC accusing the quasi-governmental agency of “taking” the property rights of PA residents without just compensation under the law (see 
Just coming to light for us now is a long-running lawsuit in Tioga County, PA by landowners who claim that UGI has taken their mineral rights as part of operating the Meeker Storage Field, an underground natural gas storage facility. The landowners lost the lawsuit in the Court of Common Pleas of Tioga County (trial court) in March 2019 (although the case began in 2016). The landowners appealed to Commonwealth Court and lost there too, in November 2020. The landowners appealed again, to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The Supremes have just accepted the case.
In January 2016, Invenergy announced its intention to build a natgas-powered electric plant in Elizabeth Township, in Allegheny County near Pittsburgh (see 
Two and a half years after Energy Transfer’s (ET) 24-inch Revolution Pipeline entered service in western Pennsylvania and exploded following a landslide (in September 2018), the pipeline finally returned to service in March of this year (see