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Sunoco Fights DEP’s “Arbitrary and Capricious” Marcus Hook Plan
Once again Energy Transfer (ET), via subsidiary Sunoco Partners Marketing & Terminals, is squabbling with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection. ET is also at odds with the special court set up to hear appeals of DEP rulings called the Environmental Hearing Board (EHB). ET says a series of proposed and signed-off modifications to the Marcus Hook refinery near Philadelphia has been reopened and numbers/assumptions changed by the DEP, and combined together in a way that makes meeting air quality regulations more difficult and expensive. The DEP combined sources after the individual projects were previously approved by the agency.
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Pennsylvania State Senator Gene Yaw is on fire! His verbal barbs concerning energy production keep coming–and they’re aimed at the right people for the right reasons. Last week the Senate committee Yaw chairs, the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, held hearings to consider the new 2021/22 budget request from the PA Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR). As we told you last week, Yaw asked some pointed questions of DCNR Secretary Cindy Adams Dunn (see 
Last Saturday Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s office published, via the Pennsylvania Bulletin, a list of agency-by-agency regulations currently in development with an estimated schedule for future actions. In the list is the all-important (to the oil and gas industry) Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). It’s been our observation when the government in general, and DEP in particular, changes a regulation, it typically makes it more onerous (and expensive) to comply with. Some of the upcoming changes to DEP regulations happening this year we’ve already warned you about. Others are new to us.
Wow, look how far the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has fallen under Gov. Tom Wolf and his subservient lackey Pat McDonnell. The DEP yesterday announced the release of “equity principles to guide investments through Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.” Translation: Here’s how we’re going to waste (i.e. “invest”) all of the $2.36 billion we’ll raise through the RGGI carbon tax, and here’s how we’ll “help” those we’re screwing with the carbon tax. Of course, those who will pay this insane tax include each and every resident and business in PA that uses electricity. In other words, everyone. You’ll ALL get soaked with this new tax. Observe what Wolf has done to your gasoline taxes in PA and apply that to electricity–that’s what’s coming your way if RGGI is implemented.
All three M-U states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania received 9 new permits, with 5 of those permits going to Cabot Oil & Gas and their drilling program in Susquehanna County. Ohio received 4 new permits, all for the same company (Encino Energy) in the same county (Harrison) on the same well pad. And West Virginia received 3 new permits, all for the same company (Northeast Natural Energy) in the same county (Monongalia) on the same well pad.
Chesapeake Energy has screwed over landowners in northeastern Pennsylvania (and elsewhere) for years. Under the provisions of a “settlement” just brokered by PA’s shale-hating Attorney General, Josh Shapiro, Chesapeake will get away with settling the royalty case for pennies on the dollar. The average landowner will get just over $300 from this “settlement.” What a cruel joke. This is all about headlines and showmanship for Shapiro who hopes to run for governor next year. Don’t fall for his “I’m the savior of landowners” schtick. He just sold landowners down the river in return for a headline his campaign can use.
This is a cautionary tale that highlights what we have preached over the years. From some of our earliest posts here on MDN, we have cautioned landowners (and rights owners) to treat the lease signing bonuses and royalties they receive in the Marcellus/Utica as an investment and not spend all the money as it comes in on the assumption it will always be there. We have an example of what happens if you spend it as soon as you get it: Greene County, PA.
Whether or not you agree with Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s idiotic plan to join something called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon tax that will force PA residents to pay $2.36 billion in higher electric costs over a 10-year period (and shut down coal and gas-fired power plants), there is one thing we can all agree on: The way Wolf is attempting to enroll the state in RGGI is wrong. Wolf is denying the state legislature (controlled by Republicans) a role in approving whether or not this new carbon tax will be assessed on PA citizens.
On Monday PennEast Pipeline filed its opening brief in a case to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in April. The case appeals a lower court ruling that disallows PennEast from using eminent domain to build across land owned or controlled by the State of New Jersey. PennEast calls the previous ruling by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals “deeply flawed” and “seriously misunderstands both eminent domain and sovereign immunity.” What are PennEast’s chances of winning, and if they do win, when will PennEast get built?
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) released their latest quarterly Natural Gas Production Report for October through December 2020 (full copy below). There are two exciting bits of news coming from this report that (so far) nobody else is reporting: (1) After eight consecutive quarters (two years) of declining natgas production from shale (comparing the current quarter to the same quarter from the previous year), the trend reversed in 4Q20; and (2) even with all of the curtailments from Marcellus producers in PA last year, the state still produced a record high volume of natural gas–an all-time high record!
The pandemic did its best to shut the world down, and maybe it succeeded in shutting down other countries–but not here in the US of A. Against an onslaught of shutdowns (particularly in “blue” states), people staying home, businesses closing, anarchy and chaos in large Democrat cities…and against an onslaught against fossil fuels by environmental Nazis seeking to destroy the economies of the world via bans of oil and natural gas and coal…U.S. natural gas production decreased by just 1 percent last year. Can you believe it? That’s a victory in our book!
Some two and a half years after Energy Transfer’s (ET) Revolution Pipeline entered service in western Pennsylvania and exploded following a landslide, the pipeline finally returned to service yesterday. The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued a press release to say it had extracted another $125,000 from ET and has allowed the pipeline to resume service.