Court Lets 16 Anti-Drilling PA Senate Democrats Join DRBC Lawsuit
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 PA Senators Sue DRBC for “Taking” Property re Frack Ban). A group of 16 left-wing PA Democrat Senators filed to “intervene” in the lawsuit two weeks ago (see 16 PA Senate Democrats Try to Block Republican DRBC Lawsuit). The court agreed to let the Democrat fox into the henhouse so they can make trouble.
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The Enervus U.S. rig count continues to climb (a very good sign). For the week ending March 24, the U.S. rig count climbed another 11 active rigs to 513. The oil-focused Permian Basin added eight new rigs. The Marcellus stayed even at 33 active rigs while the Ohio Utica picked up one active rig and now has 12 active rigs. The other major shale gas play, the Haynesville, stayed even at 47 active rigs.
At some point in the distant past (during our lifetime) swamps got renamed to “wetlands.” Don’t you just love how the left euphemizes everything? Chesapeake Energy is a bad actor when it comes to shafting landowners out of royalties, we’ll grant you that. However, the company must now pay Pennsylvania and the federal government (DOJ and EPA) a combined $1.9 million for “failure to identify and protect wetlands at 76 oil and gas well sites in Pennsylvania.” In other words, failure to protect swamps.
New Fortress Energy (NFE), which likes to build and own as much of the LNG supply chain as possible, built and operates an LNG import terminal in San Juan, Puerto Rico. After the facility was up and running, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) dinged the company, asking for an explanation as to why they built it without FERC “Mother May I?” permission. New Fortress responded last July saying FERC told them no permission was needed (see 
Yesterday we brought you the news that LOLA Energy continues to transform itself with the purchase of what was EdgeMarc Energy’s shale assets in Butler County, PA (see 
LOLA Energy (LOLA stands for 
In a very gentle and diplomatic way, Pennsylvania State Senator John Yudichak (Independent from Wilkes-Barre) told Department of Community & Economic Development (DCED) Secretary Dennis Davin on Monday he’s not doing his job. Yudichak told Davin “site selectors” (people who work with companies to select sites for big manufacturing and other types of facilities across the U.S.) aren’t aware of the tax credits available as part of Act 66, a law passed last year aimed at building new petrochemical plants in PA.
If you live in Pennsylvania, actually in just about any state, you couldn’t miss the big splash made yesterday when PA’s worst governor in the past 50 years, Tom Wolf, announced a massive taxpayer-funded initiative to build seven new solar energy facilities in six PA counties that will strip away some 2,000 acres of valuable PA farmland to produce enough electricity to power just half of PA’s state government. (Perhaps we can call it the half-baked solar project?) Leftists in mainstream media are falling over themselves to praise Wolf. We (as usual) have a different take.
We’ve written plenty about Shell’s mighty ethane cracker plant project happening in Beaver County, PA. It is one of the biggest construction projects currently underway in the entire country. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit one year ago, the construction site closed down, going from 8,000 workers to a skeleton crew of 300. The way Shell handled the closure, and handled the subsequent reopening, is worth understanding and studying.
Just two of the three M-U states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania received only 3 new permits for two drillers. One of the two is a completely new company for us! Ohio received 0 new permits last week. And West Virginia received 7 new permits, all for the same company in the same county on the same well pad as all of the permits issued two weeks ago.
In February we told you about a group of radicalized anti-fossil fuelers who raised a stink with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) over the DEP’s routine, nothing-to-see-here renewal of permits for already-running (with no operational problems) shale wastewater recycling facilities scattered around the state (see 
In July 2018 three radical environmental groups dropped their objections to permits the Pennsylvania DEP previously granted for the Mariner East 2 Pipeline. Clean Air Council, Mountain Watershed Association, and THE Delaware Riverkeeper “settled” their appeal of 20 permits issued to Sunoco for the ME2 project (see 
In February 2020, Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Pat McDonnell sent a letter to the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). McDonnell’s letter alleges Shell’s 97-mile, two-legged Falcon pipeline system that will carry ethane to the mighty Shell cracker plant now under construction in Beaver County, PA, “may have been constructed with defective corrosion coating protection.” It’s an explosive charge just coming to light now, more than a year later.
A third Pennsylvania township, Clara Township in Potter County, is about to be lured onto the same litigation rocks by the siren song of the uber-radical Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) as two other towns, by adopting an illegal “home rule” law in an attempt to block a new wastewater injection well. CELDF lured two other towns onto the same litigation rocks, where they’ve crashed–Grant Township in Indiana County and Highland Township in Elk County. Both towns were sued by the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) when they tried to block injection wells using the same home rule tactic (see 