Penn State Says Compressor Stn Noise Affects Songbirds
The official state bird for New York State is the tiny Eastern bluebird–no bigger than a chickadee. Here at MDN HQ, we maintain two bird feeders year-round in the front yard. We can remember only maybe 3-4 times over the years we’ve actually seen a bluebird at our feeders. The bluebird is one of our favorites because we see it so rarely. According to researchers at Penn State in State College, PA, loud noise from pipeline compressor stations has the ability to “diminish” the “reproductive success” of bluebirds and other songbirds. Who would even think to conduct such an experiment?
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Last August we told you about the politically-motivated prosecution (by the Chester County, PA District Attorney’s office) of men connected to a security firm providing off-duty constables to protect Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline construction sites (see 
Pennsylvania’s Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) has just thrown up a huge roadblock to Democrat/autocrat PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s attempt to railroad through a proposal to force PA to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a $2.6 billion carbon tax aimed at killing coal and gas-fired power plants. The IRRC told the rule-adopting Environmental Quality Board (EQB) it should delay adoption of the proposed RGGI regulation by one year, from 2022 to 2023.
Yesterday the country’s largest natural gas producer, EQT Corporation, released its 4Q and full-year 2020 update, holding a conference call with analysts to discuss the results. The update shows the company produced an average of 4.45 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of natural gas in 4Q. Although there was plenty of “free cash flow” for the year, on paper the company lost $967 million in 2020, which is an improvement over the year before when it lost $1.2 billion. Perhaps the biggest news (for us) coming from yesterday’s update is that in 4Q EQT turned its drilling attention to the West Virginia Marcellus. EQT plans to do much more drilling in WV this year too.
We hate it when the bad guys win even a small victory, as has just happened. We told you last week about a group of radicalized anti-fossil fuelers who raised a stink with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Proteciton (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 
Here’s a small victory to celebrate. In July 2018 three radical environmental groups dropped their objections to permits the 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 
All three M-U states received permits to drill new shale wells last week. Pennsylvania received 16 new permits. Ohio received 3 new permits. And West Virginia received 4 new permits.
Once you sort through all of the subsidiaries of subsidiaries of subsidiaries, you’ll find this news from a press release we spotted this morning: PennEnergy Resources has sold a gathering pipeline system in western Pennsylvania, called Pine Run Midstream, to a joint venture partnership between venture capital firm Energy Spectrum Partners (based in Texas) and utility/pipeline company UGI (based in Pennsylvania). Sale price: $205 million.
Danger, Will Robinson! One of the leading lights in the Pennsylvania legislature against Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf’s idiotic (and dangerous) carbon tax plan, called RGGI (Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative), has been Republican House Rep. Jim Struzzi (from Indiana County). Struzzi sponsored House Bill (HB) 2025 last year giving PA residents a say in whether or not the state should join RGGI (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) is once again spinning an error by a major Marcellus driller, Range Resources, as some sort of evil plot to avoid and defraud the DEP. Due to a mistake by a former employee, Range misclassified 42 old conventional wells on acreage it owns and did not plug the wells in a timely (for DEP) fashion. The DEP has just clipped the company $294,000 for the mistake.
A new attack against the Marcellus Shale industry in Pennsylvania comes from fossil fuel haters attempting to dispute permits reissued for existing (NOT new) shale wastewater storage and recycling facilities scattered across the state. Antis seek to shut down pipelines, rail shipments, recycling facilities, injection wells–anything they can to stop to prevent drillers from extracting natural gas from shale in the Keystone State. Sick people.
Last June MDN told you about a plan by McCandless, a township in Allegheny County, PA (near Pittsburgh), to block any and all shale drilling within its borders by getting creative (see 
As we reported two weeks ago, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (Democrat) has, for the seventh year in a row, introduced a Marcellus-killing severance tax proposal as part of his annual budget proposal (see