Marcellus Shale Coalition Debunks False Claims in PA AG Report
The fallout continues over a totally fake/manufactured “report” issued by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro last week bashing the shale industry (see PA AG Launches I-HATE-FRACKING Hotline; Report Bashing Shale, DEP). Mainstream media continues to repeat the false allegations made in the report, making it necessary for the shale industry to respond and debunk the report. Yesterday the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) sent an open letter to every member of PA’s legislature exposing Shapiro’s false report for the piece of toilet paper it is.
Read More “Marcellus Shale Coalition Debunks False Claims in PA AG Report”
Former Chester County, PA District Attorney Tom Hogan (RINO), and his successor Deb Ryan (Democrat) are 100% humiliated after a Chester County Magisterial District Judge dismissed the entire case against the local head of security for Energy Transfer in what the DA’s office lyingly calls a “buy a badge scheme.” Judge John Bailey dismissed all 54 criminal counts against Frank Recknagel over his hiring of constables as off-duty security guards for the Mariner East pipeline project. The DA’s office tried to criminalize moonlighting for the pipeline.
We’re still steamed about a totally fake/manufactured “report” issued by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro last week bashing the shale industry (see 
In February we told you the fix is in. A bankruptcy judge in Delaware announced he would award the sale of the closed Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) refinery to a Chicago developer that has plans to demolish the East Coast’s largest and oldest refinery–and replace it with big, smelly, noisy warehouses with trucks coming and going day and night (see 
Yesterday Pennsylvania’s corrupt Attorney General, Josh Shapiro (who is running for governor trying to curry favor with Big Green wackadoodles) issued a 243-page report (full copy below), the result of two years of muckraking “investigations” into the Marcellus Shale drilling industry. Shapiro announced a new hotline where people can call and complain about frackers. And he had the gall to issue his own legislative agenda to further restrict fracking! In normal, sane states prosecutors uphold laws created by the legislature (and signed by the executive). In PA, Shapiro (in the judiciary) wants to make new laws. The man is out of control and needs to be locked in a padded room for his own safety.
The Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) does a good job of guesstimating how much impact fee revenue will get generated in the coming year, based on permit and producing wells activity in the current year. Impact fees are PA’s equivalent of a severance tax–a fee paid by drillers for each new well they drill, paid over a 15-year period. This year IFO is offering up two scenarios for how much money the state will receive in impact fee revenues next year (based on wells drilled and active this year). One scenario is based on natgas prices averaging at least $2.25/MMBtus (million British Thermal Units) on the NYMEX, and the other scenario assumes gas prices slip below that level.
McCandless, a township in Allegheny County, PA (near Pittsburgh) is attempting to block any and all shale drilling within its borders by getting creative. The town is in the process of adopting changes to its zoning laws that make it illegal to drill a well in land zoned for commercial development. Since towns have to allow drilling in at least one zone, McCandless will allow it only in “institutional districts.” That means drilling will only be allowed on land with schools, hospitals, universities, and parks. Fat chance any drilling will ever happen in those places!
Shell slowly but surely continues to ramp back up the work being done at its mighty ethane cracker construction site in Beaver County, PA following a shutdown of activity due to the coronavirus pandemic. When the COVID-19 coronavirus hit in March, Shell stopped all work on the cracker plant, sending nearly 8,000 workers home in mid-March for what was thought to be “a few days to a few weeks” (see 
In April of this year, MDN told you that the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) had finally, after more than two years of evaluation, granted a permit to build a shale wastewater injection well in Plum Boro in Allegheny County (see 
We should have guessed this was coming. A New York City law firm has launched what it hopes will turn into a class action lawsuit against Cabot Oil & Gas for securities fraud following the sleazy attempt by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro to turn a 12-year-old accident (methane migration) into a felony (see 
Pennsylvania’s Pipeline Investment Program (or PIPE) grants cover part of the cost of building new natgas pipelines to connect homes and businesses in rural parts of the state to homegrown Marcellus Shale gas supplies. We’ve written about many of the more-than-a-dozen (so far) PIPE grant projects in the past (
The Washington & Jefferson College Center for Energy Policy and Management (Washington, PA) is hosting a free webinar series on “
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held a virtual hearing on Gov. Wolf’s plan to bypass the state legislature and force the state to join the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a group of northeastern states attempting to assassinate coal and gas-fired power generation by taxing it to death with an insane carbon tax (see 
Last October PA Gov. Tom Wolf, in a naked power-grab, said he would try to force PA to join the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a group of northeastern states attempting to assassinate coal and gas-fired power generation by taxing it to death with an insane carbon tax (see 
In March a worker hired to x-ray welds on sections of the Mariner East 2 pipeline in southwestern Pennsylvania was charged with falsifying records–that he falsely claimed to have performed work when he didn’t (see