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ME2 Pipe Inspector Admits Falsifying Welding Records 77 Times
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 ME2 Pipeline Worker Charged with Falsifying Welding Records). Yesterday the worker, via a video hearing, plead guilty to 77 counts of falsifying documents.
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In the American system of justice, when someone is accused of committing a crime, they are presumed innocent under the law until it is proven, in a court of law, they have committed said crime. But when a defendant, someone accused of committing a crime, is a fossil fuel company, that defendant is automatically presumed to be guilty. There is no presumption of innocence. That’s what is happening to Cabot Oil & Gas.
In Ohio, it costs drillers $5,500 to file for and receive a permit to drill a new shale well. In West Virginia, the cost is $10,150. In Pennsylvania, it has cost drillers $5,000 for a new shale well permit. Following a meeting yesterday of the PA Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC), PA’s permit fee is about to zoom to the top of the M-U list: $12,500 (2 1/2 times the previous fee). In fact, the cost of a shale permit in PA will become the highest in the country.
Earlier this week Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced an indictment of Cabot Oil & Gas for allegations of methane migration going back more than a decade (see 
We previously told you that Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzai, a long-time champion for the Marcellus Shale industry, would leave office as of Monday (see 
The door has been closed on “Dimock” (in Susquehanna County, PA) for years. Dimock, you may recall, was made famous by Josh Fox’s so-called documentaries Gasland and Gasland 2, aired endlessly on HBO. His allegations about fracking malfeasance by Cabot Oil & Gas were completely debunked in a real documentary called 
After spending years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to investigate Range Resources over a simple regulatory matter settled years ago by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection, PA’s leftist Attorney General, Josh Shapiro, announced on Friday he had finally bullied Range into pleading “no contest” to so-called environmental crimes (misdemeanors), forcing the company to pay $50,000 in fines and $100,000 to Shapiro’s favorite Big Green charities. Does that sound like a success to you? Shapiro spent multiple hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to force the company to pay $150K. Sounds like Shapiro is The Biggest Loser to us.
A group of leftwing radical professors (all of the Democrats) from seven universities in Ohio and Pennsylvania have colluded to write a letter to the governors of Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The letter trash talks the billions of dollars in economic impact and tens of thousands of jobs ethane cracker plants and the petrochemical industry will have in the region. The leftist gang of seven poo-poos those estimates and says the proposed PTT cracker is too “risky” to approve. How do they figure?
CNX Resources, one of our favorite Marcellus/Utica drillers, issued an operational update yesterday with some interesting new information. Chief among the tidbits is the fact that CNX, beginning May 1, shut-in some of its production. Specifically around 375 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d). The company expects that number to decline to 300 MMcf/d by July. After that, they’ll play it by ear.
Enverus (formerly known as Drillinginfo) recently released its latest FundamentalEdge report that explores the ongoing supply response to demand destruction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the report, Enverus estimates how much dry gas production each major shale play produced, month by month, from January through May of this year. The numbers show that production from the Marcellus/Utica, which produces the most natural gas of any play, decreased the most of any play–by some 1.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) from January to May.
Tri-Point, LLC is an oilfield services company (OFS) specializing in products and services for drillers and pipeline companies. Tri-Point is headquartered in Houston, Texas but has a number of field offices, including an office in Towanda (Bradford County), PA that services the Marcellus industry. Sadly the company is in bankruptcy. We spotted an announcement about a virtual auction later this month to sell off/liquidate all of the company’s assets.