Danny DeVito is Pro-Shale! Runs for PA State House in SWPA
We almost didn’t run this post, but, well, it was just too funny not to! Danny DeVito is running to become the next representative for the 45th District of the Pennsylvania State House, located in Allegheny County (i.e. Pittsburgh). And he’s running as a Republican on a pro-shale drilling platform! Wait, isn’t Danny DeVito that really short Hollywood actor who’s an uber-liberal and hardened Democrat?! Indeed he is. But we’re not talking about *that* Danny DeVito.
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There is one court case in Pennsylvania that we’ve been concerned about since April 2018. The Briggs v Southwestern Energy case had the power to block most new Marcellus Shale drilling in the state. The case, revolving around the oil and gas “rule of capture” principle, was appealed by Southwestern all the way to the PA Supreme Court. We are elated to report that yesterday the Supremes ruled supreme and found in favor of Southwestern–retaining the rule of capture in the Keystone State. This is seriously good news for both drillers and leased landowners. Below we explain what the rule of capture is, the background of the case, and what the Supremes said in yesterday’s important ruling.
We are sad to report that over 1,000 dedicated workers who used to work at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) oil refinery in Philly will permanently remain out of the jobs they once held at the facility. The owner of PES has decided to sell the now-closed refinery to a real estate developer from Chicago who intends to convert the property from a refinery (the nation’s oldest and largest refinery along the East Coast) into…warehouses. Yeah, warehouses. Complete with an increase in truck traffic, diesel fumes, and all sorts of headaches that come from a massive warehouse complex located in an urban area. It’s sad.
In a coordinated attack on Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 1100, aimed at attracting NEW petrochemical investment to the state, Big Green has launched a letter-writing campaign to newspapers to try and shame PA Senate Republicans into voting against the state’s future economic and jobs bonanza. Fat chance Big Green!
The ticket to getting elected in uber-liberal southeastern Pennsylvania (in the Philadelphia suburbs) is to track left with your politics. Even the few elected Republicans in SEPA are nothing more than Democrat-lite in their philosophy and voting. Two Democrats who unseated PA House Republicans in Chester County in 2018 by running against the Mariner East pipeline project, are now being challenged because of their pipeline positions.
The sleaziest of Pennsylvania’s Big Green groups–THE Delaware Riverkeeper and PennFuture–have filed a “friend of the court” (amicus) brief in a federal lawsuit hoping they can help gut the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by denying FERC the only way the agency has of combating these sleazy groups–something called a tolling order.
It’s full speed ahead for the Adelphia Gateway Pipeline project in southeastern Pennsylvania. In December the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a final approval for the project (see 
Electric fracking (or e-fracking) continues to displace traditional fracking in the Marcellus/Utica. What’s the difference between the two? Traditional fracking uses diesel-fueled engines to produce electricity to power pressure pumps for hydraulic fracturing operations. Electric fracking uses natural gas from the well pad to power turbines to create electricity. Electric fracking fleets are roughly half the size of traditional diesel fleets–and a whole lot quieter.
Two weeks ago the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced the largest fine for a single company/project in its history. DEP slapped Energy Transfer (ET) with a $30.6 million fine for the construction and subsequent explosion of the company’s Revolution gathering pipeline in western PA (see 
The gloves are off in Harrisburg. We previously told you about Gov. Wolf’s plan to have PA join with northeastern states in the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a regional alliance to slap a carbon tax on natural gas-fired electric plants (see 
PA Rep. Cris Dush, a Republican from Jefferson County, is about to introduce two bills that would either dissolve both the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) and Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) or withdraw PA from both compacts.
Aqua America, the nation’s second-largest water/wastewater utility company headquartered near Philadelphia, announced in October 2018 it would buy Peoples Gas, the nation’s fifth-largest natural gas utility company headquartered in Pittsburgh, for $4.275 billion (see