PA DEP Proposes New Horizontal Pipeline Drilling Regulations
On Jan. 15 the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environment Protection’s (DEP) Oil and Gas Technical Advisory Board will meet to hear a presentation on a draft Horizontal Drilling Pipeline Construction Guidance and stakeholder report. The so-called guidance is the first step in adopting new regulations (i.e. laws) to govern underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) for pipeline projects.
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The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) recent settlement with Energy Transfer (ET) concerning the Revolution Pipeline explosion in southwestern PA also has significant impact on southeastern PA. How? The signed consent order in which ET pays the state $30.6 million lifts a moratorium on granting new permits to ET for *any* of its pipeline projects in PA for the past one year–including permits to complete the Mariner East (ME) projects. With the consent order comes a lifting of that permit moratorium, meaning the final bits of ME can now be completed.
This is a slightly older story (from December), but an important story that deserves your attention. Last October Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf went completely off his rocker with a power-grab to force PA into a regional alliance to tax natural gas-fired electric plants out of existence (see 
Last July MDN broke the news that LOLA Energy had filed a lawsuit in Greene County, PA against EQT for allegedly drilling shale wells under property EQT formerly leased, but property for which the leases had lapsed and were subsequently scooped up by LOLA Energy II (see 
If you use the number of active rigs operating in a given shale play/state as the measure for “success,” 2019 wasn’t such a good year for the Marcellus/Utica. In January, Pennsylvania entered 2019 with 48 active rigs. In December that number was cut nearly in half, to 25 active rigs. It was a similar story for Ohio, which entered 2019 with 17 active rigs and exited with 12 rigs. West Virginia, on the other hand, entered 2019 with 15 rigs and exited the year with the same number. But at one point during the year WV had 21 active rigs. We have the monthly rig stats below for all three states.
The companies behind PennEast Pipeline, a $1.2 billion new greenfield pipeline project from Luzerne County, PA to Mercer County, NJ, have not given up on the long-delayed project. As we told you in November, PennEast 
Last June Philadelphia City Council voted to approve a $60 million Marcellus LNG export facility, to be built on property owned by Philadelphia Gas Works (see 
One of the companies in the Marcellus industry targeted for extinction by Pennsylvania’s former Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, was Minuteman Environmental Services (see 
Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Law Judge Elizabeth Barnes has tried to stop or block or otherwise do damage to the Mariner East pipeline projects for years. Most (all?) of her actions against the project have, in the past, been reversed by a vote of PUC Commissioners (see 
Carnegie Mellon University is clearly feeling the heat over their overtly political, unscientific “study” that says Marcellus Shale extraction and the use of that gas is polluting the air and causing man-made global warming–and therefore killing people (see 
The Heinz Endowments, a grantmaking organization in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that sits under the thumb of Mamma Teresa Heinz Kerry (wacko lefty Democrat), has long been viewed as a community pillar in western Pennsylvania. What you may not know is that Heinz Endowments has spent over $120 million in “environmental grants” between 2008 and 2016, much of that money funding anti-shale and anti-fossil fuel campaigns. The Heinz Endowments is no friend to the working class in western PA.