Cumberland County | Energy Services | Energy Transfer Partners | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Sunoco Logistics
PA Judge Fines Mariner East Pipe $1K for Scaring Homeowner
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 PA PUC Overrules Lib Judge – Mariner East 1 Returns to Service and PA PUC Allows ME2 Pipeline Work to Restart Near Philly). Will PUC members also overturn Barnes’ latest overreach in fining the Mariner East 1 pipeline $1,000, to be given to a nearby homeowner who doesn’t feel “safe” living 1,000 feet from a pipeline that’s been there all of his life?
Read More “PA Judge Fines Mariner East Pipe $1K for Scaring Homeowner”
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.
A leftist anti-fossil group calling itself Protect PT, in Penn Township (Westmoreland County), PA, backed with money from Big Green groups, continues to sue in an effort to block shale drilling in the township. And they keep losing their lawsuits. In November the group lost an appeal of a lower court ruling which challenges a Penn Township ordinance allowing Apex Energy and Huntley & Huntley (now Olympus Energy) to drill and operate wells (see 
The husband and wife team of Mark and Melinda Clatterbuck are at it again–getting themselves arrested for illegal trespass and disorderly conduct at a pipeline site. They previously got themselves arrested in Lancaster County, PA when protesting the Williams Atlantic Sunrise pipeline project (see 
The rig count in the Marcellus/Utica region is crashing–down to its lowest level for a December since the M-U became a “thing.” It’s now lower than the levels reached in 2014, which was the advent of the first “crash” in rig counts. BUT (and this is a big BUT), lower rig counts do not necessarily mean less drilling or less production. How can that be?
As far as we can tell, MDN is exclusively breaking the following news: On December 5 (last Thursday), the PHMSA (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) granted a special permit to Energy Transport Solutions, LLC (i.e. New Fortress Energy) to transport LNG in DOT-113C120 rail tanker cars between Wyalusing, PA and Gibbstown, NJ. This is huge! There still is not a new regulation/law to allow shipment of LNG by rail across the country, but somehow New Fortress has gotten a special permit to do so anyway. Huge!
This post catches you up on both some old and some new news. In February of this year Chevron signed a lease with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) to lease 1,028.4 acres of land *under* the Monongahela River in Greene and Fayette counties (southwestern corner of the state). That’s the old news. The new news is that Chevron has just added another 235.6 acres to the original lease for a grand total of 1,264.3 acres. Chevron is paying DCNR just over $5 million in lease signing bonuses for the entire deal.
Once upon a time Carnegie Mellon University used to conduct real research and publish real scientific studies with respect to the PA Marcellus Shale (see 
