PA AG Continues NatGas Witch Hunt – 2 Dozen DEP Workers Testify
Last week Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro sat down to talk with the editorial board/reporters of the Washington (PA) Observer-Reporter. He refused to confirm or deny he’s actively conducting a witch hunt of the PA Marcellus Shale industry, including trotting dozens of people before a grand jury–even though the media has been reporting on his grand jury fishing expedition since February (see PA AG Continues Marcellus Witch Hunt, Impanels Grand Jury). No worries. None other than the Deputy Secretary of the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (head of the DEP’s Office of Oil and Gas Management) has confirmed he appeared before Shapiro’s witch hunt grand jury.
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In a speech delivered October 31 to the P4 Climate Action Summit in downtown Pittsburgh, Mayor Bill Peduto declared his hatred for the petrochemical industry. He doesn’t want any more Shell crackers junking up his regional backyard. The highly negative reaction to Peduto’s idiotic (and pandering) remarks was swift. What petchem company wants to build in a region where the mayor of its largest city is trash talking the industry? In a bid to counter Peduto’s economically damaging remarks, some 20 county officials from Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Lawrence, Mercer, Washington and Westmoreland counties issued a joint statement on Wednesday to show their support for the petrochemical and shale industries in the region.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced yesterday it has awarded grants totaling $1,891,000 for 12 clean energy vehicle projects through its Alternative Fuels Incentive Grants (AFIG) program. What’s striking about the list of winners is just how many of them are for natural gas vehicles/technology, as opposed to electric. The DEP has another $3 million to blow on these grants by the end of the year, with a deadline for applications of Dec. 13. Line up to get yours!
Yesterday a bipartisan group of Pennsylvania House and Senate members held a press conference in Harrisburg to introduce parallel bills to prevent Gov. Tom Wolf from following through on his insane plan to tax carbon dioxide from natural gas-fired power plants–yet another attempt by Wolf to raise ~$300 million a year for Harrisburg politicians to spread around to voters in an effort to get themselves reelected. The proposed bills will prohibit the state from joining the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) without express permission from the PA legislature.
The Appalachia Development Group (ADG) is leading an effort to build a ~$3.3 billion NGL storage hub in Appalachia. From the start, the thinking has been the storage hub would be located somewhere in West Virginia (see 
A leftist anti-fossil group calling itself Protect PT, in Penn Township (Westmoreland County), PA, backed with big money from Big Green groups, continues to sue in an effort to block shale drilling in the township. And they keep losing their lawsuits. Protect PT has launched multiple challenges to a local Penn Township ordinance which allows Apex Energy and Huntley & Huntley to drill and operate wells.
Does anyone else grow weary of pompous Democrat windbags in high elected office in Pennsylvania posturing and preening to be the next gubernatorial candidate? PA’s leftist Attorney General Josh Shapiro is certainly one of them (see 
The Risberg Line, a 60-mile pipeline from Crawford County, PA to Erie County, PA, and from there across the border into Ashtabula County, OH, began construction in February (see 
Washington (PA) Observer-Reporter reporter Rick Schrum recently went on a tour of fracking operations at a Range Resources site in Allegheny County, PA. Schrum interviewed Range’s water operations manager about how and where Range gets the water to drill and frack its wells.
UGI Energy Services, the pipeline subsidiary of UGI Corporation (utility company) has just completed the fourth expansion of their northeastern PA pipeline gathering system called the Auburn Gathering System. In May 2018 MDN told you about UGI’s plans to add another two compressor stations and more gathering pipelines to benefit Cabot Oil & Gas (see 
Pittsburgh Business Times ace reporter Paul Gough has done it again–breaking big news related to ExxonMobil and their very active search to locate a site in the Pittsburgh region to build a gigantic ethane cracker plant. This time Paul’s sources are telling him Exxon has widened their search. A few weeks ago we told you Exxon was looking for potential locations in Beaver County, PA, near where Shell is building their $8 billion cracker plant (see 
Speaking of cracker plants and the exciting news that ExxonMobil is very actively searching for a location in the Marcellus/Utica region to build one (see today’s lead story), the fact that Exxon is looking is driving leftist environmental kooks bonkers. They hate the Shell cracker going up in Beaver County, and they want to ensure there are no other such plants built anywhere in the region–or at least in Pennsylvania. The eco-leftists have bullied Pittsburgh’s Mayor Bill Peduto to join their cause, who recently stated in a speech, “I oppose any additional petrochemical companies coming to western Pennsylvania.” The president of the Pennsylvania Chemical Industry Council has responded to Peduto’s inane comments, exposing him for the dunce he is.
Energy Transfer (ET), the big pipeline company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, issued its third quarter 2019 update yesterday. ET is the builder of the Rover Pipeline in the Utica Shale, the Mariner East trio of pipelines in the PA Marcellus, and the Revolution gathering system in southwestern PA. With Rover built and fully operational, our interest was in locating information/updates on the ME and Revolution projects. We hit paydirt in yesterday’s update.