Bradford County | Energy Services | Eureka Resources | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Wastewater
Eurkea Gets $1.5M Grant to Expand Lithium from Wastewater PA Plant
Eureka Resources, which owns and operates a centralized treatment/recycling facility in Bradford County, PA to process Marcellus watewater, is getting a $1.5 million state Redevelopment Assistance Capital Projects grant to help the plant launch a high tech solution to recover lithium from Marcellus wastewater. Yes, lithium, like that used to manufacture rechargeable batteries.
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In March 2018 MDN brought you the news that Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) was exploring the possibility of producing its own electricity (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has drafted up new “technical guidance” on “radioactivity monitoring at solid waste processing and disposal facilities” specifically targeted at the shale industry. Translation: new regulations for how dumps (and drillers) monitor and report on radioactivity levels from incoming loads of drill cuttings. The DEP has posted their proposed new guidance document for public comment, after which they will adopt the new regs.
Did you know that building just two new compressor stations in Pennsylvania will bring the state an extra $100 million in economic activity and support 680 direct, indirect and induced jobs? We sure didn’t! Last week Williams filed a newly published study with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on the economic impact of their proposed Leidy South Expansion Project (full study embedded below). The study makes an irrefutable case for building the new compressor stations in Luzerne and Schuylkill counties.
In June there was a series of explosions and a massive fire at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) Refining Complex, the East Coast’s oldest and largest oil refinery (see 
Allegheny County, PA (Pittsburgh and surrounding suburbs) is seriously considering a new law that would require landowners to report, via a public registry, land they have leased oil and gas drilling. Specifically land leased for shale wells. The law would require all sorts of private information to be divulged, publicly, including what kind of drilling/fracking will theoretically take place. And what if a landowner doesn’t “register” with the authorities? Here come the fines. The only reason we can divine for such a law is to shame landowners (lease-shaming), to prompt neighbors to hassle them for leasing their land. Or perhaps to alert Big Green groups so they can use paid protesters (as they so often do) to show up and protest in front of someone’s leased property. What has our society become?
Leave it to ace reporter Paul Gough from the Pittsburgh Business Times to unearth some earth-shattering news–that ExxonMobil is actively looking at locations in Beaver County, Pennsylvania to potentially build a second multi-billion dollar cracker plant. Shell is already well along in building the region’s first ethane cracker–in Monaca (Beaver County). Will lightning strike twice for the good citizens of Beaver County? Maybe!
Last year the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued administrative orders requiring three oil and gas companies–Alliance Petroleum Corporation (a subsidiary of Diversified Gas & Oil), XTO Energy, and CNX Resources–to plug 1,058 abandoned oil and gas wells across Pennsylvania (see 
What happens when two of three elected town supervisors either have a lease with a pipeline company, or have close family members who have leases with the pipeline company, and they must vote to approve a new power plant project that would use shale gas from that pipeline to power it? It’s called a conflict of interest, and we’re about to find out the answer to that question in Robinson Township (Washington County), PA.