PA Gov Wolf’s $4.5B Severance Tax Debacle Dead as a Doornail
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s Santa Claus routine is wearing thin. As he has done year after year with his annual proposed budgets, Wolf once again is calling for a massive tax increase of $4.5 billion, assessed solely on the Marcellus Shale industry, in order to fund a panoply of projects (see Wolf Lies About 2020 Proposed Budget – Includes $4.5B Tax Increase). The PA House and Senate (both chambers controlled by Republican majorities) are standing firm against Wolf’s desire to tax the Marcellus out of existence. They recognize his tax would kill the goose laying economic golden eggs in the state.
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Yesterday MDN brought you news about Democrat trade union members in Pennsylvania turning on one of their own–Gov. Tom Wolf (see 
The sale of the bankrupt former Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) refinery has officially become a soap opera. Last June a series of explosions and a massive fire at the facility, the East Coast’s oldest and largest oil refinery, closed it down (see 
In December 2018, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that so-called “stripper wells” (low-producing wells) can be taxed under the 2012 Act 13 law, slapped with an impact tax assessment if those wells produce more than 90 thousand cubic feet per day (Mcf/d) of gas in a single month, any month (see 
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf flat out, 100% lied when he introduced his latest annual budget on Tuesday, declaring “it doesn’t raise taxes.” B.S. As he has done for the past six budgets, Wolf once again is calling for a new severance tax on the Marcellus. On top of the existing impact tax (the equivalent of a severance tax). Wolf’s plan calls for a new tax that would steal $4.5 billion out of the pockets of drillers and landowners in order to redistribute their hard-earned wealth to a panoply of others.
Pennsylvania State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, Majority Chair of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, doesn’t put up with the juvenile antics from the Democrats on his committee–like Danielle Friel Otten and Greg Vitali–from those who violate decorum by pretending they want to ask a question when in fact they want to pontificate like the gasbags they are. Wednesday at a hearing on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), Metcalfe shut down Otten and Vitali when they attempted to violate rules and bloviate instead of asking relevant questions.
A fascinating new study has just been published in the peer-reviewed journal Science of The Total Environment. The new study, titled “Characterizing anecdotal claims of groundwater contamination in shale energy basins,” looks at the perception of landowners who say local fracking activities have impacted (polluted) their water wells–versus reality. The study finds that in most cases the so-called pollution problems of these water wells is (using our own words here) “all in the heads” of the landowners. It’s not real. Fracking, in fact, has NOT caused the pollution of their wells. Researchers studied wells in the Texas Barnett and Eagle Ford, the Louisiana Haynesville, and (yep) the Pennsylvania Marcellus–in Dimock.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro claims an accident in 2017 (based on human error) that resulted in 63,000 gallons of produced water in Lycoming County, PA spilling onto the ground (outside the well pad) is negligent and a crime. Shapiro has filed criminal charges against Inflection Energy and the subcontracting company they used, Double D. We view it as yet another stunt by a man who wants to tee himself up to run for governor.
A longtime dispute between the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) and Range Resources reemerged in January when the DEP ordered Range to fix a well in Lycoming County the DEP alleges is leaking methane into the surrounding ground and water supplies. The DEP says faulty cement casing allows methane to leak. Range maintains the methane was already in the ground/water supply long before it drilled the well. Range is appealing the DEP’s order to “fix it” to a special environmental court.
The U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Energy (of the Committee on Energy and Commerce) held a hearing yesterday called “Modernizing the Natural Gas Act to Ensure it Works for Everyone.” The Natural Gas Act of 1938 created the Federal Power Commission (FPC), giving the agency control over the regulation of interstate natural gas sales and pipelines. Later on, the FPC was dissolved and became the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). One of the witnesses at the hearing, there to bash FERC, was (suprise!) THE Delaware Riverkeeper herself, Maya van Rossum.
Listen up those interested in a new job working for the shale industry: JobNewsUSA.com is conducting an 
Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 1100, aimed at attracting NEW petrochemical investment to the state, is due to be voted on (and passed) by the PA Senate this week. Gov. Tom Wolf (liberal Democrat) has vowed to veto the bill–denying the state billions of economic stimulus it could receive. Why the veto? Your guess is as good as ours. Likely because it will encourage more use of PA’s abundant natural gas supplies, and that doesn’t sit well with radicalized enviro types.
In January the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) finally, after more than a year, allowed Energy Transfer to restart the final bits of construction needed to complete the Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline project (see 