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CNX Resources Lays Off 10% of Total Workforce – More Cuts Coming?
CNX Resources has just laid off (i.e. fired) roughly 50 employees company-wide, most of them at company headquarters in Canonsburg. But not all. We heard from an MDN trust source who said at least nine workers got their walking papers in West Virginia. Given the company employs about 500 people, 50 fired represents 10% of the workforce. Question is, will there be more firings?
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Here’s something we didn’t know: The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) does not do all of its own work to issue permits for things like erosion and sediment control. In some (many?) cases, the DEP delegates and farms out authority to issue and monitor/inspect permits for erosion and sediment control to county conservation districts. DEP is not happy with the way Beaver County has been performing those functions and has just snatched it back, revoking the county’s right to issue and monitor erosion and sediment control permits for projects like pipeline construction and building well pads and roads.
Some 77 miles of PennEast Pipeline’s $1 billion, 120-mile primarily 36-inch underground pipeline is slated to run through Pennsylvania. The rest runs through New Jersey. In February of this year the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) published draft versions of Erosion and Sediment Control Permits for the project. Just one teeny tiny problem: The DEP screwed up the application number in their official posting in the PA Bulletin. So the DEP has just republished their intent to issue the permits–very soon–in the latest PA Bulletin.
Yesterday MDN told you that new EQT CEO Toby Rice is in the midst of conducting four “town hall” style meetings with landowners–two this week and two next week (see 
Take note Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto: You can only crap on the shale industry for so long before it comes back to bite you on the backside. EQT CEO Toby Rice told a group of landowners Wednesday night that the EQT Foundation (EQT’s charitable giving arm), the third largest foundation by giving in Pittsburgh, is going to shift its donations away from Pittsburgh and to the counties/regions where the company drills.
There is no disputing the fact that the Marcellus Shale has fundamentally changed the economic landscape for Pennsylvania–for the better. A former PA state senator and county commissioner from southeast PA recently went on a tour of shale related infrastructure in western PA and wrote an insightful editorial that outlines the case in favor of building *more* natural gas pipelines in the state.
We’re highlighting a second scientific study today, this one real. We told you about Cornell University’s Robert Howarth’s faux study that says methane escaping from shale wells is causing the planet to toast. This second study, from Princeton University, actually performed in-the-field experiments to measure methane escaping from Marcellus Shale wells in Pennsylvania. Real science. The study found some 77% of the methane that escapes into the atmosphere comes from 10% of the wells–and concludes if we can identify and fix the 10%, we’ll go a long way to solving the escaping methane issue.
Democrats and the media (one and the same) are truly a conflicted, schizophrenic bunch. Both national and local Democrats who pretend to be unbiased journalists (what a joke) couldn’t wait to blast out headlines from yesterday’s visit by President Trump to Monaca, PA that Trump is falsely “taking credit” for the Shell ethane cracker, a plant that began life–at least planning stages–during the reign of their Lord and Savior Barack Hussein Obama. Yet in the next breath they write that this plant Trump is taking credit for will produce eeeeevil plastic that’s dooming all life on Mom Earth to extinction. They want credit for the plant, yet they don’t want the plant. What’s a lib Dem to do?
This is one of those “feel good” stories. Going back to 2012, a number of officials in Wyoming County and the borough of Tunkhannock began to dream about connecting the borough to locally extracted Marcellus Shale gas. Among those who helped turn the dream into reality were Williams (the pipeline company) and Cabot Oil & Gas (shale driller). Thanks to the efforts of all involved, Tunkhannock eventually received state-backed funding to build “phase one” of the project (see 
Chester County, PA District Attorney Tom Hogan has sunk to a new low. We told you back in January Hogan and his highly-paid staff, motivated by politics, were investigating Energy Transfer, their Sunoco Logistics division and anyone/anything to do with ET’s Mariner East pipeline projects, looking for “crimes.” All he found were minor violations by two off-duty PA constables (see 
A paid political activist who is not a doctor but works for the so-called Physicians for Social Responsibility (left wing group), told a hearing in Murrysville (Westmoreland County), PA on Wednesday that she could not prove fracking leads to negative health affects on those living near the activity, but in the very next breath she essentially said it does, saying there’s a “strong correlation” between fracking an ill health. Her proof? A list of Big Green-paid for “health studies” (propaganda campaigns).
One of the most liberal governors in America, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, continues his campaign to kill the Marcellus Shale by slapping a severance tax on top of an already-high impact tax. He’s now getting a little help from his lib friends at the polling unit at Franklin & Marshall College. When asked a misleading question, a recent poll of 627 PA residents found 69% of them “strongly” or “somewhat” favor Wolf’s Santa Claus promises in his “Restore PA” plan–if it’s funded by a severance tax on Marcellus Shale.