PA First Responders: Apply for $6K Act 13 Grants…NOW
Ever notice the tagline under the MDN logo? It says: “Helping People & Businesses Profit from Northeast Shale Drilling.” Not mentioned are non-profits, but even non-profits can “profit” from shale drilling. How? By applying for grants awarded either by the industry itself (drillers, pipeline and utility companies), or, in this case, by applying for grants from the PA state government.
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Yet another attack on the shale industry by two Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “reporters” (propagandists) who have made a career of unfairly attacking shale–Don Hopey and David Templeton. This latest smear job makes the claim that leachate coming from a landfill piped to a municipal wastewater treatment facility is “contaminated” with all sorts of nasty chemicals (what the heck do you think is in leachate, anyway?!). The claim is the chemicals in the leachate are present because of drillers dumping leftover rock and dirt that comes out of the ground when drilling new holes for shale wells into the landfill.
One of the false allegations made against shale drilling is that it somehow pollutes the air–of particular concern near schools. A new independent two-year study commissioned by Range Resources at one of their drilling sites, located about a mile from a local school, thoroughly debunks that allegation. A first-of-its kind public health and long-term ambient air monitoring report (full copy below) provides analysis from nearly two years of continuous data from an unconventional Marcellus Shale well site nearby a high school and elementary school campus in Washington County, PA. The study found no health impacts from shale drilling.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, arguably PA’s worst governor in a generation, has just thrown in his lot with uber-leftists Andrew Cuomo (governor of NY), Phil Murphy (governor of NJ), and John Carney (governor of DE) to support a total, permanent ban on fracking *and a ban on any drilling-related activities* in the Delaware River Basin (DRB). Put another way, Wolf has just turned his back on thousands of PA citizens living in the Wayne and Pike counties (in PA) who could be, right now, benefiting from Marcellus Shale drilling.
Yesterday two northeast Pennsylvania legislators–state Representative Aaron Kaufer (Republican) and state Senator John Yudichak (Democrat)–hosted a rally to promote proposed new bipartisan legislation aimed at luring a “world-class” petrochemical manufacturing plant to the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area. A big plant, on the order of the Shell cracker plant in southwestern PA. But no, not an ethane cracker. The kind of plant the two legislators want to attract in northeastern PA would leverage the huge volume of locally extracted Marcellus dry gas (i.e. methane).
From time to time we check in on Epsilon Energy, which concentrates most of its effort on the Marcellus in Susquehanna County, PA. Does Epsilon actually do any of its own drilling? No. They partner with (give money to) other companies and the other companies do the actual drilling. Epsilon, according to their website, owns ~4,000 net acres in the PA Marcellus–down from 5,750 net acres which their website showed in February. Epsilon released their first quarter 2019 update earlier this week.
The best teachers (people) and the best teacher (method of instruction) have the same thing in common: Hands on. As in tactile, doing stuff, rather than sitting in a chair attempting to learn by information dumping. Particularly with elementary-age kiddies. Cabot Oil & Gas and Southwestern Energy recently sponsored the annual Vehicular Career Day where 400 fifth graders from school districts across Susquehanna County climbed into big rigs, buses, and emergency vehicles. The shale industry was well-represented. Needless to say, the kids loved it.
EdgeMarc Energy, headquartered in Canonsburg, PA (with 45,000 acres of Marcellus/Utica leases), is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, looking to sell all of the company’s assets. The reason? They can’t move their production to market because their main pipeline partner, Energy Transfer’s Revolution Pipeline, exploded last September and ET has not been able to get the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection to allow them to restart it.
Speaking of the exploded Revolution Pipeline located in southwestern Pennsylvania that’s led to a driller declaring bankruptcy (see EdgeMarc Energy Files for Bankruptcy, Blames Revolution Pipe Outage), yesterday the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued an order to Energy Transfer, builder of Revolution, to “identify and restore or mitigate all streams and wetlands that it illegally eliminated or altered during the construction” of the pipeline. DEP claims ET “illegally” eliminated at least 23 streams and changed the length of another 120 streams.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has just upheld a lower court opinion that allows shale drilling to happen *anywhere* in a township, so long as such drilling satisfies standards to protect public health, safety and welfare. This is the end of the road for a lawsuit funded by Big Green that began in 2015 in Westmoreland County, PA.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette seems to be doing its best to tie what it calls a “cancer cluster” to local shale drilling in the region. We first noticed a developing story about a potential cluster of rare Ewing sarcoma cancer cases among children in the Pittsburgh region a few months ago, when Pittsburgh media first began to report on it.
A landowner in Jessup Borough (Lackawanna County, PA, near Scranton) has filed a lawsuit against the Borough Council as a whole (and the individuals who serve on it), claiming they rezoned the landowner’s property, cutting them out of millions of dollars, as retribution because the landowner had the audacity to sell property to the Marcellus gas-fired Lackawanna Energy Center (LEC) power plant.
Last week the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held an informational meeting to hear from the regulated community, including the shale industry, on their experiences with Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) permit review processes. By all accounts legislators (and the DEP) got an earful.
Here’s a cool story: Energy Transfer, the company building the Mariner East 2 Pipeline in Pennsylvania, has just committed to funding the Pennsylvania Special Olympics to the tune of $450,000 over the next three years. MDN editor Jim Willis’ wife works with special needs kids, so he has a soft spot for programs like Special Olympics. Jim thought: “Hey, this is a good news story. Surely someone in the media will have picked up the Special Olympics press release by now and published an article about this, right?” Nope. Total media blackout. We couldn’t find a single news outlet that has covered this news, now four days old.
Several members of the Marcellus Shale industry spoke at a meeting of the Williamsport/Lycoming Chamber of Commerce yesterday, including MDN friend George Stark from Cabot Oil & Gas. George is director of external affairs. At the meeting he said the Marcellus industry has made tremendous strides in the last 10 years and will be around for decades to come. He said, “It’s booming in our area.” George also said Cabot is having trouble filling vacant jobs.