Researchers Discover Low-Cost Way to Find New Shale Gas in PA
Penn State researchers say they’ve found a better, lower cost way to identify potential high yield areas for Marcellus Shale gas extraction. How? By using well production data taken from more than 5,600 existing wells, and only for wells with at least two years of production logs, the researchers created decline curves. They then extrapolated those curves to the entire PA Marcellus region and say they can predict, with a pretty high degree of accuracy, the amount of gas that would be extracted if a new well were drilled in a given location. How cool is that?!
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In the American legal system those accused of wrongdoing, including those afraid of being entrapped by so-called law enforcement (like the Chester County, PA District Attorney Tom Hogan) are entitled to legal representation–to protect themselves from the abuses of people like DA Hogan. Yet when they do so, avail themselves of legal representation, Hogan gets bent out of shape. Could it be he *has no case* and wants to bully people into admitting to things they are not guilty of? Or force them to falsely testify to things the prosecutor wants to hear?
Greene County, PA, located in the far southwestern corner of the state, last night unveiled a new marketing/rebranding initiative called “Greene County, a Powerful Place.” Greene is making a play to attract investment from the natural gas industry’s downstream (manufacturing) sector. It is a full-throated endorsement of the Marcellus/Utica shale industry and the petrochemical industry that goes hand-in-hand with shale.
Sunoco Pipeline, a division/part of Energy Transfer, has just been fined (again) for work related to the construction of the Mariner East 2 pipeline project. This time around Sunoco got two fines: One for problems with their work in 2018, to the tune of $240,840, and one for work done back in 2017, to the tune of $78,621. Total bill: $319,461. So far the Mariner East project (ME1, ME2, and ME2X) has incurred over $13 million in fines with over 80 violations.
Last week the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) revoked the right of the Beaver County Conservation District (BCCD) to issue and monitor permits for erosion and sediment control, two permits used in building both pipelines and drill pads (see 
Pennsylvania antis from the Philadelphia area who don’t want pipelines running through their neighborhoods (NIMBY types) beat the drums of war so loud and for so long, they finally began to intimidate the non-partisan, shouldn’t-be-intimated PA Public Utility Commission (PUC). In June the PUC launched a “major review of its safety regulations for hazardous liquids pipelines” in response to pressure from Mariner East 2 pipeline foes (see 
Researchers from Pennsylvania State University, using a new testing protocol that uses existing, affordable water chemistry tests, have tested 20,751 water well samples from wells located near high levels of both conventional and shale oil and gas drilling in PA. The tests show whether or not existing/naturally occurring methane is in the water well, or whether methane from nearby drilling is present in the water. Know what they found? Out of 20,751 samples, they found 17 wells (0.08%, less than one-tenth of a single percent) showed “possible signs of methane contamination.” Statistically speaking, it’s zero.
New Fortress Energy is in the process of building the first (of two or more) LNG liquefying plants in Wyalusing, PA–nowhere near a shoreline. The company will truck (eventually rail) the LNG to a port located on the Delaware River along the New Jersey shoreline for export to Puerto Rico and other destinations. As we reported in July, work is now underway to clear the site before actual construction of buildings begins (see 
To his credit (we don’t often heap praise on him), Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf toured a Mariner East 2 pipeline construction site in Chester County near Philadelphia last Thursday, along with some Democrat politicians, and told anti-pipeline residents “NO” to their faces when they asked him to shut down the Mariner East pipeline system. He was polite, but firm, telling them he disagrees with their position of the need to permanently shut down the Mariner pipelines. “Do a better job” with construction and impacts from the project? Sure, according to Wolf. Shut it all down permanently? NO.
Can it be possible that the shale industry and anti-shale environmentalists (those who irrationally espouse the end of using all fossil fuels) can actually agree on something? Turns out, we can! The something we agree on is opposition to PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to tax a single industry, shale drilling, $4.5 billion in order to use that money for Big Government programs.
In October 2017, officials in Plum, PA (Allegheny County) approved a plan by Huntley & Huntley (H&H) to drill a series of Marcellus wells on a single well pad in their municipality (see 
Last September MDN brought you news that six men had been charged with conspiring to illegally alter emission systems on 30+ trucks with heavy-duty diesel engines used to haul water and wastewater to and from Marcellus Shale wells (see