Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Beaver County | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Regulation
Antis Want Pipeline Work in Beaver County Stopped for 6 Months
We should have seen this one coming (but didn’t). Yesterday MDN told you that the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) had 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 PA DEP Revokes Beaver County Right to Issue Pipe, Drilling Permits). Antis are now screaming for the DEP to suspend all pipeline work in the county for six months in order to review previously issued permits by BCCD.
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Two weeks ago MDN told you about an incident near Philadelphia in which the flare stack at a Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline pump station ignited causing a loud noise, which we likened to flatulence (see 
In 2006 the Pennsylvania State Legislature passed a bill (signed into law) that protects certain information about pipelines from being divulged via open records requests. It’s all too easy for terrorists (foreign or domestic) to use that information to inflict pain and suffering, even death–or to stop the flows along those pipelines. Good law, good call. But now several PA House members from the Philadelphia area want to pass a new law that would repeal the 2006 law–all in the name of pipeline “transparency.”
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?
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