NEPA Schools LOVE Natural Gas…and Shale Wells, and Fracking
Two schools in rural Susquehanna County, PA are saving big bucks and helping the environment at the same time–by switching to burning natural gas. One of those schools, Elk Lake, has made millions of dollars in royalties by hosting two shale wells *on school property* (see Elk Lake School LOVES Their 2 Marcellus Shale Wells & Gas Heat). No, Elk Lake doesn’t stick a pipe into their wells (the gas has to get cleaned up first). But Elk Lake, and the Montrose School District, are beneficiaries of gas produced literally in their own backyards. Students are the ultimate winners. The money saved by switching to natural gas heating gets spent on the kids, rather than going to buy oil from Saudi Arabia.
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It takes a loooong time for the wheels of justice to turn, but (usually) turn they do. In 2016 Kathleen Kane, former Pennsylvania Attorney General who prosecuted and persecuted others, particularly in the gas drilling industry, was convicted of committing perjury (i.e. lying under oath) about leaking privileged grand jury information in a case unrelated to gas drilling. She was, in October 2016, sentenced to jail (see 
We pride ourselves on keeping close tabs on the market. Yet somehow the construction of a smallish NGL (natural gas liquids) pipeline gathering system in western PA slipped by us. The pipeline is now built and the builder, Stonehenge Energy Resources, is putting the “finishing touches” on the Stonehenge Laurel – Clarion Pipeline System before it goes live. The pipeline will connect to Laurel Mountain Energy’s wells in Clarion County and collect up the NGLs (things like ethane and propane) from those wells and flow it neighboring Butler County where the NGLs will hitch a ride via Energy Transfer’s Revolution Pipeline system to Washington County, PA where they will get cleaned up and separated.
In August, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court handed PA drillers a partial victory in their quest to block onerous new drilling regulations, part of something called Chapter 78a (see 
Reuters has published a “hit piece” against Energy Transfer (ET) and two of its recent big pipeline projects–Rover Pipeline (in Ohio & Michigan), and Mariner East 2 Pipeline (in Ohio and Pennsylvania). Reuters is usually more balanced than, say, Bloomberg with these types of articles. Reuters usually doesn’t go out of its way to denigrate the industry. The article evaluates the number of permit violations issued for both projects. Together that number exceeds 800. Is that a lot? Reuters says they’ve analyzed “four comparable pipeline projects” and found an average of 19 violations per project (or 38 for two projects). So yeah, 800 vs. 38 sure sounds like a lot to us.
Both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia were in the running to become Headquarters 2 (HQ2) for online shopping behemoth Amazon. But neither got it. They both bent over backward, forward, and sideways, wined and dined Amazon people, and in general did everything they could short of bribery to attract Amazon to their respective cities. In the end, Amazon decided to split HQ2 between New York City and a suburb of Washington, D.C. Now that the distraction of pursuing Amazon is gone, a couple of energy industry players in Pittsburgh say it’s time to focus again on reality. Amazon offered 50,000 jobs to the winner(s) of HQ2. The PA Marcellus industry offers 100,000 jobs that pay way more, IF we hurry to capitalize on it. So says Morgan O’Brien, president and CEO of Peoples Natural Gas, and Stacey Olson, president of Chevron Appalachia.
Last week MDN told you about seven anti-fossil fuelers in the Philadelphia area who have filed a request with the PA Public Utility Commission requesting the PUC shut down both the Mariner East 1 pipeline, which has been flowing since 2016, and Mariner East 2 pipeline, which is about to go online any day now (see 
In November 2015, MDN first reported on a zoning court case in Westmoreland County, PA that’s still playing out (see 
Pennsylvania has had a seriously bad problem with acid mine drainage for years–water that washes through old/abandoned coal mines that comes back out heavily laden with minerals that make it acidic and a danger to the environment. More recently, with the shale revolution, PA has also found itself with an abundance of shale wastewater–most of it “produced” water that comes from deep in the earth (not surface drinking water), also laden with all sorts of minerals. Both acid mine water and shale wastewater are not easy to treat. Some sharp kids and their professors at the University of Pittsburgh got the bright idea to combine the two together, and treat them together, at the same time. Why? Because they have opposite amounts of barium and sulfates. Combine the two and you can more easily remove the nasty stuff via “precipitation.” How cool is that?
Earlier this month MDN brought you the exciting news that New Fortress Energy (NFE) is planning to build an LNG (liquefied natural gas) liquefaction plant in Wyalusing (Bradford County), PA in order to export Marcellus gas (see 
This is big news that will impact nearly every landowner and shale driller in Pennsylvania. In April, MDN brought you the news that Pennsylvania Superior Court had handed down a decision (known as the “Briggs” case) that has the power to greatly restrict, perhaps even stop, Marcellus drilling in PA (see 
Seven antis from Greater Philadelphia, with money and lawyers from Big Green groups backing them, on Monday asked the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission to shut down Mariner East 1 pipeline (which has operating for more than a year), and to block the startup of Mariner East 2 pipeline. The chutzpah of these people is breathtaking. To put it in perspective, Chester and Delaware Counties, which is where the seven antis hail from, has a combined population of 1,083,989 people (as of 2017). Seven people represents .0006% of the population. Meaning 99.999% of the population either don’t care, or are not against these pipeline projects. Both ME1 and ME2 carry natural gas liquids (NGLs)–meaning ethane and propane–from the western side of PA across the state to Delaware County and the Marcus Hook refinery. From the very beginning there have been a committed few (with the help of Big Green) fighting the ME2 project every inch of the way. They’ve thrown everything they have at it–multiple lawsuits, pleas to regulatory agencies, legislative hearings, illegal protests–you name it, they’ve done it. This latest action appears to be a last gasp, “Hail Mary” attempt at convincing a regulatory agency to stop both pipelines. Which isn’t going to happen.
Is Shell (or SWEPI, formerly known as Shell Western E&P Inc.) leaving its Pennsylvania Marcellus drilling program behind? You may recall we posted a story in June quoting Tonya Williams, general manager for Appalachia with Shell, as stating (during her talk at the DUG East event in Pittsburgh) that Shell plans to spend $150 million to drill wells on four pads in 2018, all of it in Tioga County (see 
Since our lead story today is about the spike up in the price of natural gas (see Price of NatGas Spikes to Highest Level in 4 Years – $4.84/Mcf), we thought it fitting to bring you a related story that caught our eye–on the price of natgas in Pennsylvania. For years PA, especially the dry gas northeast, has been plagued with some of the lowest natural gas prices in the U.S. Why? Prolific production and not enough pipelines to get all that production to higher-paying markets. The situation is changing, rapidly. Prices in the northeast Marcellus are catching up with the Henry Hub price in southern Louisiana, thanks to multiple pipelines coming online. What does it all mean for Pennsylvanians?