10% of PA Farms Received Avg $154K in Lease/Royalties in 2014
Some farms not only produce products like milk, meat, eggs and/or crops–some farms produce energy. Would it surprise you to learn that in 2014 (the most recent year with stats available), energy companies paid farmers a staggering $2.9 billion for the energy extracted from private farms? The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture posted a brief blurb from their Amber Waves magazine yesterday, recounting stats from a report released last November. The report, “Trends in U.S. Agriculture’s Consumption and Production of Energy: Renewable Power, Shale Energy, and Cellulosic Biomass” (full copy below) points out it’s not just oil and gas extraction that farmers receive income from. Some farmers lease their land for solar and wind generation. Some biomass. However, it was one particular chart and stat that caught our attention: About 9.6% of Pennsylvania farms received energy income in 2014. The average amount received, per farm? $157,000! Almost all of that revenue came from the Marcellus Shale…
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Paul Sidorek, an accountant representing some 60 northeastern Pennsylvania landowners who receive royalty income from drilling, is also a landowner himself. In 2009 Sidorek leased 145 acres, a lease that was eventually sold to Chesapeake Energy. Because of the troubles encountered by others, Sidorek wrote into his lease a 20% royalty and made sure the lease explicitly stated that no expenses could be deducted from the sale of the gas produced on his property. That is, NO post-production expenses could be deducted. And yet, Chesapeake disregarded the lease and deducted as much as 30 percent from his royalties, attributing it to “gathering” and “third party” expenses, an amount that adds up to some $40,000 a year (see 
There may, finally, be movement by the recalcitrant Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to finally, after eight years, begin to move in the direction of guidelines to allow shale drilling in two northeastern PA counties: Wayne and Pike. Why is there movement now? Because last year landowners launched a lawsuit against the DRBC, a lawsuit the DRBC now senses they may lose (see 
In the midstream (i.e. pipeline) world, it seems like nobody owns 100% of anything. Big midstream companies like Williams and Kinder Morgan (and others) are composed of subsidiaries and (sometimes) MLPs–master limited partnerships. And beyond the companies within companies (like a Russian nesting doll), often pieces of pipeline systems are co-owned with other companies, even competitors! In 2014 Williams bought out Access Midstream, the renamed and former division of Chesapeake Energy called Chesapeake Midstream (see 
In August 2013 an extensive investigative article about a then-director for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, William A. Capouillez, appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer (see 
For those of us in a certain generation, you will recognize this: Fred, Daphne, Shaggy, Velma…and of course, Scooby-Doo! If you were raised watching cartoons on Saturday morning, and you watched Scooby-Doo, do you remember the name of the van they traveled around in? That’s right, the Mystery Machine! An image of the Mystery Machine is what floated through our brain as we read about the latest venture in researching air quality in Pennsylvania near drilling sites. Researchers from Drexel University (in Philadelphia) set out across Marcellus territory in “Drexel’s Mobile Laboratory, a Ford cargo van equipped with all the equipment necessary for measuring concentrations of chemicals and particles in the air at 1-10 second intervals while driving.” The Mystery Machine! And what, pray tell, did our intrepid Marcellus sleuths find be-bopping around the countryside? In the recently published study, “Analysis of local-scale background concentrations of methane and other gas-phase species in the Marcellus Shale” (full copy below), researchers say they found that even though the number of Marcellus wells being drilled has slowed quite a bit over the past few years, the amount of fugitive methane in the air has increased. And the increase can’t be explained by a general global increase in fugitive methane. The increase in fugitive methane in the Marcellus is due, our methane sleuths say, to the “increased production of natural gas from the region which has increased significantly over the 2012 to 2015 period.” The researchers conclude that “because everybody knows how evil and nasty fugitive methane is for global warming” (our words), this study is yet more evidence that Marcellus shale drilling (and pipelines, etc.) leak so much methane as to make any benefits we get from extracting and burning methane, over say coal, muted–even lost. Because we can’t put a cork in it, by extracting and using methane we’re making poor old Mom Earth even sicker. Which is, of course, total bunkum…
Yesterday MDN brought you the disappointing news that Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, America’s most liberal governor, has once again introduced a 6.5% severance tax plan as part of his 2017 budget (see 
Yesterday Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf released his 2017 budget proposal. Twice before, Wolf has attempted to levy a severance tax Marcellus drilling in the state–in addition to the existing impact tax. A severance tax would cause drilling in the state to stop, by giving PA one of the highest severance tax rates in the nation. (Yes, drillers do have other options and will go to other shale plays!) However, in this new budget, Wolf is once again attempting to impose a severance tax–this time 6.5% (same as last year)–as a payback to the teachers’ unions that helped elect him. Wolf’s plan this year is to transfer away nearly $300 million from drillers and landowners, via a high severance tax, and give it to “education.” As soon as Wolf was done with his divisive budget address yesterday, top Republicans declared the severance tax plan dead–about as dead as Wolf’s fledgling reelection effort…
Acting Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Patrick McDonnell held a “hastily arranged” meeting on Monday with several antis who are opposed to Sunoco Logistics Partners’ Mariner East 2 pipeline project. You may recall these same antis predicted the DEP would grant the final permits needed for Mariner East 2 last Friday (see 
Anti-fossil fuel protesters (some of them paid) will go on a camp-out in Amish country (Lancaster County, PA) beginning this Friday to protest the imminent start of construction for the Williams Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project. The same group built themselves a magic tree house along the planned route of the pipeline (see 
In December the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) unveiled new regulations to clamp down on methane emissions and other other air pollution that allegedly comes from shale drilling sites (see 
In 2014 MDN reported that MAX Environmental, operator of the Bulger hazardous waste landfill in Smith Township (Washington County), PA since 1958, planned to expand the landfill by 21 acres in order to handle an increase of drill cuttings and even liquid waste (which they will turn to solid waste) coming from Marcellus Shale drilling (see 
A bright and enterprising graduate student at Penn State University cooked up an interesting research project for her graduate thesis. With all this talk about “fracked gas” having boatloads of radon in it, would using such radon-laden gas as the source fuel for a gas-fired electric plant pose a risk to those who live near it? In particular, could the gas-fired plants on Penn State’s own campus be posing a danger to students, faculty and staff that live and work on campus? Alison Stidworthy, a former graduate student in the Department of Meteorology at Penn State (and now employed as a site manager for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection), led the research effort, which was the topic of her master’s degree thesis (copy below). What did Alison find? High levels of radon do not leak from the plants and pose no health issues to those living and working nearby. Which makes perfect sense. How do you get rid of radon in your basement when it’s present? You vent it to the outside, where it quickly dissipates and becomes inert. Alison, along with several of her professors, recently published her work as a study in the Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association...
