PA DEP Says Ten Mile Creek Radiation-Free; Antis Still Peddle Lies
In 2014 Pennsylvania anti-drillers from a local chapter of the Izaak Walton League, a so-called conservation organization, attempted a smear job on the Marcellus Shale industry. They alleged that shale drillers were illegally dumping frack wastewater in an abandoned coal mine, the Clyde Mine, which sits near the Ten Mile Creek where the creek joins the Monongahela River. According to the smearmeisters, the illegally dumped wastewater was leaking out of the mine and into Ten Mile Creek (see Is Shale Wastewater Causing Radiation Spike in Ten Mile Creek?). They claimed testing they had done showed high levels of radioactivity that could not come from just acid mine drainage, that it is radioactivity typically seen in shale wastewater. Of course the allegations got a lot of media attention. The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) investigated and echoed their concerns with initial tests also showing high radioactivity. Except the testing done by the DEP, and the testing done by the Izaak Walton League, WAS THE WRONG TYPE OF TEST. They blew it. Researchers from West Virginia University came in and tested using the appropriate type of test and found no elevated radioactivity (see PA DEP Screws Up Water Test at Ten Mile Creek – Egg on Face). After the humiliation of being outed as using the wrong test, the DEP re-ran tests for six months in 2015–the right kind of tests–and found NO elevated radioactivity in Ten Mile Creek nor anywhere else in the area (see PA DEP Admits No Radiation in Ten Mile Creek, Closes Investigation). The DEP has continued to run tests since that time and issued a final report in November (full copy below) finding, once again, NO elevated levels of radiation in Ten Mile Creek. The response by anti-drilling radicals with an agenda to smear the Marcellus industry? Unbelievably, they once again repeated their allegation of illegal wastewater dumping…
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For some time we’ve followed the story of Range Resources and their (former) wastewater impoundments in Washington County, PA. The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) fined Range a whopping $4.15 million for violations in September 2014 (see 
Over the past two months Panda Power Funds has brought online the first two built-from-scratch-to-use-Marcellus-gas electric plants, both in northeast Pennsylvania (see 
In November 2014, MDN told you about an innovative plan by PECO–formerly known as the Philadelphia Electric Company, is the largest combined electric/natural gas utility company in PA serving some 500,000+ natural gas customers in southeastern PA–to allow customers to sign up for its natural gas service and spread the cost over 20 years (see 
Earlier this week MDN reported that Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf helped kill a plan by Philadelphia Energy Solutions to expand its shale oil refinery in Philly by denying a lease on 200 acres at the Southport Marine site (see 
Sunoco Logistics Partners, the builder of the Mariner pipeline projects, has fought a long and hard legal battle to be recognized as a public utility in Pennsylvania–especially with regard to the next big project in the lineup, the Mariner East 2 pipeline. ME2, as it’s called, is a $2.5 billion, 350-mile natural gas liquids (NGL) pipeline that will run from eastern Ohio through the state of Pennsylvania to the Marcus Hook refinery near Philadelphia. From the beginning anti-pipeline fanatics have tried to derail the project by claiming it is not a public utility (with the right of eminent domain) as defined by PA’s statutes. In July 2014 two administrative law judges working for the PA Public Utility Commission (PUC) said ME2 is not a public utility (see 
One of the lasting, positive legacies of Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, predecessor to the current disaster of a governor, Tom Wolf, is signing into law Act 13, which updated PA’s laws for Marcellus Shale drilling. Among the provisions of Act 13 is something called an impact fee–far better and more fair than a so-called severance tax. As we wrote at the time, the impact fee is really 60% fee and 40% tax. Most of the revenue raised, 60% of it, stays local in the communities impacted (hence the name) by drilling. Those communities have higher expenses for first responders, water and sewer, and other government expenses, due to an increase in drilling activity. But in order to get the deal done in Harrisburg, Corbett and the Republicans had to agree to grease the palms of bureaucrats with 40% of the revenue raised from the fee, to be spread around to various agencies (see 
Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) has been on a mission to expand their operation at the Southport Marine site in Philadelphia by leasing an additional 200 acres to build a terminal for shale oil imports and exports. Believe it or not, a plan to lease the extra space has been going on for more than two years (see 
Some of the first businesses that will profit from the mighty Shell ethane cracker being built in Beaver County, PA will be small, local businesses. Restaurants, banquet halls, hotels, drug stores, real estate…the list goes on. But even small businesses that want a piece of the Shell cracker plant action don’t automatically have smooth sailing. Trying to get Shell to promote a business to its workers is hard work. Businesses report talking to Shell and being told that the company won’t help them by promoting them to cracker plant workers (a bit un-neighborly if you ask us). But that’s the life of an entrepreneur. You encounter brick wall after brick wall and you find a way to go through it, or over it, or around it, or under it. That’s what several small businesses in Beaver County are doing with Shell…
The Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry recently released employment numbers for the first quarter of 2016 for the Keystone State. Those numbers show that employment in PA’s oil and gas industry, which includes the Marcellus, dropped some 10,000 jobs from 1Q15 to 1Q16. That’s about one-third of the o&g workforce. Ouch. Still, PA employs twice as many people in o&g right now than they did when the Marcellus boom got underway in 2008. Here’s the lowdown on the latest PA employment numbers…
In May of this year, the federal Environmental Protection Agency issued more shale-killing regulations. The EPA issued 600 pages of new regulations that require drillers to install expensive new equipment to locate so-called fugitive methane that may or may not be leaking from wells, pipelines, etc. (see 
On April 29, Spectra Energy’s Texas Eastern Transmission (TETCO) “Delmont Line 27” pipeline exploded in Westmoreland County, PA, seriously injuring one resident who was burned over much of his body (see 
A small Worthington (Franklin County), OH driller, Geopetro, has just purchased 37,000 acres, 27 working shale wells and 5 not-yet-hooked-up wells from Chesapeake Energy for an undisclosed amount of money. The wells are located in Columbiana County, OH and Beaver County, PA. All but one of the wells are Utica wells. One of the wells is drilled to the Upper Devonian layer (above the Marcellus). The purchase is a big deal for the small Geopetro. It converts what until now has been mostly a conventional (shallow, vertical only) drilling company into primarily an unconventional/shale company. Welcome to the shale industry!…