PennEast Pipeline’s Main Sponsor Recognized as Enviro Champion
Perhaps we now know the real reason why a group of anti-fossil fuel protesters decided to abandon their protest at the headquarters of PennEast Pipeline’s main sponsor, UGI. MDN told you yesterday how mainstream media in the New Jersey market covered a “massive” protest (of 35 people) who showed up at the Statehouse in Trenton during the day–with obviously nothing better to do–to protest against the PennEast Pipeline (see Tiny Protest in Trenton, NJ Against PennEast Pipeline is “News”?). The protesters had planned to also show up at UGI headquarters on Tuesday for a similar “massive” protest–but those plans got canceled. We assumed it was because it was food stamp distribution day and the paid-for protesters had better things to do–but maybe we were wrong. Could it be that protest organizers were tipped off that UGI, the lead sponsor of the PennEast Pipeline, was about to be named to a national list of utility companies that are “Environmental Champions”? It wouldn’t look good for THE Delaware Riverkeeper and her acolytes to show up and protest a company that is recognized nationwide as one of the leading environmentally sensitive companies, would it?…
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PA Gov. Tom Wolf has dropped all pretense of being a nice guy and has turned into a mafioso bully because he can’t get his own way. We understand. He made a back-room deal with teachers’ unions and they delivered him an election victory. He owes them and the only way he can pay them off is by taxing the Marcellus Shale industry into oblivion. Wolf’s latest tactic is to call the Republicans who won’t go along with his Marcellus-killing severance tax “the bad guys” and appeal to RINOs in the House and Senate–those like Rep. Gene DiGirolamo (from the Philly area)–those he calls “good Republican legislators”. Wolf plans to make the RINOs an offer they can’t refuse in order to support a severance tax. Will they bow to pressure from the don?…
The ideologically rigid, most-liberal governor in America (according to InsideGov), Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, yesterday vetoed a stopgap spending budget passed by the Republican-controlled House and Senate, further damaging the people he pretends to want to help–little children in schools. Falling back on the same old lies and political pandering rhetoric, Wolf said he was vetoing the bill because it “sells out the people of Pennsylvania to oil and gas companies and Harrisburg special interests.” It’s now open war on the Marcellus industry by the Wolf administration. In his veto letter, Wolf doesn’t mention that his own special interests–primarily teachers’ unions–are the real reason he’s holding out for an obscenely high severance tax on Marcellus Shale production. Sometimes politicians like Wolf have conveniently leaky memories. Wolf is perfectly happy with driving the state right over an economic cliff if he doesn’t get his way on a severance tax, no matter who (i.e., children) get hurt…
Looking like he’d had his morning Ensure drink, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush had plenty of energy as he talked about energy policy in a speech he delivered yesterday at the headquarters of Rice Energy in Washington County, PA. As predicted, Bush said things the oil and gas industry can stand up and cheer for: lift the ban on exporting crude oil, make it easier to export natural gas, and repeal some of the onerous regulations now on the books. He would also roll back Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan regulations that target coal (and natural gas) with a regulatory death sentence. Below is how it was reported, followed by Bush’s policy paper on how he would handle energy policy if he were to get out of single digits in the polls and get the nomination (something not very likely)…
Your beliefs matter. For example, if you believe in the fairy tale of man-made global warming (see 
The Washington County (PA) Firemen’s Association recently opened a new $500,000 gas well training center at the fire academy located at 895 Western Ave in Houston, PA. The project, which took more than a year to plan and complete, was completely funded by some of the biggest and best drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, including Range Resources, Rice Energy, CONSOL Energy, EQT, American Well Service and others. It will be used to train first responders not only in Washington County, but also from other parts of Pennsylvania along with West Virginia and Ohio. According to Pennsylvania Fire Commissioner Tim Solobay, “There’s nothing like it outside of Texas”…
In February MDN told you about a deal signed by a hospital in Potter County, PA to lease 742.9 acres of hospital-owned land to JKLM Energy to drill Utica Shale wells (see 
An update on a royalty lawsuit we first reported in July. Two Butler County, PA landowners with a combined 245.7 acres of land leased to (and drilled by) XTO Energy have sued XTO claiming the company is breaking the lease agreement by paying royalties below 1/8 of what XTO receives in revenue for the gas (see 
The Obama Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be in Pittsburgh tomorrow to conduct a hearing into how they can illegally regulate oil and gas drilling through the back door of so-called “fugitive” methane emissions, which they claim are insanely high in shale plays like the Marcellus/Utica (
The Christ-less editorial board of the Scranton Times-Tribune has all of a sudden gotten the Catholic religion. The anti-drilling Dems who run the Times-Tribune are normally religion-free–but since Pope Francis visited Philly and mouthed words that he believes in the myth of man-made global warming, Pope Francis (regardless of his stance on issues like abortion) is the new patron saint of the Times-Tribune. They go so far in their latest editorial as to link Pope Francis and another Democrat saint–John Quigley, the PennFuture Secretary of the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection…
MDN recently received a tip from a reader who said that WPX Energy, which has been exiting the Marcellus for more than year, is plugging and abandoning its wells in Cook Township (Westmoreland County), PA. We asked WPX about it and got the scoop about what’s happening with WPX in southwestern and central PA…
Party time! Yesterday PennEast Pipeline filed their full, official application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for permission to commence building their $1 billion, 118-mile, 36-inch diameter pipeline that will deliver approximately 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day from the Marcellus gas fields of northeastern PA to locations in southeastern PA and across the border to Trenton, NJ. The long-term benefits to the pipeline are many–lower natural gas and electricity costs for millions of consumers. In addition, during construction the pipeline will generate an estimated $1.6 billion of economic impact during design and construction alone, supporting approximately 12,160 jobs and an associated $740 million in wages. This is good news for all Pennsylvanians and New Jerseyites. Of course anti-fossil fuel nutters also issued an angry press release claiming the PennEast Pipeline will do “irreparable harm” if built…
THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum, and a bunch of her anti-fossil fuel pals delivered a letter on Wednesday to America’s most liberal governor, PA Gov. Tom Wolf, asking him to immediately suspend all further Marcellus drilling in the state and while he’s at it, stop building any new pipelines. They also “demand” (their words) that Wolf shut down his Pipeline Infrastructure Task Force which he created back in May (see