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Expert Tells Utica Conference NE Will See “3 or 4” Cracker Plants
An expert speaking at the Utica Summit III yesterday in Stark, OH said he believes the Marcellus/Utica region will see three, possibly four, ethane crackers built. Tom Gellrich of consulting firm TopLine Analytics, a company that “closely follows ethane markets,” said he thinks the first ethane cracker to get built will be the Shell cracker plant in Beaver County, PA…
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A team of researchers led by Yale University have just published a new “peer reviewed” study that finds fracking does not contaminate water aquifers. Mainstream media’s response? Crickets. Nothing. Why is that? Here’s something even better: One of the researchers who participated in the study is none other than Avner Vengosh from Duke University, who, using Park Foundation money, previously published studies stating the opposite (see 
Quick: According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which three states are responsible for 85% of the increase in natural gas production since 2012? If you answered Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, you would be correct. The Marcellus/Utica Shale has been the number one economic stimulus and jobs creator in the northeast for the past three years. At times, PA, OH and WV have competed for the same investments, like ethane cracker plants. (All three states have a serious proposals for ethane crackers.) Realizing it may be better to work together rather that compete against each other, all three states have agreed to cooperate to develop shale gas in the Appalachian region. Yesterday political representatives from all three states–Gov. Tom Wolf from PA, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin from WV and Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor from OH–signed a tri-state regional cooperation agreement at the Tri-State Shale Summit held in Morgantown, WV. There are four main areas the three states have pledged to work together on…
Wow. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is as stubborn about wanting to raise PA taxes as a jackass–his party’s mascot. Wolf’s latest proposed budget was voted down last week–with nine Democrats in the House voting against it (see 
Peters Township, the most populous township in Washington County, PA, is one of the seven selfish towns that sued the state over the zoning provisions in the Act 13 law, eventually winning at the PA Supreme Court level (see 
Last week Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) filed their official, full application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) seeking approval for their Orion Project. The project will cost $143 million and construct 13 miles of “looping” pipeline in Pike and Wayne counties, Pennsylvania. The project will boost capacity on the TGP by another 135 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d), allowing TGP to pump more Marcellus Shale gas to Mid-Atlantic and New England states. If all goes according to plan, the TGP Orion upgrade will be complete and in-service by June 2018…
Last week MDN reported on a new junk science study that claims to have discovered the closer you live to fracking in Pennsylvania, the more likely your baby will be born prematurely (see 
If you stick a cube of sugar in a batch of poison, the poison will still kill you, although it will taste better. Part of PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s poisonous budget that went down in flames last week (see 
A Belmont, Ohio man is accused of stealing more than $100,000 worth of equipment from two CNX Marcellus well sites just across the border in Greene County, PA. Two thefts happened in mid-August, and a third one on Sept. 21. Matthew Bartimus, currently hailing from Bethesda, OH, is accused of stealing a flaring chimney, pipeline choking systems, shutoff values and numerous studs and bolts. Not stuff you just throw on eBay or peddle at the local flea market. But then nobody ever accused common criminals of actually having any brains. Apparently he had a market for his stolen goods from August because Bartimus showed up to steal again in September. This time, however, he was caught red handed by employees arriving for work who held Bartimus until the police arrived. In later questioning, Bartimus confessed to the thefts…
The United Kingdom (as in Merry Old England) is finally, seriously, considering permits to allow shale fracking in the country. It’s taken a long time, and it’s certainly not a done deal yet. But it’s getting much closer. A Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) from a district in the north of England likely to see shale drilling when/if it happens recently traveled 3,500 miles to visit Pennsylvania, to see the effects of shale drilling firsthand. We applaud the MP’s efforts to see it up close. Unfortunately, Conservatives in the UK are more like RINOs here–there really aren’t all that many true conservatives in the socialistic UK. So when our “Conservative” MP came calling, one of the “expert” groups he took a tour with was the nutty Martians, a small group of anti-drillers in Butler County called the Mars Parent Group (see 
It’s a miracle! Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf actually did something right–he signed Senate Bill (SB) 875 into law yesterday. You may recall on Tuesday we told you that the PA Senate and House had passed SB875 and sent it on to Wolf for his signature (see 
In January 2014, anti-drilling “researchers” jumped the gun at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in Philadelphia by announcing “preliminary” results of research in which they claim they can show a connection between shale drilling and low birth weights in newborn babies in Pennsylvania (see 
In the end, it was PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s own Democrat Party House members that sunk his latest high tax budget proposal. Nine Dems voted against the Wolf budget, showing bipartisan support for defeating Wolf’s high taxes, including lack of support for a high severance tax. Every single Republican, even the RINOs, voted against Wolf’s unpopular budget proposal. Trying to spin his humiliating defeat as some sort of plus, Wolf said he was “encouraged” that “so many Democrats” actually voted yes for his budget. Talk about chutzpah. Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, has some big cojones–he equated Wolf with a thug trying to mug somebody, taking all of their money at gunpoint. Wow! It’s about time there was some frank talk about the bully Wolf has become in ten short months–and some push-back against it. Time for Republicans to pass a budget and get a few of those Dems to go along and override a Wolf veto. Time to govern without Wolf if he refuses to do his job…
Oilfield service giant Baker Hughes released their venerable monthly rotary rig count report yesterday for September 2015. After posting gains in the overall land-based U.S. rig count number for two straight months in July and August, the September numbers dropped like a rock. September U.S. active land-based rigs averaged 848, down 35 from the average of 883 in August and down 18 from July’s average of 866. Rig counts for the Marcellus/Utica also continued to drop, showing another four rigs were idled during September across the combined PA/OH/WV. It’s getting bloody out there…