SWPA Town Requires Full EIS Before Drilling can Commence
A potentially troubling development in Penn Township (Westmoreland County), PA. Apex Energy had a permit from the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection to drill a Marcellus Shale well in Penn Twp. An anti-drilling group called Protect PT filed a lawsuit against the town for allowing the well to be drilled with first requiring a full environmental impact statement (EIS)–something that drives up the cost of drilling a well. The town caved to pressure and withdrew permission to drill, so Apex also sued the town. A deal has been worked out. Apex will have to pay for and conduct an EIS, and then they will be allowed to drill. Other towns populated with anti-drillers are catching wind of it and eyeing it as a potential way to slow or stop drilling in their towns…
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A hilarious “Boo! Scared Ya” report has just been issued by the brainiacs at Penn State that says Pennsylvanians are all going to fry by 2050 because of mythical man-made global warming. Never mind these are the same people who have made the same predictions going back 25 years (average temps haven’t gone up now for 18 years and counting). Never mind these are the same people who can’t predict the weather next week, let alone 35 years from now. We’re just supposed to believe them because they have letters after their names, supposedly indicating they’re smart. One person has fallen for this erroneous garbage: the PennFuture Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection, John Quigley. Unfortunately Quigley has the power to make drillers’ lives miserable by enacting draconian regulations to control their activities because he believes in the fairy tale of global warming. That not only makes him stupid, it makes him dangerous…
The Ben Franklin Shale Gas Innovation & Commercialization Center (SGICC), affiliated with the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic with a mission to accelerate technology breakthroughs related to shale gas in PA, has just released an updated report on shale wastewater treatment and disposal in PA. The report, titled “Shale Gas Development – Summary of Shale Gas Wastewater Treatment and Disposal In Pennsylvania 2014” (full copy below) finds that drillers in PA produced about 1.8 billion gallons of gas and oil wastewater in 2014–a figure largely unchanged since 2011. The study also finds the shale industry in PA is recycling 91% of the wastewater it produces. Interestingly, the updated report shows “produced water” (or brine, naturally occurring water from the depths) volumes far exceeded volumes for “frac fluid” (or the fluid originally pumped into the well when drilling and fracking). That’s a reversal from the data evaluated in 2011 when frac fluid represented the bulk of the wastewater stream…
A pipeline upgrade project in western Pennsylvania is making excellent progress. In February 2014 National Fuel Gas Company (NFG) filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for the Line N West Side Expansion and Modernization Project in Washington, Allegheny, Beaver, Venango and Mercer Counties, PA. The project calls for building some 23 miles of new pipeline next to an existing NFG pipeline in Washington and Beaver counties, along with compressor station and other upgrades along other portions of the existing Line N pipeline. NFG previously signed Range Resources and NFG’s own subsidiary, Seneca Resources, as customers for an increase in capacity to flow an additional 175,000 decatherms per day, Dth/d (175 million cubic feet per day, MMcf/d). The extra capacity allows Range and Seneca to move of the Marcellus Shale gas they produce in western PA to market. Although construction is still underway, NFG has asked FERC to begin partial service now, two months ahead of schedule…
The writers at NGI–Natural Gas Intelligence–continue to pump out hit article after hit article. (Full disclosure: MDN editor Jim Willis works part time for NGI on the marketing side. But hopefully by now you know that Jim doesn’t offer false praise for friend or foe. He always calls ’em like he sees ’em.) The latest article we’re excited about is one about a potential shift among Marcellus drillers in southwestern PA and WV–a shift away from Marcellus drilling, potentially replacing it with Utica drilling. Yes, you read that right. No, not all Marcellus drilling will suddenly stop–but in a continuing low-cost gas environment where every dollar counts, drillers are rethinking their strategies and where they will spend precious capital dollars. The recent blockbuster Utica well drilled by EQT in southwestern PA is catching everyone’s attention (see 
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection announced an agreement/settlement with three Marcellus drillers operating in the northeastern portion of the state. The three–Chesapeake Energy, XTO Energy and SWEPI (i.e. Shell) were fined a collective $374,481 for methane migration related to their drilling activities at three locations (three different counties) in 2011 and 2012. The bad news is that 13 private water wells between the three incidents were negatively affected, along with several local creeks. The good news is that the problems are all fixed. Methane migration is an eminently fixable condition. Here are the details for each fine, including what happened and where it happened…
Liberal Democrats don’t like to play by the same rules everyone else does. They somehow think they’re better than the rest of us–above the law. That’s what happened when the arrogant, and alleged criminal PA Attorney General Kathleen Kane, decided she could flout the law by leaking secret grand jury information to a reporter (see 
As MDN has previously chronicled, Chicago-based Invenergy hopes to build what will be the largest (to date) electric generating plant in the state of Pennsylvania powered by natural gas (see 
The U.S. Labor Department is on a witch hunt, unfairly targeting not only the Marcellus/Utica drilling industry–but any company in the entire supply chain that benefits from drilling, including hotels, restaurants and convenience stores. When you have the full force and backing of an out-of-control president like B.H. Obama, you get kind of drunk on your own power. That seems to be what has happened at the Labor Department. The Department of Labor’s wage and hour division in Pittsburgh has been targeting Marcellus-related companies since 2012, arriving for surprise audits of how companies classify employees–and how they pay them (particularly overtime payments). The jack boots have investigated 395 companies in three years and assessed $10 million in wages, civil penalties and liquidated damages and spurred a number of lawsuits by employees (and even the Labor Dept. itself) against employers. One question: Why hasn’t the Labor Department launched ANY investigations into the employment practices of Big Green organizations like the Sierra Club, THE Delaware Riverkeeper, William Penn Foundation, Heinz Endowments, PennFuture, Clean Air Council, Food & Water Watch and a myriad of other such organizations where wild-eyed zealots appear to work 24/7 for weeks on end in their mission to end all fossil fuels? Surely there are some overtime violations happening in Big Green…
Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), published an article on Friday that appears to “take sides” in the Pennsylvania debate over whether or not to institute a severance tax. Which is a disappointment. Until now the EIA has stayed above the fray in such issues. The EIA article from Friday offers a grossly misleading side-by-side comparison of where states get their primary source of revenue to feed their voracious appetites to transfer wealth from those who earn it to those who don’t–and how much is contributed by oil & gas severance taxes. The EIA compares tax revenues from five major fossil fuel generating states–Alaska, North Dakota, Wyoming, Texas and Pennsylvania. The graphic they use is powerful (and misleading) and appears to support calls to increase a severance tax in Pennsylvania. We disagree–strongly–with that position. Here is the EIA post from Friday, followed by MDN’s explanation of how it is grossly flawed…
Two Republican members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives have penned a column that points out the math for PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s so-called severance tax on the Marcellus Shale industry a) doesn’t add up, and b) doesn’t actually end up funding education. What makes the column noteworthy is that the two Republicans are not the conservative leaders of the PA House, but instead are from the Philadelphia area. Every Republican we’ve seen from the Philly area are moderate at best–usually RINOs (Republican in Name Only)–and certainly not anywhere near conservative. Yet these two, Rep. Tom Quigley from the 146th district in Montgomery County, and Rep. Warren Kampf from the 157th district in parts of Montgomery and Chester counties, ever-so-eloquently skewer Wolf and his inane high tax plan. Remarkable, coming from two Philly-area Republicans…
Pennsylvania’s Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, will appear in court today to answer charges that she is, herself, a criminal. She will appear in Montgomery County court to face nine criminal charges, including perjury (i.e. lying under oath). As we have reported, Kane is attempting to divert attention away from her own criminal actions by resurrecting an old porn case, claiming angry white men are out to get her (see