PA Gov Wolf: Forget Burning Natgas, Make PVC Pipe Instead
A question and answer session with PA Gov. Tom Wolf at the Harrisburg Patriot-News reveals a lot about his attitude and thinking with regard to the Marcellus Shale industry. Hinting at his previous statement that if the industry doesn’t agree to his tax he’ll ban them (see PA Gov Wolf Turns Bully, Threatens Ban on Drilling Absent New Tax), Wolf, in answering a question about the drilling industry and how it conducts itself said the industry will “do this [Marcellus drilling] right or we can’t do it at all.” He failed to define what he means by doing it right. Wolf also said that while he’s in favor of extracting Marcellus Shale gas, he (fantastically) thinks it’s a waste to burn it! Instead, HE wants to use it to make things, like artificial wood for decks and PVC for pipes. He’s more interested in solar and wind than he is natural gas (must be John Hanger’s influence). What a mess this man’s thinking is on one of PA’s most important natural resources. He’s going to screw it up if he continues on this dangerously naive course…
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PA’s PennFutureDEP Acting Sec. John Quigley wants to get the big pipeline companies and the townships through which the pipelines will go to meet at the local Starbucks and “start a conversation.” Which latte do you like? Er no, not that kind of conversation. Quigley acknowledges he doesn’t have a thing to do with interstate pipelines–they’re approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Other agencies (federal and state) oversee the pipelines once they are built. But Quigley thinks if he can get both sides–pipeliners and towns–together and try to at least get a dialogue going, perhaps something good will come from it. Not a bad idea as ideas go. One recommendation: don’t tell the nutters which Starbucks you’re meeting at…
Seems like it was ages ago now that we told you (and keep telling you) about a rural school district in northeastern Pennsylvania–the Elk Lake School District–that drilled two Marcellus Shale wells on the school campus (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has been working on revisions to oil and gas regulations, something called Chapter 78, since 2011. In 2012 the new Act 13 drilling law required the DEP to update Chapter 78 to reflect the new reality of shale drilling. Over the past three years, the DEP held nine public hearings and received some 24,000 public comments on the proposed changes (see 
The 3rd Annual Northeast Oil & Gas Awards event is now just two weeks away. This is a final shout-out to MDN readers and our exclusive offer to you: Attend the Industry Summit during the day for free, saving you $199 (see details for how to signup here: 
Have you ever played Jenga? You know, the game where you stack blocks of wood in mini-skyscraper style and then each player must remove a block from a lower level and stack it on the top until somebody pulls a block out and the whole thing comes crashing down. That’s the comparison used to describe the state budget recently proposed by PA Gov. Tom Wolf in none other than the reliably liberal, Democrat-supporting, anti-drilling Allentown Morning Call. As the Morning Call points out, Wolf has built his Jenga (house of cards) budget on soaking drillers with a new severance tax. When that doesn’t happen, the whole budget comes tumbling down and no one will be to blame except Tom Wolf himself…
Tioga County, PA is getting a reputation. No, not THAT kind of reputation silly! Tioga County, PA is getting a reputation for impressive Utica Shale wells. Last September MDN told you that Shell had drilled a pair of Utica wells in Tioga County (see