Corbett Starting to Cave on Taxing Natgas? Sort of…
In a fight for his political life, PA Gov. Tom Corbett is dipping his toe in waters he has, until now, not been willing to enter. In an interview with the anti-drilling PBS reporters at StateImpact Pennsylvania, Corbett talked about the possibility of a “transmission tax” on natural gas. He still doesn’t support a severance tax (thank God), but he is talking about a new tax on gas flowing through pipelines in the state. Dangerous talk, if you ask us. Corbett’s best shot at re-election is to NOT cave on the issue of unfairly taxing the drilling industry so grubby politicians in Harrisburg can redistribute the wealth, spending it on their own pet projects (pork barreling)…
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The Martians are getting an assist from THE Delaware Riverkeeper herself (Maya van Rossum). Get this: The Delaware Riverkeeper, along with another anti-drilling group called The Clean Air Council (both based near Philadelphia), have filed an appeal with Adams Township (Butler County), PA over the town’s decision to grant Rex Energy permits to drill gas wells 3/4 of a mile away from the Mars public school. In June, Adams Township supervisors voted 4-1 to allow drilling to commence, subject to getting permits from the Dept. of Environmental Protection (see 
Three cheers for Marcellus Shale Coalition president David Spigelmyer for responding to a bone-headed editorial that recently appeared in the Wilkes-Barre, PA Times Leader castigating potential natural gas exports and denigrating the entire Marcellus Shale industry. The “reporters” of the Times Leader, in their sycophantic zeal and eagerness to obsequiously seek favor with their favorite candidate, Tom Wolf, ran an editorial titled, “Our Opinion: Exporting Pennsylvania’s natural gas to the globe defies good sense” in which they take pot shots at the men and women of the Marcellus along with mis-characterizing the issue of Marcellus gas exports. Mr. Spigelmyer had the 
We’ve got some bad blood happening between EQT–a big Marcellus driller headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA–and the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). The DEP has just filed a lawsuit against EQT to force the company to cough up a new record–$4.53 million in fines–for a leaky wastewater impoundment in Tioga County, PA. The fine comes a week after the anti-drilling PA Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, once again abused her office’s powers by filing criminal charges against EQT (see today’s companion story). The DEP says EQT filed for and received permission to build a freshwater impoundment at that location in 2012, but after the impoudment was built, they decided to change and use it for frack wastewater. Problem is, with a wastewater impoundment you need monitoring wells drilled around the impoundment and extra protections that were lacking because it was supposed to be used for freshwater only. EQT then built a second impoundment next to it for wastewater and did install monitoring wells, figuring those monitoring wells would cover both impoundments. The first impoundment leaked and, according to the DEP, EQT just doesn’t get how serious the problems were/are that resulted, and so they’ve slapped them with their biggest single fine ever. EQT is already fighting back both legally and with their own press release…