Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA
Radical Green Groups Sue PA to Overturn Well Plugging Law
Last summer, Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 2644 was passed into law, becoming Act 96 of 2022 (see New PA Act 96 Helps Boost Plugging Orphan Wells – Left Goes Nuts). Part of the new law keeps the power to raise bonding amounts for conventional wells with the legislature rather than allowing PA’s unelected Democrat bureaucrats in the bowels of the DEP’s Environmental Quality Board (EQB) to raise rates to punish drillers. Having their power taken away has pushed the extremists in some of PA’s most radical green groups, including PennFuture, Sierra Club, and Clean Air Council, to file a lawsuit challenging the law.
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Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) drills in the Greater Pittsburgh region, in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. Olympus owns a pipeline subsidiary called Hyperion Midstream that builds gathering lines to the company’s wells. Hyperion applied to build a compressor station on a recently approved Olympus well pad in rural West Deer Township (Allegheny County). The PA State Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) will hold a public hearing on Sept. 26 about the proposal. Grab the popcorn.
Last November, one of the ten natural gas storage wells at the Equitrans Rager Mountain Gas Storage Area in Jackson Township, Cambria County (in Pennsylvania) began to leak. The well leaked roughly 100 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of gas into the atmosphere (see 
New shale permits issued for Aug 14 – 20 in the Marcellus/Utica finally turned around. There were 27 new permits issued last week, way up from the 10 issued the prior week. Last week’s permit tally included 21 new permits in Pennsylvania, 2 new permits in Ohio, and 4 new permits in West Virginia (after no permits in WV for three weeks in a row). The top permittee for the week, for the second week in a row, was Chesapeake Energy, receiving 6 permits–5 in Bradford County and 1 in Susquehanna County.
Let’s face it: Josh Shapiro has been a major disappointment as Governor of Pennsylvania. He promised the moon to voters–that he would be both pro-gas and anti-gas at the same time. Some believed him, but we didn’t. Each week, new information comes along that reveals Shapiro’s true nature as a radical leftist Democrat. Shapiro said during the campaign he didn’t like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax that forces coal- and gas-fired power plants to close (see 
One year ago, in July 2022, MDN brought you news of a possible frac-out, or “inadvertent return” that happens when drilling mud pops out of places where it’s not supposed to–places outside the borehole being drilled (see 
It’s really sad, and sick, and twisted to watch what’s happening after University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) researchers released three deeply flawed “studies” that don’t prove anything (see 
It’s getting even uglier out there. For the sixth week in a row and the 15th of the last 16 weeks, the U.S. active rig count lost rigs. A lot of rigs. Last week the number decreased by a whopping 12 rigs after falling by five rigs per week for the three weeks prior. The total is now down to 642 active rigs across both oil and gas. Sadly, the Marcellus/Utica dropped three rigs last week (after losing two the week before) for a combined M-U rig count of 40–the lowest this year. Last week Pennsylvania picked up two rigs after losing two the week before, but the additions in PA came at the expense of Ohio (lost 2 rigs) and West Virginia (lost 3 rigs).
This is so frustrating. Last week, the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) issued fake research reports that supposedly link proximity to shale wells with a minuscule (less than one-tenth of one percent) rise in one type of childhood cancer (see 
On August 17, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) posted an Interim Final Environmental Justice Policy to guide DEP’s permit application reviews and outreach efforts in environmental justice areas throughout the Commonwealth. New Environmental Justice (or EJ) policies are a euphemism for regulations that prohibit drilling and pipelines built in neighborhoods of color or economic hardship zones because, says the left, those people can’t fight them. It is a uniquely dystopian and prejudiced view of the world. We call it “all shale drilling is racist” regulations. Completely repugnant. The DEP will publish their new anti-shale regs in the Pennsylvania Bulletin on September 16 and immediately implement them on the same day. Meaning the DEP will begin to slow or deny new permits for wells and pipelines as of that date–based on violating made-up EJ standards. We hope the Marcellus industry sues the DEP to stop it.
In 2018, Pennsylvania’s then-Attorney General, Josh Shapiro, assembled a grand jury to “investigate” Marcellus drillers. He lied to them for over two years and eventually got them to indict a number of Marcellus companies on trumped-up charges. The so-called grand jury issued a report (which was actually authored by Shapiro and his minions) in June 2020 (see