Liberals Pretending to be Conservatives Push PA RGGI Carbon Tax
An environmental group purporting to be run by political conservatives, calling itself Conservatives For Responsible Stewardship (CRS), is pushing for Pennsylvania to adopt the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)–an obscene carbon tax that will kill the Marcellus shale industry in the state. In what has to be the ultimate example of chutzpah, the president of CRS, Dave Jenkins, argues in a column appearing in the Erie Times-News, that RGGI is (don’t laugh) a “market-based program” and the type of thing old Ron Reagan would have liked. HOGWASH!
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CNX has reached a settlement with the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County (MAWC) in a lawsuit brought by MAWC in 2016 claiming that CNX (and partner Noble Energy) claimed post-production deductions from royalties that should have been paid to MAWC. The original lawsuit sought combined damages of $3.6 million. The final number to be paid by CNX, according to reports, is $600,000.
The mighty Shell ethane cracker seems to have “issues” in getting and staying fully up to speed. We’ve previously reported on a series of emergency flaring episodes at the plant (see 
A disabled Navy veteran and his wife, who live in a rural, wooded area of Cambria County, PA, say their lives were upended beginning in 2017 when Sunoco (Energy Transfer) began constructing the Mariner East 2 NGL pipeline across their property. According to the vet, Sunoco cut down more than 60 large trees on his property, destroyed several small ponds, destroyed his water well, and destroyed (caved in) his septic system. The property is now susceptible to frequent flooding and sewage backups into the house.
We continue to be majorly disappointed with the new “Acting” Secretary of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection, Rich Negrin. Last Friday, we told you that Negrin is hewing to the far-left, promoting the concept that all wells and pipelines in poor communities and communities of color are automatically racist (see 
So-called “environmental justice” is a buzzword used by the left over the past decade or so. It is a euphemism, a code word for “any well pad or pipeline or any kind of oil and gas infrastructure that gets built anywhere near a community with a large population of poor folks or black/brown folks is automatically considered racist.” Environmental justice is the antithesis of American freedom and the American sense of equal justice for all under our laws. The left screams “racist” when they can’t compete on the basis of ideas, a tactic they use to shut down arguments. Unfortunately, Pennsylvania’s new “Acting” Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection, Rich Negrin, spouted environmental justice nonsense yesterday at a House hearing on the budget.
New shale permits issued for Mar. 13-19 in the Marcellus/Utica rose by four from the prior week. There were 34 new permits issued in total last week, including 24 new permits for Pennsylvania, 4 new permits for Ohio, and 6 new permits in West Virginia. Last week the top receiver of new permits across PA and OH was Chesapeake Energy with 7 new permits spread across three PA counties: Bradford, Sullivan, and Wyoming. Range Resources received 6 new permits in Washington County, PA.
Diversified Energy (formerly Diversified Gas & Oil), with major assets in the Marcellus/Utica region (and other regions too), owns approximately 8 million acres of leases with close to 70,000 (mostly) conventional oil and gas wells. The company’s business model is to buy lower-producing wells on the cheap and find ways to make them more productive. One of the new ways Diversified is looking to make money with old wells is by mining cryptocurrency at wells in remote locations not hooked to a pipeline network. Diversified wants to try it with a well in northwestern Pennsylvania. Unsurprisingly, it’s generating some controversy…
For more than a year, we have covered the topic of the Bidenistas’ Hunger Games contest to award $7 billion to some 6-10 “hydrogen hubs” across the country. Each winning hub will receive $500 million to $1 billion of government largesse to help build a hub in a particular region. The money for the hub projects was allocated as part of the so-called Infrastructure bill, passed in November 2021. Some 79 “concept papers,” which is a pre-application, were received by the Dept. of Energy. Of the 79, only 33 were given “encouragement” (i.e. permission) by the DOE to advance to the next stage of the Hydrogen Hunger Games (see 
Newly-elected Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro nominated Rich Negrin, a former top official (and Deputy Mayor) of Philadelphia, to become the next Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (see 
A Boston-based fossil fuel hating group called HEET (Home Energy Efficiency Team) paid big money for a “research report” written by a card-carrying “research activist” targeting Philadelphia Gas Works’ (PGW) plan to upgrade its aging and (in some cases) failing 6,000 miles of natural gas pipelines that make life possible in the City of Brotherly Love. The HEET-funded “study” says PGW should slap a 10-year Band-Aid on leaky pipes because, you know, renewables will take over the world after that. What a load…
Josh Shapiro promised he was a different kind of Democrat, but in the end, he turned out to be the same kind as most. We told you, warned you, that should Shapiro be elected, he would embrace the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax, even though he expressed sentiments during the campaign that he doesn’t support it (see 
On March 14, eight business groups across five states (including PA and WV) sent a letter to the federal EPA urging the EPA to expedite approvals for well permits for carbon sequestration, including allowing primacy for states. Businesses and consortia are actively pursuing significant investments in projects related to the so-called energy transition. Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) is an important piece of the “transition,” both for capturing direct emissions and enabling clean hydrogen production from promised regional hydrogen hubs. CCS investments can accelerate a region’s energy transition and grow jobs. But the feds are dragging their feet. States want to take control of approving CCS projects for themselves, to speed things along–to become the primary regulatory authority. But the dysfunctional EPA is not responding. Hence the letter.
While we don’t track rig counts each week, given the volatile up-and-down nature of rig counts, the count from last week warrants comment. Oil rigs fell by one last week to 589, while gas rigs rose by nine to 162. Total rig count is up 13.7% over the same time last year–a good indicator that more drilling is happening. In our region, the Marcellus play gained five rigs from the previous week, while the Utica lost four rigs from the previous week.