Over the years MDN has heard the oft-repeated comment that if New York and other states want to block new pipelines, maybe Pennsylvania should quit shipping its gas to those states. PA State Senator Gene Yaw has also heard those comments and, in a brilliant move, Yaw will soon introduce a bill that does precisely that: block natural gas shipments to states like New York, New Jersey and Maryland–states attempting to (or have) blocked new pipelines from PA.
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Swamp dwellers are recoiling in horror that the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee has just approved a series of bills that restores some sanity in how environmental regulations are made and paid for in the Keystone State. The bills begin, in a small way, to take back control of our system of creating laws, returning authority for making laws to the PA legislature, instead of creating and forcing laws on citizens by unelected, nameless, faceless, swamp-dwelling bureaucrats in regulatory agencies like the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). Let us explain.
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Last November, a variety of Big Green groups including the Clean Air Council, Widener University Environmental Law and Sustainability Center, eco(n)law LLC and 61 others submitted a “rulemaking petition” (407-page plan) to the Pennsylvania Environment Quality Board (EQB) requesting the Board and PA Gov. Tom Wolf establish a cap-and-trade greenhouse gas emission reduction program to eliminate carbon emissions from major sources by 2052. It’s a bizarre plan, meant to eliminate fossil fuel production and use, including Marcellus Shale production. Yesterday the EQB voted to accept and consider this cockamamie plan.
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New York State is already doing it, Pennsylvania is actively considering doing it, and now, Ohio has caught the contagion too. The “it” we’re talking about is soaking electric rate payers to pump more money into the coffers of big corporations so they can keep uneconomic and financially failing nuclear electric generating plants operating. Both PA and OH lawmakers have floated plans to soak rate payers in their respective states.
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Yesterday the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) Air Quality Technical Advisory Committee voted to recommend the DEP move forward with a proposed new regulation to control volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions, with a side benefit of reducing methane emissions, from existing oil and gas operations. It was a split vote, but it propels the regs to the next level.
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In December, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) released a draft of onerous new regulations that focus on reducing volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions and so-called fugitive methane. The new regs will force drillers and pipeline companies to spend big bucks to produce a teeny tiny improvement in emissions. The DEP followed up with a revised version just a few weeks ago (see PA DEP Releases Onerous New Air Regulations, Again).
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Pennsylvania State Senators Camera Bartolotta (Washington County) and Pat Stefano (Fayette County) have just beaten PA Gov. Tom Wolf at his own game. Wolf has been gallivanting around the state like Santa Claus promoting a plan called Restore PA, a plan that will get rid of lead paint in schools, fix flooding, repair old roads, give rural residents internet access, and just about any other goody you can think of. Wolf wants to pay for it by slapping a severance tax on the Marcellus industry. Bartolotta and Stefano are introducing two bills that would fund Wolf’s folly–but do so by allowing new shale drilling on state land. Game, set, and match!
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What will Pennsylvania’s future with respect to energy look like 25 years from now? What role will shale gas play? And how will that role affect the state? A group of 35 people began to study that question in the summer of 2017 and the end result, a new study, has just been released (full copy below). According to the study’s results, there are two distinct paths PA can take, resulting in two very different outcomes.
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We’re in the unusual position of defending Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, arguably the worst governor PA has had in a generation. But defend him (and his staff) we must, because the Wolf Administration is the object of a false and disgusting smear campaign by a prominent London tabloid called The Guardian.
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One liberal Philadelphia-area Republican and two Philly Democrats (considered a “bipartisan” group) have just introduced a package of seven bills in the Pennsylvania House supposedly meant to “further regulate pipeline companies and provide greater oversight authority to state agencies.” Sounds so reasonable, doesn’t it? In reality the bills are aimed at shutting down new pipeline projects in the state. Why does it take seven bills? They’re flinging whatever crapola they can against the wall, hoping at least one or two bills will stick.
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In December, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) released a draft of onerous new regulations that focus on reducing volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions and so-called fugitive methane (see Pa. DEP Jumps the Gun with Proposed New Emissions Regs). The new regs will force drillers and pipeline companies to spend big bucks to produce a teeny tiny improvement in emissions. The DEP is back with yet another revision of their onerous new regs, hoping this time they can ram them through and make them law.
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Diversified Gas & Oil has been on a mission to buy as many non-shale (conventional) oil and gas wells as it can in the Appalachian Basin. It owns close to 3 million acres of leases with some 60,000 (mostly) conventional oil and gas wells. That’s changing. Yesterday Diversified announced it has cut a deal to buy 107 operating (and 3 non-operating) shale wells in Pennsylvania and West Virginia for $400 million.
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All 97 miles of imported steel pipeline that will be used to construct Shell’s Falcon ethane pipeline project was offloaded at a Philadelphia port last month (10,996 pipes!), and is now loaded on trucks and on the way to the Pittsburgh region (some may have already arrived).
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Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 827, which would make a permanent frack ban by the Delaware River Basin Commission (if adopted) a government “taking” or seizure of a citizens’ property liable for compensation, passed the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee yesterday with a bipartisan vote of 16-9.
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How many times will Pennsyvlania voters (voters in general across the U.S.) continue to fall for the same old Democrat lies? “All it takes is more money. We’re almost there. Raise XYZ taxes [like a new 4.5% “severance” tax in PA] and we’ll have it. That will cure [fill in the blank]…lead problems in schools, hunger, heck, it might even cure cancer!” That’s the line of bull being fed by PA Gov. Wolf to (really stupid and gullible) Pennsylvanians about the need for a Marcellus-killing severance tax.
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In 2016 Crestwood Equity Partners formed a joint venture with New York City’s largest utility company, Consolidated Edison Inc., to operate a critical link of pipelines and storage facilities in the heart of the Utica/Marcellus, called Stagecoach Gas Services (see Con Ed & Crestwood Seal the Deal on Marcellus Pipeline/Storage JV). The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has launched an investigation into the fees charged by that service, which may now be too high following the Trump tax cuts.
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