Revisiting PA Bill to Allow Shale Drilling Across Multiple Units
Two days ago MDN brought you news about a new bill in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, HB 247, which would allow fully leased parcels that are part of one drilling “unit” to be combined with parcels in a different unit (see PA Floats Bill to Allow Shale Drilling to Span Multiple Units). “Cross-unit drilling,” if you will. We connected a few dots and made some observations that maybe were not quite on the mark. This post presents “the other side” of the HB 247 issue.
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Some Pennsylvania landowners have recently been approached by the companies they’re leased with, asking landowners to sign amended leases to allow cross-unit drilling. We personally know of one case in which a driller requested such an amendment in northeast PA. So it is with great interest we notice a new bill has been introduced in the PA House, specifically to allow cross-unit shale drilling.
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 
According to new data released this week by our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Pennsylvania accounted for 25% of new clean-burning natural gas electric power generation added last year.
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 over millions of acres and tens of thousands of wells–many of them located in Pennsylvania. Last fall the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) told Diversified it wants 1,000 of its nonproducing wells plugged in the next five years. Diversified countered it would like to plug 2,000 wells, but over the next 20 years. They ended up compromising.
Ever notice how predators like to hunt in packs? First the Chester County, PA District Attorney launched an ethically questionable “investigation” into “crimes” that may have been committed by building the Mariner East pipelines through his county (see 
Did Williams just float an alternative/competitive pipeline to PennEast? Sure looks that way to us. On Friday Williams announced a binding open season to add 34 miles of looping pipeline next to existing Transco pipeline along with beefing up some of it’s compressor stations, in a bid to increase flows along the Transco from Luzerne County, PA (where PennEast would originate) to Mercer County, NJ (where PennEast would terminate).
In late December, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that so-called “stripper wells” can be taxed under the 2012 Act 13 law, slapped with an impact fee assessment if those wells produce more than 90 thousand cubic feet per day (Mcf/d) of gas in a single month, any month (see 
Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, published a post yesterday on the topic of “U.S. natural gas processing plant capacity and throughput have increased in recent years.” In that post EIA links to a handy dandy online tool that lists all of the active natural gas processing plants operating in the U.S. We used the tool to download all of the plants in PA, OH and WV, and further trimmed out the low volume (conventional only) processing plants, leaving a list of sweet 16 Marcellus/Utica processing plants–where they are located and how much they process.
Chesapeake Energy, started by Aubrey McClendon as a gas-focused drilling company that went on to become the country’s largest natgas producer, is doing its darnedest to get rid of its natgas assets and turn itself into an oil driller. Yet it was the company’s natural gas assets that boosted the company’s financial performance in 4Q18, helping them turn in a better financial performance than analysts expected. Ironic, no?
PennEast Pipeline, a $1 billion, (previously) 120-mile natgas pipeline that will stretch from northeast PA to the Trenton area of New Jersey, has made a few minor route adjustments, the most recent of which will make it another mile shorter, and anti-fossil fuelers like THE Delaware Riverkeeper is up in arms.
We really dig maps and charts that illustrate data about permits and drilling. Yeah, we’re shale geeks. We recently came across a series of maps issued by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) that summarize how many permits were issued, and how many wells were drilled, across all relevant counties in PA. And does so on a super-handy map. We grabbed the two maps you need to view and have them below–one showing permits, the other showing wells drilled.
Big Green insanity continues at the so-called Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation (PEDF). The only thing they “defend” is their own twisted philosophy of trying to gouge out the eyes of the oil and gas industry in PA–even at the expense of de-funding their own beloved PA Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR).
Earlier this week Energy Transfer, the company that built the Rover Pipeline in Ohio, the Revolution Pipeline in southwestern Pennsylvania, and the Mariner East pipelines that run from eastern OH clear across PA to Philadelphia, issued its fourth quarter and full year 2018 update. The thing that caught our attention is an admission by ET’s CEO Kelcy Warren that the company has made “mistakes” with its pipeline projects in PA, and has learned from those mistakes.