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PA AG Shapiro Colludes w/Delaware County DA to Investigate ME Pipe
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 Chester County DA Goes Rogue, Targets ME2 Pipe w/Criminal Probe). The Chester DA recently impaneled a grand jury to hear fake allegations against Energy Transfer and Sunoco Logistics Partners (see Politically Motivated Investigation of ME Pipe Convenes Grand Jury).
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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.
We won’t pretend to understand the wacky math Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is attempting to perpetrate on the good citizens of PA. The state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) wants to raise permit fees on Marcellus Shale drillers by 250% in order to help fund the agency, claiming the oil and gas program loses $800,000 per month (see 
A drilling team with experience drilling more than 1,000 Marcellus shale wells in Pennsylvania with laterals from 1,500 feet to 11,000 feet recently published a research paper looking at best practices and what it will take to routinely drill wells with laterals longer than 18,000 feet.
It seems we owe an apology to Williams for the story we ran earlier this week (see 
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has just declared full-on war with Energy Transfer and its Sunoco Logistics subsidiary by directing the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to suspend all reviews of clean water permit applications and other pending approvals for all of ET/Sunoco’s pipeline projects in the state, including Mariner East 2 (ME2) and the Revolution pipeline project.