Antis’ Fake Outrage at ME2 Construction “Spills,” Demand Stop Work
Anti fossil fuelers believe they have a new angle in their years-long war to prevent Sunoco Logistics Partners from building the Mariner East 2 twin pipelines across the state: drilling mud spills. When a pipeline company installs a new pipeline, the vast majority of pipe is laid in trenches. However, there are places (creeks, rivers, wetlands, roadways) where you can’t just dig a trench to lay the pipe. In those cases, you drill underground horizontally, something called horizontal directional drilling (HDD). When you drill through rock, you need drilling mud to cool the drill bit as it chews away. Drilling mud is typically bentonite, a non-toxic clay substance used to manufacture things like toothpaste, cosmetics and kitty litter. The only threat from bentonite is that it can smother aquatic life if enough is spilled. Or it can foul a water aquifer–making the water in your well cloudy for a period of time, until it settles. Such an instance recently happened in Chester County, when Sunoco’s drilling for ME2 fouled an aquifer, causing well water for some 15 homes to become temporarily unusable (see Sunoco Stops ME2 Drilling in Chester County Following Water Issue). Sunoco has agreed to run a nearby municipal water line to the affected homes. Sunoco is using HDD in a number of locations, to avoid disturbing surface structures. Along the way, a few gallons of benonite mud have gotten spilled here and there. Literally just a few gallons. But each time that happens, it must be reported. Big Green groups have gotten ahold of the reports and are now (via mouthpiece organizations like StateImpact Pennsylvania) proclaiming Sunoco has “already” experienced “61 drilling mud spills.” And based on that very misleading number (vast majority just a few gallons), those same Big Green organizations are demanding the Dept. of Environmental Protection’s Environmental Hearing Board close down construction, immediately. Stop all work on the pipeline–to give Big Green groups time to try and block the project permanently…
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For the past two years running, the Delaware River Basin Commission, a cooperative organization with five members–Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers–has received more than half a million dollars per year from PA as its dues to support the anti-drilling organization. The problem is, PA pays its full share, but states like NY and NJ consistently short-change the DRBC. PA Gov. Tom Wolf is a big DRBC fan. Wolf supports the DRBC’s ongoing ban of drilling in the Delaware River Basin–which unfairly denies landowners in Wayne and Pike counties (PA) from benefiting from Marcellus Shale drilling–Wolf’s own constituents. However, the DRBC’s gravy train from PA is now over. Gov. Wolf recently allowed the PA budget to pass, without his signature. Part of the budget bill whacks PA’s contribution to the DRBC to just $217,000 this year–less than half of what is has been getting. The effort to whack the DRBC came from PA representatives in northeastern PA, tired of the ongoing drilling ban. Looks like layoffs are coming to the DRBC. They don’t do a heck of a lot, so why not? Time to toss the bureaucrats out on their rear-ends…
We’re not quite sure how to present this news. In some respects, we want to roll around on the ground laughing. In other respects, we’re angry at the semi “racist” overtones of a new “research” paper. We’ll report, you decide. A couple of researchers from the University of Maryland’s Dept. of Economics have published a so-called “working paper” via the National Bureau of Economic Research that finds a link between fracking and more babies. The paper, titled “Male Earnings, Marriageable Men, And Nonmarital Fertility: Evidence From The Fracking Boom,” says for every extra $1,000 of money earned by those working in the fracking industry, the pregnancy rate goes up by 6 births per 1,000 women. However, marriage rates don’t go up. The researchers say that people in rural pockets of Texas, Oklahoma, California and Pennsylvania who are connected to the fracking industry are “reproducing at a rate that far exceeds the national average.” In other words, those ignorant rednecks can’t get enough sex–IF they have lots of money coming in. However, those same rednecks feel no need to marry the women they knock up. Rednecks find it perfectly acceptable to shack up. That’s the MDN summarized version of the research…
Last November MDN brought you the delicious news that Pennsylvania would shift $24 million away from a boondoggle program called the PA Alternative Energy Investment Act and into a new program called the Pipeline Investment Program, or PIPE (see 
The Gas Technology Institute (GTI), based in Illinois, is doing the Marcellus/Utica region a huge favor. GTI has launched a pre-employment training program to introduce folks to natural gas pipeline operations. The four-week program provides a basic understanding of natural gas, the utility and pipeline industry, and different equipment, procedures and operations used. The program is aimed at students, veterans, displaced coal workers and others with an interest in getting a job with utilities, midstream (i.e. pipeline) companies and their contractors. Here’s the best part: The program is fully funded, so there is no tuition cost for those who qualify. The program is delivered via classroom at three participating colleges: Westmoreland County Community College and Butler County Community College (both in PA), and Washington State Community College (in OH). Here’s the lowdown..
Totally biased, Big Green-backed mouthpiece StateImpact Pennsylvania, funded in part by taxpayers via PBS (a travesty), as well as funded in part by anti-drilling organizations like the Heinz Endowments and the William Penn Foundation (which appear to control StateImpact’s “reporting”), is targeting a PR agency because the agency has the audacity to do good work for Sunoco Logistics and the Mariner East 2 Pipeline project. You see, in liberal anti-drilling land, it’s OK for antis to smear and lie and fabricate all sorts of falsehoods about pipeline projects–but it’s not OK for the object of those smears (i.e. Sunoco LP) to fight back and to present its side of the issue. As soon as you fight back and tell your side of the story, you’re “targeting” innocent people, you’re attempting to bully the little guy. You’re mean. You’re pedaling fossil fuel death. That’s how it works in Big Green land. A recent article on StateImpact PA attempts a smear job on PR agency Bravo Group because Bravo has the gonads to say this on their website: “We’re helping Sunoco Logistics build public and policyholder support for its Mariner East projects, an infrastructure investment of more than $3 billion. The goal: secure regulatory approvals, neutralize opposition and develop the Mariner East projects on budget and without capital losses.” The “neutralize opposition” phrase in particular set off the anti-pipeline crazies, so StateImpact created an entire story focused on that phrase. You know you’re being effective when they attack you with a smear campaign…
Being a marketing guy, MDN editor Jim Willis knows that crystallizing a concept into a few key words is critical. You have to be able to convey your meaning in as few words as possible–and those words must be pregnant with meaning. Jim was lucky enough to name this blog/news site Marcellus Drilling News, which (mostly) conveys its purpose–to report on happenings in the Marcellus (later adding the Utica) region. A very smart person who’s given a lot of thought about our industry is Kathryn “Katie” Klaber. Katie owns her own consulting firm–The Klaber Group. But before that, she was founder and president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition (a well-named organization). Katie lives and works in Pittsburgh. In a recent article for the Pittsburgh Business Times, Katie ponders over Pittsburgh (and our industry’s) “identity crisis”–by which she means our lack of good branding. Sometimes our industry and region is referred to as “Appalachia.” But that term often connotes the mountains of West Virginia, spreading out into Kentucky. Sometimes we are referred to as the “Marcellus/Utica basin,” which gets a lot closer to meaningful, but connotes drilling and leaves out the downstream. And sometimes we’re called “the Northeast.” But folks in Ohio consider themselves Midwesterners, not northeasterners. Why is it important to lock down an accurate, pregnant-with-meaning description for our entire industry (upstream, midstream and downstream), and our geographic region? According to Katie, it comes down to two words: capital investment. We need to brand ourselves and do it sooner rather than later, if we want to grow business in our neck of the woods…
Here on MDN we talk a lot about big interstate natural gas pipelines–like Rover and NEXUS, Atlantic Sunrise and Atlantic Coast. But we don’t talk so much about the tiny (in diameter) gas pipelines that connect to people’s homes. In oil and gas industry parlance, those pipelines belong to the “downstream”–or the end users of natural gas. From time to time we’ve covered stories about NiSource and other utilities spending big money to replace aging local distribution pipelines (see 
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you are tempted to treat everything as a nail (Abraham Maslow, 1966). Such is it with radical anti-drillers who recently won a case at the PA Supreme Court by the skin of their teeth. The case dealt with the narrow issue of how PA can spend revenue raised by leasing and allowing drilling for oil and gas under state-owned land (see 
Franklin Kury was a young lawyer and PA House of Representatives member back in the late 60s/early 70s. He was, at that time, the author of Pennsylvania’s so-called Environment Rights Amendment (Article I, Section 27 of the PA Constitution). For 40 years the ERA didn’t have much of an impact–but then activist, liberal, leftist judges got ahold of it and (ab)used it to screw with the Marcellus Shale industry in the state. Things “all changed” on June 20 when the PA Supreme Court (ab)used the ERA to tell the Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) it can’t use money raised from shale drilling to help fund itself–a bass ackwards view of things if ever we’ve heard of one (see 
In a story about PA’s “moribund” drilling industry beginning to turn around, the AP notes some news that we think it pretty significant. For the first six months of 2017, PA shale drillers have drilled 397 shale wells. That’s more than twice the number they drilled in the first six months of 2016. There are now 20 additional drilling rigs active in the Marcellus, and fracking crews are in “short supply.” This is all great news for the PA Marcellus, something to celebrate on the day after July 4th…
As MDN reported in June, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court of Appeals, in a sharply divided 3-2 decision, sided with virulent anti-drilling group Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation against the state in saying that any royalties generated from drilling on state-owned land MUST be used solely for conservation and the environment (see 
Pennsylvania does not have a revenue problem–it has an overspending problem. Once again the Republican-majority legislature in PA is caving to the siren song/pressure of wild-spending, liberal Democrats and will pass a budget that is $2 billion over the revenue they can reasonably expect–sprinkled with giveaways like an extra $100 million for teachers unions–and beginning next week the Republicans will face a barrage of media stories and pressure to create a severance tax to help make up the difference. Already we’re seeing stories about the need for a “fair gas tax” and that a severance tax is “long overdue.” What about passing a “fair budget” that doesn’t overspend? What about “fiscal responsibility” that’s long overdue? Where are those stories? And, when will Republicans learn to quit playing the Dem’s game?…
Pennsylvania does not have a taxing problem, as people like Gov. Tom Wolf pretend–it has a spending problem, as in they spend beyond their means. The last governor that tried to correct that problem–Tom Corbett–got handed one term in the big chair for his efforts at dealing honestly with it. Big Education and Big Labor knifed Corbett in the back, politically, after he cut the mammoth increase in their growth. (FEED ME FEED ME) If you want to know why PA is in budget trouble, look no further than it’s Secretary of the Dept. of Community and Economic Development, Dennis Davin. Every econ growth guy we’ve ever talked to knows that increasing taxes gets less of what you tax–it is an incontrovertible fact in economics. Yet Davin, who’s boss is utter failure Tom Wolf, is pushing hard for a huge tax increase on the Marcellus industry–the very industry that has singlehandedly kept PA out of an economic abyss. And yet the guy who should understand the issue the best, is pushing hardest for the tax. That tells you all you need to know about the Wolf Administration and it’s utter failure…