Whatever Happened to the PA DEP Air Study Started in 2012?
In July 2012 MDN told you about a one-year study of air quality in and around Chartiers Township in Washington County, PA being conducted by the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (see PA DEP Announces 1 Year Study on Air Quality in Marcellus). The aim of the study is to determine whether or not Marcellus drilling, pipelines and the MarkWest natural gas processing plant in the Chartiers area causes an unhealthy increase in various air pollutants for residents. What did the research find? In 2013 the DEP said testing so far showed “no levels of any pollutant that would violate federal ambient air quality standards.” However, the DEP decided to extend the study until Spring 2014 (see DEP Marcellus Air Study in SW PA Extended Extra Half Year). Then all the wheels came off the cart. The DEP didn’t finish the report, and the good citizens of Pennsylvania made a huge mistake by installing Tom Wolf as their governor. Along with Wolf came an anti-driller as the head of the DEP, John Quigley, who looked over the report and told the DEP to do it over again because it didn’t find enough bad stuff to suit him…
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PA’s very liberal Governor, Tom Wolf, has been obstinate in demanding onerous new drilling rules for the conventional, as well as unconventional (shale) drilling industry since he took office. Reworked drilling rules were done and ready to go under previous Governor, Tom Corbett. Then Corbett lost to Wolf, and Wolf demanded to change common sense rules everyone had already agreed to (see 
This pipeline project has been, until now, completely off our radar screen. As pipeline projects go, it’s pretty small. But building even a single square inch of new pipeline, or expanding a compressor station, is anathema to anti-fossil fuel nutters. So we expect this project will be in the headlines starting this week, with a pair open house meetings in the Philadelphia area (and one in Delaware) where the project will get built. The project is being built by Eastern Shore Natural Gas and is called the 2017 System Expansion project. In March 2015, Eastern Shore ran a non-binding open season to see if customers want more natural gas in the Delmarva Peninsula area (includes most of Delaware and portions of Maryland and Virginia). It looks like Eastern Shore’s customers expressed enough interest that they plan to move forward with an expansion project that will bring new sources of natgas from an interconnection Eastern Shore has with the mighty TETCo (Texas Eastern Company) pipeline near Philadelphia. Below we have details on the expansion project, and details for the open house meetings scheduled for this week in PA and DE…
The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) filed a lengthy comment with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last week regarding the Williams Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project (full copy below). The EPA said, in a nutshell, that more studies should be done. The EPA said the pipeline could have “significant adverse environmental impacts.” They also said alternate routes should be considered. A few things to know about the EPA’s filing: First and foremost, the EPA is treated like any other individual or organization who files comments on a project with FERC. That is, the EPA’s comments will receive no special treatment or consideration. Second, the only value in EPA’s comments is publicity for anti-pipeline nutters. Third, the “alternate routes” the EPA professes to prefer have already been considered, thoroughly, and discarded by FERC. So this is a lot of smoke and noise and mirrors–and nothing else…
MDN has previously reported on efforts in Pennsylvania to substitute a so-called “gross receipts tax” (GRT) on natural gas for a severance tax as a way to raise millions of dollars for Democrats’ voracious appetite to spend money (see 
Pennsylvania legislators went home for the long Fourth of July holiday weekend without a final budget in place. The clock is ticking. The spending part of the budget–some $31.5 billion (a massive amount) has been agreed to by both the Republican-controlled legislature and Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf. However, the budget needs to find another $1.5 billion to fund it–the shortfall in the current plan. Wolf wants “sustainable revenue”–by which he means permanent tax increases on something. Wolf’s preference is to slap a Marcellus Shale-killing severance tax on the natural gas industry. That’s a non-starter for the Republican-controlled legislature–people who actually know how economics work. It does appear the two sides are close to getting the budget passed. This week should tell the tale of how the state plans to raise enough money to bridge the shortfall…
A new bill in the Pennsylvania legislature, Senate Bill (SB) 1327 looks to undo some of the damage done by the now departed anti-drilling Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection, John Quigley. The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently introduced draconian new rules to govern methane emissions from oil and gas drilling (see 
Can a single petrochemical facility, like Shell’s proposed ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, “rebirth” all of Pennsylvania’s moribund manufacturing base? That would be a resounding “Yes!” according to Marcellus Shale Coalition president Dave Spigelmyer and Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association president Dave Taylor. Writing a column in the Harrisburg Patriot-News, the two Daves make the case for just how big a hairy deal the coming Shell cracker in PA really is…
Last December MDN ripped the mask off a group of extremely partisan, virulently anti-drilling Democrats who call themselves the innocent-sounding Multi-State Shale Research Collaborative (see 
Three radicalized environmental groups–the Allegheny Defense Project, the Appalachian Mountain Advocates and Damascus Citizens for Sustainability–have filed a motion with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to challenge FERC’s approval of three tiny pipeline expansion projects in Pennsylvania. Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s 300 line is proposing to expand three different segments of the line, serving different customers, and rightfully asked FERC to consider the three projects as separate and to not commingle them together. The radicalized groups are insisting FERC evaluate all three bundled together, in an attempt to slow down and hopefully stop progress on the projects…
There was lots of cracker talk at the first Northeast U.S. & Canada Petrochemical Construction Conference & Exhibition in Pittsburgh yesterday. According to NGI’s ace reporter for Shale Daily, Jamison Cocklin, excitement over the Shell cracker announcement from a few weeks ago was “palpable” at yesterday’s event. There was plenty of talk about the Shell cracker–but the talk coming from the event that interests MDN is talk about both the PTT Global Chemical cracker planned for Ohio, AND the Braskem cracker planned for West Virginia. These other two world class cracker plants (similar in size and scope to Shell’s project) “remain on track.” Now that is news!…
Last Friday MDN told you about the latest plan to tax Pennsylvania natural gas–something called a gross receipts tax (see