Statewide PA

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    PA DEP Won’t Renew Permits that Allow Drill Cuttings to be Reused

    A few years ago (not sure exactly when) three companies were issued permits by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to reuse drill cuttings–leftover rock and dirt that come out of a borehole–on construction sites. The three companies were issued the permits on an experimental basis. The permits will expire March 1, 2017. Even though DEP officials openly state, on the record, that “drill cuttings aren’t dangerous,” the DEP has indicated they will not renew the permits after they expire. However, the DEP appears to leave the door open to issuing more permits in the future, once they make a final determination after reviewing the results from these three companies. Who are the companies that were issued permits?…
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    Ben Franklin Tech Partners Invests $300K in Pipeline Sensor Co.

    For more than 30 Years, Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Central & Northern PA has provided startup funding and business support services to tech-based startups and small manufacturers located in our 32-county footprint. Lately they’ve been investing in Marcellus industry companies. Earlier this month Ben Franklin Technology Partners invested $300,000 in a PA company called Sensor Networks Inc. The company manufactures a “non-invasive” sensor for pipelines that uses ultrasound allowing the pipeline operator to detect corrosion and how thick the wall of the pipeline is. It’s a cool technology and will be hugely beneficial to midstream companies in the northeast and beyond…
    Read More “Ben Franklin Tech Partners Invests $300K in Pipeline Sensor Co.”

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    PA Court Says Leaseholder Can Sublease Production Rights

    We’re not sure how many landowners this may potentially affect, but we found a recent court decision by Pennsylvania Superior Court to be interesting. Landowners who had inherited property (and a lease) in Greene County, PA asked the court to “sever” the lease into two parts. The lease is with EQT and its affiliates and is 50 years old–long before Marcellus drilling. The landowner makes the case that because EQT had assigned the production rights to a third party and had never themselves drilled, the lease is terminated. There are two parts to the lease: one which said EQT had up to 10 years to extract oil and gas, the other that EQT can store natgas underground. The landowners were looking to end that portion of the lease that allows drilling because EQT never drilled on or under the property–and by assigning those rights to someone else, they have abrogated their rights under the lease. The court disagreed and said you can’t “sever” production rights from storage rights. If one OR the other happened, under the original lease, that is enough to make all parts of the lease ongoing and enforceable. Our description is likely not very good. Here’s what the legal beagles at Vorys say about the case, along with a copy of the decision…
    Read More “PA Court Says Leaseholder Can Sublease Production Rights”

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    PA Gov. Wolf Caves on Budget Deal After 9 Mo. of Temper Tantrums

    In the end, the recalcitrant and rabidly partisan Tom Wolf, governor of Pennsylvania, delayed his state’s budget for nine months…for nothing. He didn’t get his precious high Marcellus (or state income) tax hikes. He didn’t get pretty much anything he demanded. Like a petulant child stomping his feet and blaming every Republican he could find–in the end everyone saw Wolf for what he is: inept, inexperienced, and unprepared to govern the Keystone State. Like leadership-deficient people throughout history, he’s surrounded himself with suck-ups who won’t give him much-needed counsel that goes against his childish demands. They just tell him he’s right and to stick with it. Which has resulted in a disaster for PA. It was PA’s Democrats, in the end, that forced Wolf’s hand. Those in his own party. (Et tu, Brute?) PA’s Democrat legislators told Wolf if he didn’t allow the latest budget proposal to pass, they would vote with Republicans to override his threatened veto. And that would completely unmask him for the leaderless chump he is. So Wolf won’t veto the latest proposal–which contains no new taxes–allowing it to become law. Thank you to PA Republicans for standing firm and WINNING! The media can’t spin it, the Dems can’t spin it–Wolf lost and the Republicans won. Every citizen in PA is a winner because of it…
    Read More “PA Gov. Wolf Caves on Budget Deal After 9 Mo. of Temper Tantrums”

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    Columbia Gas of PA Asks PUC for Permission to Raise Rates

    Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania, a division of NiSource, has filed a request with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) to raise rates so it can recuperate costs spent in upgrading its natural gas delivery system for customers. Columbia Gas has spent $1.1 billion from 2007 to 2015. However, they’re only asking for a mere $55 million rate increase…
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    Shale Companies Keep Giving to PA Charities, Even During Downturn

    Shale companies in Pennsylvania have been hammered hard. The prices they get for natural gas in PA are already among the lowest in the country (in the world!); they’ve cut back their budgets by 50-80% on average; they’ve laid off thousands of employees. In fact, things right now are fairly bleak in Marcellus-land. And yet….and yet these same companies continue to fund charities and non-profits at the same level they previously funded them when times were good. Which amazes and disappoints anti-drillers, both at the same time…
    Read More “Shale Companies Keep Giving to PA Charities, Even During Downturn”

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    Who Pays for Abandoned O&G Wells in PA?

    Pennsylvania state officials estimate there are as many as 200,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in the state–the vast majority of them conventional wells drilled over 50 years ago. Most of them are not mapped or known. Some of them are hazards for shale drillers who stumble across them when drilling new wells. If you drill horizontally and clip an old/abandoned well, it becomes like an elevator pumping fluids and gas to the surface. Not good. Everyone is committed to finding and marking and capping these old wells–the question is, how do you pay for it? The shale industry says it’s not fair to put the economic burden solely on the shoulders of the Marcellus industry. The PA Environment Protection Agency (DEP) Abandoned and Orphan Well program attempts to find an owner of the well first, before committing public money to plug it. However, there’s a second way to get public money to plug an old well…
    Read More “Who Pays for Abandoned O&G Wells in PA?”

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    Radical Democrats Invoke God + Sham Science to Bash PA NatGas

    Just about nothing makes us more angry than when self-righteous “religious” leaders prance in front of cameras to denounce extracting and burning fossil fuels, like natural gas, as immoral or unethical. They are the height of hypocrisy–because they left them homes and churches heated with natural gas, wearing clothes made from fibers that come from petrochemicals (oil and natural gas), driving vehicles powered by fossil fuels, speaking into microphones with plastics in them and standing at a podium made from a material derived from petrochemicals–to denounce it all. Yet they use it every single day themselves. They claim to have God on their side. Repugnant. The Rev. Dr. Leah Schade (United in Christ Lutheran Church in Lewisburg, PA) and a group of 50 or so other hypocrites recently held an interfaith rally in Harrisburg to call on Gov. Tom Wolf to stop all drilling for gas and oil in the state–because it’s “immoral.” Too bad Rev. Shade lost her way and quit worshiping God and instead now worships nature. Her twisted philosophy is what happens when you quit worshiping the Creator and instead worship the creation…
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    2 NEPA Members of Pipeline Task Force Want to Know, What’s Next?

    In May 2015 Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and his underling Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary John Quigley created a “Task Force on Pipeline Infrastructure Development” (see Disaster on the Horizon: PA Gov Wolf Creates Pipeline Task Force). The stated purpose of the group was “to identify best practices for pipeline siting, permitting and safety.” We won’t recount all of the twists and turns–of how the Task Force was packed with government employees beholden to Wolf, etc. Along the way antis tried to protest and derail the meetings held by the Task Force (see PA DEP Sec. Quigley Calls Pipeline Protesters “Badly Misinformed”). The final meeting was held and the final report was released all 658 pages of it with 184 recommendations (see PA Pipeline Task Force Report: 658 Pages, 184 “Recommendations”). Two members of the task force from northeast PA are now asking the question, “What happens next?” We have the answer: NOTHING…
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    SWPA Created Bulk of PA’s NatGas Production Increase in 2015

    Pennsylvania natural gas production continues to impress, despite rigs being laid down in the later half of last year. Looking at all of 2015, the top two producing counties in the state likely won’t surprise you: #1 was Susquehanna County (where Cabot Oil & Gas drills). Susquehanna produced about 25% of all natural gas produced in the state last year! The #2 producing county was Bradford, also in northeast PA. But counties #3 and #4 in the list may surprise you: Washington and Greene counties, both in southwestern PA. In fact, an analysis done by the Pittsburgh Business Times finds that the 11-county southwestern PA region accounted for 86% of the state’s growth in production last year. That is an amazing statistic! Here’s more of their analysis of PA’s natgas production numbers for 2015…
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    Landowners vs Drillers: PA Minimum Royalty Bill Gets a Hearing

    There is a renewed push in Harrisburg to pass a minimum royalty bill to protect landowners from getting the shaft by drillers deducting expenses from royalty checks. We’ve tracked this issue for the past few years–an issue that came to the forefront when Chesapeake Energy started to screw landowners in Bradford County (and other locations) out of royalty money (see Bradford County, PA Landowners Sue Chesapeake over Royalties). Bills were introduced in the PA legislature and went nowhere. Last year another new bill was introduced by State Rep. Garth Everett: House Bill (HB) 1391 (see New Bill HB 1391 Will Guarantee PA Landowners 12.5% Royalties). Organizations like the PA chapter of the National Association of Royalty Owners (NARO) fully supports the bill. However, drillers make the counterargument that duly signed contracts which allow for certain deductions should not be swept away with the stroke of a pen. As we’ve previously commented, the issue is one of those rare times when landowners and the industry are on different pages altogether (see Rare Schism Between Landowners & Drillers over PA Royalty Law). HB 1391 is once again being pushed–under discussion yesterday in the PA House…
    Read More “Landowners vs Drillers: PA Minimum Royalty Bill Gets a Hearing”

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    Reaction to Dimock Court Decision Continues

    Last week a brain dead, OJ-style jury awarded two families $4.25 million (one of the families already being millionaires) in the six year-old case claiming Cabot Oil & Gas contaminated water wells in Dimock, PA with their drilling activities (see Dimock Jury Levies $4.25M Judgement Against Cabot in Dimock Case). The jury rewarded the plantiffs for being unreasonable and refusing to allow their water to be fixed–because methane in water CAN be fixed. The plantiffs held out, hoping to shake down Cabot, and they got an obtuse jury to agree with them. The case is still generating shock waves with both supporters of shale energy, and irrational detractors of fossil energy. Below is reaction to the decision from the Pennsylvania chapter of the National Association of Royalty Owners (NARO), the litigious radicals at Food & Water Watch, and from Penn State’s Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research…
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    Education Doing Just Fine Without Marcellus Tax in PA

    Guess what’s just happened? The fiscal year for Pennsylvania is in its last four months. Republicans held firm against an out-of-control-spending governor, Tom Wolf, with no increase in income taxes and no new Marcellus severance tax. And schools went on as they always do. Teachers taught, students learned. The educational Holocaust didn’t happen without hundreds of millions of dollars being transferred from Marcellus drillers to teachers unions. And everything is just fine. Illustrating that Wolf lied about the need for a new/high severance tax. But don’t worry, Democrats are consistent if anything. Wolf is absolutely insisting on a 6.5% severance tax this year, instead of the 5% severance tax he wanted last year. He’s doubling down on the tax, even though it was just proved it’s not needed…
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    Time to Fire John Quigley Following Remarks to Marcellus Investors

    John Quigley
    John Quigley – Sec. PA DEP

    John Quigley should be fired–immediately. He is the Secretary of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). Quigley previously worked for the anti-drilling PennFuture organization, an organization that seems to still have a big influence over him. On Friday, March 4, in his role as DEP Secretary, Quigley did intentional, massive damage to the state’s ability to attract new investment to the Marcellus industry. Quigley used calculated, disparaging comments about the industry during a call with Deutsche Bank Markets Research, broadcast to big money investors. He actually intended to, and did, talk down the industry and its prospects in Pennsylvania–meaning many investors decided to write PA off their list of places where they might want to invest. By all accounts, Quigley wants to discourage more investment in his state’s Marcellus industry. Although not criminal, it is unforgivable and he needs to be removed from office–NOW…
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    Somber Milestone – US Rig Count Hits Lowest Level in 68 Years

    Baker Hughes released their weekly rig count numbers last Friday (see full report below). We typically don’t report on the weekly ups and downs of rig counts, preferring to check in on a monthly basis to get an idea of the overall trend. But last week’s weekly report was historic, which is why we’re commenting on it now. Baker Hughes began tabulating weekly rig counts 68 years ago. The number of working rigs in the United States last Friday hit 480–the lowest number on record since Baker Hughes began keeping records. While the Marcellus count went up by 3 last week, right now there are only 19 rigs operating in Pennsylvania–less than before the Marcellus boom began and down from the high water mark of 114 rigs operating in 2012. When rigs are operating, it means jobs and economic stimulus for a community and region. It also means landowners get royalties, and that money gets invested and/or spent in a community. The converse is also true: no rig activity, fewer jobs and economic impact. Therefore the number of rigs operating is always of keen interest…
    Read More “Somber Milestone – US Rig Count Hits Lowest Level in 68 Years”

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    PA RINO Rep. Kate Harper Trots Out Severance Tax, Again

    What is it about elected “Republicans” in the Philadelphia orbit? Seems to us most of them are Republicans in Name Only (RINOs). One such elected RINO, PA House of Representatives member Kate Harper, R-61, is once again floating a severance tax plan. Her 3.5% tax plan sounds better (on the surface) than Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf’s 6.5% plan–except she also wants to keep the impact fee and not allow that fee to be deducted from the 3.5% tax she wants to raise for the teachers’ unions. At least Wolf allows impact fees to be deducted from his plan. The point is, Harper is completely bonkers. Out of her mind. Read today’s companion story about rig counts and how PA has been decimated. And she wants to slap a tax on production?…
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