PA Democrat In-fighting re Member of Wolf’s Pipeline Task Force
This story is amusing–PA Democrat infighting over the composition of the PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s Pipeline Infrastructure Task Force. You’ll recall we brought you Wolf’s announcement that the PennFuture Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection, John Quigley, would head a new task force to oversee (i.e. slow down) the development of local shale gas gathering pipelines (see Disaster on the Horizon: PA Gov Wolf Creates Pipeline Task Force). In July the DEP announced the list of 42 members of the Task Force, one-third of whom work for Wolf in state government jobs (see PA Gov Wolf Packs Pipeline Task Force with His Own Minions). What we didn’t know is that apparently there was at least one anti-fossil fueler who is so extreme, not even PennFuture’s own John Quigley wanted him on the task force. Scott Cannon, from Luzerne County, PA, was originally invited to be a member of the task force. Cannon is well known as an anti-driller in NEPA, running around with a video camera shooting anti-fracking propaganda films. It seems Cannon’s name somehow got on the list to be invited, and then, suddenly, he was uninvited. All signs point to Quigley, a fellow liberal Democrat, as the one who did the uninviting…
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With fewer new wells being drilled in Pennsylvania, and more inspectors added to the roles at the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), as you might expect, there have been more inspections of existing/older gas and oil wells. In fact, the DEP has conducted 1,700 more inspections over the first seven months of 2015 than they did in 2014. The oil and gas division of the DEP has added 25 new employees in the past 12 months–even though drilling activity has gone down. Typical government boondoggle. You can’t hire people and give them nothing to do. Well, you can, but that doesn’t look good for a new governor. So the DEP has hauled out the magnifying glass to look under every rock on the well pad. And what have they found? Despite 16% more inspections of shale operations this year, the total number of violations has gone down–from 283 violations for the first seven months of 2014, to 205 violations for the first seven months in 2015. However, violations for conventional drillers over the same period have gone up…
The Philadelphia-based anti-fossil fuel group Clean Air Council has announced through their media/public relations mouthpiece (the taxpayer-funded PBS StateImpact Pennsylvania) that they’ve launched yet another frivolous lawsuit–this time against Sunoco Logistics and their Mariner East 2 pipeline plan. Clean Air Council has launched so many lawsuits against the oil and gas industry we’ve lost count of the number. The Clean Air Council, once called The Delaware Valley Citizens’ Council for Clean Air, is a non-profit (i.e. non-taxed) group engaging in political activity in violation of their non-profit charter–yet government officials ignore those violations. The Clean Air Council, without standing, filed a lawsuit in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas (the lowest trial court, essentially what other states call county court), charging that Sunoco Logistics, contrary to decades of accepted recognition as a public utility in Pennsylvania, is not actually a public utility and therefore cannot assert eminent domain against a few holdout landowners who refuse to allow the Mariner East 2 pipeline to be placed next to the existing Mariner East 1 pipeline already crossing their land…
A hilarious “Boo! Scared Ya” report has just been issued by the brainiacs at Penn State that says Pennsylvanians are all going to fry by 2050 because of mythical man-made global warming. Never mind these are the same people who have made the same predictions going back 25 years (average temps haven’t gone up now for 18 years and counting). Never mind these are the same people who can’t predict the weather next week, let alone 35 years from now. We’re just supposed to believe them because they have letters after their names, supposedly indicating they’re smart. One person has fallen for this erroneous garbage: the PennFuture Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection, John Quigley. Unfortunately Quigley has the power to make drillers’ lives miserable by enacting draconian regulations to control their activities because he believes in the fairy tale of global warming. That not only makes him stupid, it makes him dangerous…
The Ben Franklin Shale Gas Innovation & Commercialization Center (SGICC), affiliated with the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic with a mission to accelerate technology breakthroughs related to shale gas in PA, has just released an updated report on shale wastewater treatment and disposal in PA. The report, titled “Shale Gas Development – Summary of Shale Gas Wastewater Treatment and Disposal In Pennsylvania 2014” (full copy below) finds that drillers in PA produced about 1.8 billion gallons of gas and oil wastewater in 2014–a figure largely unchanged since 2011. The study also finds the shale industry in PA is recycling 91% of the wastewater it produces. Interestingly, the updated report shows “produced water” (or brine, naturally occurring water from the depths) volumes far exceeded volumes for “frac fluid” (or the fluid originally pumped into the well when drilling and fracking). That’s a reversal from the data evaluated in 2011 when frac fluid represented the bulk of the wastewater stream…
The writers at NGI–Natural Gas Intelligence–continue to pump out hit article after hit article. (Full disclosure: MDN editor Jim Willis works part time for NGI on the marketing side. But hopefully by now you know that Jim doesn’t offer false praise for friend or foe. He always calls ’em like he sees ’em.) The latest article we’re excited about is one about a potential shift among Marcellus drillers in southwestern PA and WV–a shift away from Marcellus drilling, potentially replacing it with Utica drilling. Yes, you read that right. No, not all Marcellus drilling will suddenly stop–but in a continuing low-cost gas environment where every dollar counts, drillers are rethinking their strategies and where they will spend precious capital dollars. The recent blockbuster Utica well drilled by EQT in southwestern PA is catching everyone’s attention (see 
Liberal Democrats don’t like to play by the same rules everyone else does. They somehow think they’re better than the rest of us–above the law. That’s what happened when the arrogant, and alleged criminal PA Attorney General Kathleen Kane, decided she could flout the law by leaking secret grand jury information to a reporter (see 
The U.S. Labor Department is on a witch hunt, unfairly targeting not only the Marcellus/Utica drilling industry–but any company in the entire supply chain that benefits from drilling, including hotels, restaurants and convenience stores. When you have the full force and backing of an out-of-control president like B.H. Obama, you get kind of drunk on your own power. That seems to be what has happened at the Labor Department. The Department of Labor’s wage and hour division in Pittsburgh has been targeting Marcellus-related companies since 2012, arriving for surprise audits of how companies classify employees–and how they pay them (particularly overtime payments). The jack boots have investigated 395 companies in three years and assessed $10 million in wages, civil penalties and liquidated damages and spurred a number of lawsuits by employees (and even the Labor Dept. itself) against employers. One question: Why hasn’t the Labor Department launched ANY investigations into the employment practices of Big Green organizations like the Sierra Club, THE Delaware Riverkeeper, William Penn Foundation, Heinz Endowments, PennFuture, Clean Air Council, Food & Water Watch and a myriad of other such organizations where wild-eyed zealots appear to work 24/7 for weeks on end in their mission to end all fossil fuels? Surely there are some overtime violations happening in Big Green…
Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), published an article on Friday that appears to “take sides” in the Pennsylvania debate over whether or not to institute a severance tax. Which is a disappointment. Until now the EIA has stayed above the fray in such issues. The EIA article from Friday offers a grossly misleading side-by-side comparison of where states get their primary source of revenue to feed their voracious appetites to transfer wealth from those who earn it to those who don’t–and how much is contributed by oil & gas severance taxes. The EIA compares tax revenues from five major fossil fuel generating states–Alaska, North Dakota, Wyoming, Texas and Pennsylvania. The graphic they use is powerful (and misleading) and appears to support calls to increase a severance tax in Pennsylvania. We disagree–strongly–with that position. Here is the EIA post from Friday, followed by MDN’s explanation of how it is grossly flawed…
Two Republican members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives have penned a column that points out the math for PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s so-called severance tax on the Marcellus Shale industry a) doesn’t add up, and b) doesn’t actually end up funding education. What makes the column noteworthy is that the two Republicans are not the conservative leaders of the PA House, but instead are from the Philadelphia area. Every Republican we’ve seen from the Philly area are moderate at best–usually RINOs (Republican in Name Only)–and certainly not anywhere near conservative. Yet these two, Rep. Tom Quigley from the 146th district in Montgomery County, and Rep. Warren Kampf from the 157th district in parts of Montgomery and Chester counties, ever-so-eloquently skewer Wolf and his inane high tax plan. Remarkable, coming from two Philly-area Republicans…
Pennsylvania’s Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, will appear in court today to answer charges that she is, herself, a criminal. She will appear in Montgomery County court to face nine criminal charges, including perjury (i.e. lying under oath). As we have reported, Kane is attempting to divert attention away from her own criminal actions by resurrecting an old porn case, claiming angry white men are out to get her (see 
You know what happens when you elect Big Government liberals to important positions, like governor? You get high taxes and onerous regulations across all industries–but particularly on the drilling industry. Welcome to Pennsylvania and the floundering administration of Gov. Tom Wolf and his PennFuture sidekicks who pretty much run the whole show for Wolf–including the PennFuture Sec. of the Dept. of Environmental Protection, John Quigley. PennFuture is an anti-drilling environmental group that Quigley used to work for prior to being appointed by Wolf to run the DEP, the agency in charge of drilling (how’s that for ironic?). On a conference call yesterday Quigley said, of the current round of new drilling rules and regulations, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. He plans to attack the Marcellus industry with even more onerous rules and regulations in the coming months and years of a (hopefully) one-term Wolf administration. Quigley is making his onerous list and checking it twice; gonna find out who’s naughty and naughtier (there is no nice in fossil fuels, ya know)…