New PA State Budget Includes Third-Party Review of DEP Permits
A MAJOR victory for Pennsylvania Republicans that is not getting the attention it should. For years, PA State Sen. Gene Yaw and others have lobbied for review by qualified third parties to speed up the turnaround time to approve relatively simple permits issued by the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), including earth disturbance/erosion permits, known as Chapter 102 permits, and water obstruction and encroachment permits, known as Chapter 105 permits (see PA Sen. Yaw Intros Bill to Allow 3rd Party Review of Erosion Permits). The DEP fought it tooth and nail, perceiving such a change as a threat to its bureaucratic power (see PA DEP Using ePermits for Erosion & Sedimentation to Avoid New Law). No more. The DEP is now silent in its opposition as a third-party review of permits was adopted and signed into law as part of the recently passed state budget.
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Over the past seven-plus years, BKV Corporation (Banpu Kalnin Ventures), the American arm of Banpu (96% owned by Banpu, Thailand’s largest coal mining company), has become one of the top 20 gas-weighted natural gas producers in the U.S. BKV originally entered the American shale sector by investing $500 million in 2016-2017 to buy existing Marcellus wells and acreage in northeast Pennsylvania. Then the company went wandering into other shale plays (see 
We’ve covered the Pennsylvania state budget negotiations and passage in years gone by when PA’s then-Gov. Tom Wolf (far-left Democrat) requested a Marcellus-killing severance tax every year he was in office (eight loooong years). We’ve largely ignored the PA budget this time around under PA’s do-nothing dud of a governor, Josh Shapiro, as his proposed budget didn’t include a severance tax proposal. The budget passed last Thursday (two weeks late). We happened to spot a comment by the Marcellus Shale Coalition offering words of praise for the budget, so that got our attention. What is in this budget the MSC likes?
Operators and investors are more concerned than ever about the remaining inventory of drillable locations. Who has it? Where is it? Will it be economic? The North American inventory rankings by shale play are always of interest. Enverus Intelligence Research (EIR), a subsidiary of Enverus, recently issued a report that ranks the plays by the number of economic-to-drill locations each play has left. Unfortunately, Marcellus Shale play is on the list of “losers” in this latest report. Why? A huge jump in Bidenflation — rig day rates were up 25% year-over-year in September in the Marcellus, compared to about 15% across the other plays. Also a factor is dropping productivity in the Marcellus (“productivity degradation”), particularly in northeast PA.
A civil war in the Pennsylvania environmental movement is not getting any attention from mainstream media. Why are we not surprised? We told you about the civil war earlier this week (see 
Permitting in Pennsylvania overseen by the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has been a hot mess for years. A Chapter 102 Erosion and Sedimentation permit sometimes takes two, three, or even six to eight months for approval — instead of the law-mandated 14 days. It got so bad that in the fall of 2019, PA State Sen. Gene Yaw introduced a bill to allow third-party reviews of these permits to speed up approvals (see 
Pennsylvania Democrat leftists face a conundrum. Do they listen to one set of environmentalist wackos, including the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, Environmental Defense Fund, Nature Conservancy, and Clean Air Task Force? Or do they listen to a different set (on the same ideological side of the aisle), including Better Path Coalition, 350 Pittsburgh, 412 Justice, the Center for Coalfield Justice, and the Clean Air Council? Two weeks ago, the first set of wackos threw their support behind PA Senate Bill (SB) 831, the Carbon Capture & Sequestration (CCS) Act (see 
As we mentioned in a companion post today, the Williams Transco Regional Energy Access Expansion (REAE) project recently received permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to begin operations for another segment of the REAE project, flowing an extra 130 MMcf/d of natural gas to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland (see FERC OKs Request to Place More of Regional Energy Access Online). However, yesterday, Williams suffered a minor legal setback related to the REAE project.
The U.S. national oil and gas rig count had been in a pattern of free-falling for over a month. Last week, the national combined Baker Hughes oil and gas rig count finally reversed course and added four rigs — now at 585. The Marcellus/Utica stayed the same last week, for the fifth week in a row, with a combined 36 active rigs. Pennsylvania continued to operate 21 rigs. Ohio remained steady with ten active rigs. And West Virginia kept five active rigs.
Pennsylvania’s Democrat Party is hellbent on driving the Marcellus Shale industry out of the state. They have been for years. That’s just a truthful observation and beyond dispute. One year ago, the Dems in the PA House passed a resolution by a single vote that directs the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee (LBFC) to “study” Pennsylvania’s revenue from the oil and gas industry, comparing it with the top five states for natural gas production in the U.S. (see 
Last week, MDN brought you the news that the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) is now distributing money raised by the shale impact fee (PA’s version of a severance tax) from 2023 to municipalities and government agencies (see 
In March, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro traveled to Scranton, PA, to announce a proposal to “immediately pull Pennsylvania out of a multi-state carbon cap-and-trade program” (the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI) and instead enroll PA in its very own RGGI-like carbon tax program (see 
The radicals at the tax-exempt (extremely partisan) PennFuture organization have arrogantly proffered a report with policy recommendations for the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED), lecturing DCED on how it should “reshape the Commonwealth’s strategic collaborations” with public and private partners. And what does this reshaping look like? Defund any efforts that benefit the oil and gas industry in the state (responsible for billions in revenue and hundreds of thousands of jobs) and instead invest in “clean energy” (unreliable wind and solar) and “energy efficiency” (tell PA citizens to turn the thermostat up in the summer, down in the winter, while trying to convince them they love it).