Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | CNX Resources | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA
CNX CEO Tells Dr. His Comments re Fracking Violate Hippocratic Oath
Last November, CNX Resources CEO Nick Deiuliis signed a voluntary deal with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to expand drilling setbacks and several other regulatory steps not mandated for shale drillers under PA law (see CNX Signs Deal with PA Gov. to Increase Setbacks, Other Changes). The deal torqued off anti-fossil fuel fanatics who demanded Shapiro renounce it (see Antis Demand PA Gov Shapiro Drop Enviro Deal with CNX Resources). Mainstream media noticed the deal, and several national outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, ran articles about it.
Read More “CNX CEO Tells Dr. His Comments re Fracking Violate Hippocratic Oath”
Both conventional and unconventional (shale) drillers in Pennsylvania were supposed to submit a new annual report to the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) on December 10 detailing volatile organic compound (VOC) and methane emissions from their operations over the past one-year period. Shortly before that deadline, the DEP suspended the due date. This past weekend, the DEP published a new due date. Drillers must submit the annual report (for 2023) by June 1, 2024.
Big, breathless news coming from the do-nothing Josh Shapiro gubernatorial operation last Friday. THE MAN has made an edict to those waskily Marcellus drillers: You WILL disclose the chemicals you will use to frack and drill any given well you receive a permit for. Lights! Fireworks! Loud claps of thunder (and an echo) as if GOD has spoken. It is commanded from on high. Except…Marcellus drillers *already* make those disclosures! There is no “there” there in Shapiro’s edict. He’s (sorry for laughing out loud) jumping up and down, making a spectacle of himself over nothing. Literally. He’s hoping nobody will notice that he’s just served up a cheese puff instead of a sirloin steak.
In December, Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office (IFO), the agency charged with providing revenue projections along with impartial and objective analysis of fiscal, economic, and budgetary issues for the citizens and legislature of Pennsylvania, provided its best guess as to how much revenue the PA impact fee (i.e., severance tax) will generate from shale wells drilled or flowing in 2023 (see 
The Baker Hughes rig count gained another rig last week. The count went from 620 active rigs two weeks ago to 621 last week — up a single rig. It went up a single rig the week prior, too. And that’s about where we are. We have floated between 620 and 625 for all of December and January — dipping to 619 for one week during that period. It appears we’ve hit the bottom and are stable. The Marcellus/Utica remained constant last week with 42 active rigs, after PA added two rigs the week before.
Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 170, introduced early last year, would increase setback distances for shale wells from 500 feet to 2,500 feet — effectively killing any new shale well drilling anywhere in the state (see 
From time to time, the issue of wells that need plugging appears in the news. We highlighted one such story earlier this week (see 
Horizontal directional drilling (HDD) is a form of trenchless drilling to install pipelines, like natural gas pipelines, underground without digging a big trench first. It uses directional drilling, similar to drilling a horizontal shale well, in order to install the pipeline. In 2018, Energy Transfer’s Sunoco Logisitics unit, which was building the Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline project at the time using HDD, and the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) settled a lawsuit with radicalized green groups, including THE Delaware Riverkeeper, the Clean Air Council, and the Mountain Watershed Association (see 
During a Pennsylvania House Republican Policy Committee hearing on strengthening rural communities held on Wednesday, Rep. Bud Cook (R-Waynesburg) didn’t hold back when assigning blame for why the state’s rural communities are losing population and experiencing economic growth. Cook said, “The overriding impediment is Governor Shapiro’s DEP,” referring to the Dept. of Environmental Protection. One of Cook’s chief complaints is how long it takes to get a simple permit issued from the DEP.
The American Energy Alliance and the Committee to Unleash Prosperity recently sponsored a survey of 1,600 likely voters equally divided among eight “battleground” states (Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Missouri, and Ohio) conducted by MWR Strategies in December 2023. The total sample margin of error is 2.45%. The survey results confirm that there has been little change in sentiment and attitudes on energy and climate change. Many of the responses in the survey are either consistent with or more emphatic than what they found in previous surveys.
The Baker Hughes rig count lost ground again last week, as it has in four of the last five weeks. The count went from 621 active rigs two weeks ago to 619 last week. The Marcellus/Utica count was steady at 40 active rigs; however, the mix changed. Pennsylvania kept 19 active rigs as in previous weeks, but Ohio picked up one rig for 13 active rigs, while West Virginia lost one rig for 8 active rigs.
It’s hard to underestimate the influence and role of Pennsylvania on the world’s energy sector, especially over the past 19 years with the rise of the Marcellus Shale. However, advocates for fossil energy (like the American Petroleum Institute) are expressing concerns that PA’s dominant role may change to one with far less influence. Why? Lack of pipelines to transport PA’s production to other regions (or to export plants). Their concerns are valid (see 
In October, Pennsylvania Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) Rich Negrin suddenly resigned after being on the job for less than a year (see 
Have you ever been around the kind of irritating person who says “No!” to everything? Someone who is perennially unhappy and loves to share that unhappiness with everyone around him or her? Someone who, when you offer valid solution after valid solution to a given “problem,” the person shoots each one down, unwilling to try anything? Such people are toxic. On an organizational level, we have a perfect example of such toxicness — the 
Republicans control the Senate in Pennsylvania. Until last year, Republicans also controlled the House. Now, leftist Democrats control the PA House by a single seat. As narrow as the numbers are, the philosophical divide between the two parties and the two chambers with respect to environmental issues is a chasm. Republicans like Sen. Gene Yaw, Chairman of the Senate Environmental Resources & Energy Committee, are focused on safe and responsible energy development and grid reliability in 2024. On the other hand, Democrats, like Greg Vitali, Chairman of the House Environmental Resources & Energy Committee, are focused on the mythology of man-made global warming and blocking anything remotely connected to fossil fuels. It means there is little to no room for compromise on environmental issues.