PA Sen. Gene Yaw Proposes to Rename State DEP, Drop “Protection”
You’ve gotta give Pennsylvania State Senator Gene Yaw credit–he sure knows how to get under the skin of the wackadoodle left! Yaw is the Majority Chairman of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee. His committee oversees (among other things) the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), which is the state agency that oversees energy industries, including shale drilling. Yesterday Yaw tweaked the left by announcing he will soon introduce a bill to remove the word “Protection” from the DEP’s name, and replace it with…
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Yesterday Range Resources Corporation issued its first quarter 2023 update and held a conference call with analysts. On the call, retiring (as of May 10th) CEO Jeff Ventura proclaimed Range sits at the best spot it’s been in history. Ventura said, “For the Marcellus, the future is very bright.” Incoming CEO (currently COO) Dennis Degner echoed Ventura’s remarks and pledged to “stay the course” and continue to “block and tackle” in the months and years ahead.
S&P Global Commodity Insights reports that natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica has fallen this month, in April, by some 400 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) from the average production seen during the first quarter. The most notable declines are in eastern Ohio and southwestern Pennsylvania. Why is production down? Falling demand (from mild weather) and high rates of storage (extra supply) are crashing the spot price for natural gas traded at the region’s defacto benchmark trading hub–Eastern Gas South.
We appear to finally be at the end of an eight-year road with respect to new shale drilling regulations in Pennsylvania adopted back in 2016. Two days ago, the PA Supreme Court overturned a Commonwealth Court decision that blocked the Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) ability to control shale drilling near schools and public playgrounds. In October 2016, after five years in the making, PA adopted new shale drilling regulations called Chapter 78 (see 
We sometimes ponder (and despair) over this question: Does the truth matter anymore? Do people actually care whether or not they are being lied to–by the government, by the media, by so-called experts? The trigger for our dark reflection on metaphysics comes from the news that the Pennsylvania Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) yesterday approved, by a vote of 3 to 2, a new regulation controlling volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions and by extension, methane emissions, for Pennsylvania’s conventional oil and gas drillers. How is that news event related to truth and lies? We will explain.
Some 23 extremist so-called environmental groups from Pennsylvania (and beyond) sent a letter to federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan asking him to rachet up federal regulations to be so extreme it forces the remaining electric power plants in PA that use coal and natural gas to close down. The extremist groups include PennFuture (headed by former PA Dept. of Environmental Protection Secretary Pat McDonnell), the so-called Clean Air Council (funded by the Haas and Heinz families), and the Philadelphia Solar Energy Association.
We spotted a post by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) that, at first glance, we thought, “Yeah, we know that, and we’ve talked about it.” But on second glance, and after searching our own archives, we came to the conclusion that perhaps we haven’t talked about it. At least not plainly. The “it” we’re talking about is this: In 2022, Pennsylvania’s annual natural gas production *decreased* for the first time since the shale revolution began. Which is notable.
Newly-elected Gov. Josh Shapiro, who (we must say) has appeared to be completely ineffective since taking office (which is not necessarily a bad thing), appointed a working group to help guide him on what he should do with respect to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax and the broader issue of global warming. The panel is super-secret. Only two people who belong to the working group have been named, the two co-chairs: one from the radicalized National Resources Defense Council and one from a PA state labor union.
One of two original “anchor” applicants in the billion-dollar hydrogen hub Hunger Games contest that was part of Pennsylvania’s application was Equinor (the Norwegian super major formerly known as Statoil). The Pittsburgh Business Times reports Equinor is now out and has been replaced by Mitsubishi Power, which (among other things) builds natural gas and hydrogen turbines to generate electricity. Why did Equinor leave? Is this proposal in trouble?
As we reported back in February, the Biden EPA plans to allow private citizens to police oil wells and pipelines for methane leaks–meaning Big Green groups actually do the “policing” (see 
One of MDN’s favorite organizations is the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Landowner Alliance (POGLA), an organization representing oil, gas, mineral, and royalty owners throughout the Commonwealth of PA. POGLA will host a conference titled 
The Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) owns and manages more than 1.5 million acres of state game lands throughout the Commonwealth. The primary purpose of these lands is the management of habitat for wildlife and providing opportunities for lawful hunting and trapping. You might think PGC gets most of its revenue from hunting and trapping licenses and fees. You would be wrong. PGC allows shale drilling on some of its vast holdings, and leases and royalties generate about 7X the income for PGC than all other sources combined.
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) published notice in the April 1 Pennsylvania Bulletin that it has denied a request by the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA) to reconsider the agency’s plan to regulate small, completely safe natural gas gathering pipelines. We have the news of the PUC’s rejection, and what it means, along with an exclusive–the official response from PIOGA.
We have new evidence that so-called environmental groups, including a long list of anti-fracking groups in Pennsylvania, don’t really care about the environmental at all. They only care about the power to dictate to you what energy sources you can and cannot use–as a way of controlling you. Great strides have been made in capturing and sequestering (storing underground) carbon dioxide (CO2). These so-called environmental groups all say that CO2 is killing Mom Earth. Yet when real science is employed to control CO2 (to sequester it), they attempt to block it. Why is that?