Former PA DEP Secretary Attacks O&G Industry He Oversaw Last Year
We renew our call for a full investigation into Patrick McDonnell and his tenure as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). McDonnell led the DEP from May 2016 until he left the department in July 2022. He oversaw the regulation of the shale energy industry in the state, among other duties. What is obvious now is that the entire time he helmed the DEP, McDonnell was a radical anti-fossil fueler. After leaving the DEP, he became the head of the ultra-radical anti-fossil fuel group PennFuture (see Former PA DEP Sec. Pat McDonnell New CEO of Anti-Shale Group). McDonnell’s new role raises all sorts of questions about whether he was compromised and used (abused) his position to restrict shale drilling in the state.
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Evolution Well Services, headquartered in Houston with a regional office in Pittsburgh, specializes in “electric” fracking–using natural gas from the well pad (instead of diesel fuel) to power turbines to create electricity that drives fracking pumps. In September 2020, three former Evolution employees who worked at remote sites in the Marcellus/Utica filed a lawsuit against the company claiming Evolution failed to pay them for their commute to and from job sites. The lawsuit was turned into a class action in February of last year (see 
We’re going to say it right up front to everyone who voted for John Fetterman for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania: We told you so. We warned MDN readers Fetterman is not up to the job. He had a stroke, he should have pulled out of the race, but he didn’t. And now the left (including the Democrat cheerleaders of the New York Times) feel comfortable enough to admit the truth that some of us were speaking last fall–that Fetterman is not fit to be a U.S. Senator. Fetterman defeated the odious Republican Dr. Oz, so he’s served his purpose. Now it’s time to dump him and replace him with someone else. That appears to be the plan by the left.
We spotted an article chronicling a visit to Pennsylvania by the Dept. of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland yesterday. She was there to tout money flowing to the Keystone State from the so-called Infrastructure bill in order to plug old abandoned oil and gas wells. What was interesting about her visit was not that she was there to promote the Bidenista agenda and proclaim how great the doddering old fool (her boss) is. The interesting thing is who was by her side: Rich Negrin. You may recall newly minted liberal Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro nominated Negrin to be the next Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) just about 30 days ago (see 
Attorneys for both the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) and those representing gas-fired power plants were in PA Commonwealth Court on Wednesday. DEP’s attorneys argued the court should toss a lawsuit brought by the power-generating industry against an obscene carbon tax called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) that DEP is trying to force on the state. Power generators argue in their lawsuit that RGGI will actually lead to MORE carbon pollution rather than less.
Have you ever heard of reviving an expired lease through retroactive pooling and unitization? We sure hadn’t. But apparently, it’s a thing in the Marcellus region. According to the legal beagles at Pittsburgh energy law firm Houston Harbaugh, in some cases, landowners with leases that were expired are being notified those leases are now part of an amended (back-dated) declaration of pooling, which shows a date prior to the lease expiring.
The heads of three major oil and gas groups in the Appalachian region–the Marcellus Shale Coalition (representing Pennsylvania), the Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia, and the Ohio Oil and Gas Association–combined to pen an open letter to President Biden encouraging him to let the Marcellus/Utica “lead the way” in achieving our country’s shared goals for domestic, affordable, and clean energy. It’s a great letter making strong and cogent arguments for why more M-U natgas can reduce emissions and benefit not only the economy but the environment. There’s just one small problem…
The Pennsylvania House Republican Policy Committee held a hearing yesterday in Harrisburg on the increasing energy costs that affect large and small businesses as well as homeowners. Several energy advocates, including Marcellus Shale Coalition President Dave Callahan, shared their thoughts and insights. High on the list of issues creating higher energy prices in the Keystone State are (1) the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, an obscene carbon tax), and (2) the ongoing issue of red tape from government bureaucracies like the Dept. of Environmental Protection.
Baker Hughes reported the rig count for last week saw the deepest cuts in rigs for any single week since June 2020 (just as the COVID pandemic and lockdowns were taking hold). The oil and gas rig count, an early indicator of future output, fell by 12 to 759 in the week ending Feb. 3. That is the lowest overall rig count number since September of last year. All of which sounds rather ominous. So we grabbed the numbers and updated our own spreadsheet/chart, and found the rig count across the three Marcellus/Utica states–Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia–remained a constant 52 active rigs over the past three months. Whew.
Two weeks ago, the Pennsylvania Senate Majority Policy Committee held a public hearing on energy access and affordability. As part of that hearing, Marcellus Shale Coalition president Dave Callahan gave testimony that a problem we’ve highlighted for years is still out of control. The state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) (a) takes WAY too long to issue new permits for shale projects, (b) when it does issue permits, it is inconsistent in the standards used, depending on which area of the state, and (c) the ongoing permit delays and inconsistency are costing the state jobs.
In February 2022, Equitrans Midstream announced it had filed a new pipeline expansion project with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (see 
What a difference 20 years can make. In 2001, natural gas was used to produce 2% of the electricity produced in Pennsylvania, and coal produced 57% of the state’s electricity. Then the Marcellus Shale miracle happened–the first Marcellus well was drilled in PA in 2004. By 2021, 52% of PA’s electricity was produced by natural gas, and 12% was produced by coal. A complete reversal. Most of that change came over just eight years–from 2008 to 2016. There are multiple reasons for the change, including regulations (against coal), low cost (for newfound supplies of gas), and emissions (more for coal, less for gas).
Purely by happenstance, we stumbled across an interesting “working paper” published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The paper (we’d call it a study) is titled “Negotiations of Oil and Gas Auxiliary Lease Clauses: Evidence from Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale” (full copy below), first published in December but subsequently updated in January. Researchers scanned and (using software) analyzed nearly 60,000 leases signed in the Marcellus Shale Play of Pennsylvania. They learned some interesting things about PA leases. One of the main conclusions (eye-opening for us) is that getting more money for your lease is not necessarily tied to whether or not nearby wells are good producers. At best, better lease terms have a “weak relationship” to the performance of other wells in a given geography. What is the secret to getting more favorable lease terms?
The Marcellus/Utica region is becoming a booming real estate market and manufacturing destination in the U.S., with manufacturing investment currently estimated at over $100 billion, according to Bryce Custer from NAI Spring Commercial Realty. What’s drawing manufacturers to the M-U region? Geopolitical instability, supply chain disruption, the reshoring trend, and abundant raw materials, including cheap (and clean) M-U natural gas.