PA DEP 2021 Annual O&G Report: Highest NatGas Production Ever
Last Thursday, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) published its 2021 Oil and Gas Annual Report (about five months late). This is the sixth year in a row the DEP has published the report in an interactive, electronic (i.e. online only) format. Don’t worry, we’ve turned the report into a convenient PDF for MDN readers. What does the 2021 report show? Permits issued went down, but the number of new wells drilled went up. Natural gas production has gone up (again)–to another new all-time record high.
Read More “PA DEP 2021 Annual O&G Report: Highest NatGas Production Ever”
The best gifts we give to each other during this holiday season are intangible: Time spent with family and friends, a kind word, attending a church service. But hey, toys and gadgets and gear are a close second! 🙂 Have you ever stopped to ponder what Christmas morning without fossil energy would look like? We’ll tell you what it would look like–men and women wearing animal skins sitting around a wood or dung fire in a cave. There would be no gifts. Just about every (physical, tangible) gift you either give or get this holiday season will have plastic as part of it, and plastic comes from oil and gas. No fossil fuels, no gifts. The Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA) has put together a holiday gift guide to remind you of the importance of oil and gas this holiday season.
Kevin Sunday, director of government affairs with the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, recently published an op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette pointing out how the mighty Shell ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, PA, is the result of business and government (bipartisan government) working together. He makes the case that we need more of this type of thing, especially with many new faces coming to Harrisburg in January. We frankly wonder if hoping for bipartisan cooperation on fossil energy projects in the current political climate is just spitting in the wind.
Earlier this week, MDN told you that the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced a consent order assessing a $600,000 fine against a trucking company that hauled drill cuttings from West Virginia to PA and dumped them (without a permit) at several sites owned by the trucking company (see 
Industrial Energy Consumers of America (IECA), a trade group representing some of the biggest consumers of energy in the U.S. (i.e., manufacturers), wrote a letter to the governors of 12 states along the Eastern Seaboard asking those governors to prioritize natural gas pipelines in their respective states (full copy of the letter below). Recipients included Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and (falling on deaf ears) New York and New Jersey. According to the letter, manufacturing companies along the East Coast face growing natural gas scarcity due to the lack of interstate natural gas pipeline capacity.
In August, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (a confirmed shale energy hater who becomes Governor on Jan. 1), announced that he had finally bullied Energy Transfer into pleading “no contest” (meaning they don’t admit to a darned thing) in a so-called criminal case against the company for a series of accidents affecting construction for both the Revolution and Mariner East pipelines (see 
In addition to the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon tax on coal- and gas-fired power plants in the northeastern U.S., there are a number of other carbon tax schemes operating around the world. It is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the human race–getting us to pay for carbon dioxide emissions, the very stuff you breathe out with every breath you take. Part of the con job Pennsylvania Gov. Wolf tried was to convince everyone the carbon tax wouldn’t cost power plants all that much yet would deliver billions in revenue to the state. But the costs of carbon credits companies are required to purchase have skyrocketed over the past year. EIA says carbon credits went up an average 40% in 2021.
There are advantages and disadvantages to being publicly or privately owned. In the oil and gas sector, most large companies are publicly owned–meaning they have a board of directors, and the “owners” hold shares of stock in the company, shares traded on public exchanges. In the Marcellus/Utica, most of the top drillers are publicly owned: Range Resources, Coterra Energy, CNX Resources, EQT Corporation, Antero Resources, Southwestern Energy, Repsol, National Fuel Gas Company (i.e. Seneca Resources), and Gulfport Energy. Several others are privately owned, including Ascent Resources (Ohio’s largest natural gas producer and the 8th largest natural gas producer in the U.S.), Greylock Energy (based in West Virginia), and Olympus Energy (which drills in the Pittsburgh suburbs).
Yesterday MDN brought you the news that as of Friday, a new regulation controlling volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions, and by extension methane emissions, for Pennsylvania’s conventional oil and gas drillers went into effect (see 
This morning the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) released its latest quarterly Natural Gas Production Report for July through September 2022 (full copy below). There were 158 new horizontal wells spud (drilled) in 3Q22, an increase of 47 wells (+42%) compared to 3Q21. However, natural gas production volume was 1,878 billion cubic feet (Bcf) in 3Q22, a slight decrease (-0.8%) from 3Q21. It is the third quarterly decrease in production in a row (comparing the same quarters year-over-year). However, 3Q22 production was up slightly (+1.4%) from 2Q22.
This one came right out of left field, and we didn’t see it coming. Totally unexpected. Yesterday, outgoing U.S. Senator Pat Toomey, from Pennsylvania, introduced a bill to reform pipeline permitting. The bill specifically approves and would push through final construction for Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a pipeline that doesn’t even touch PA (it starts in Wetzel County, WV, and ends in Pittsylvania County, VA). The bill was concurrently introduced in the House by Congressman Mike Kelly, also from PA. Weird. Does this bill stand even a remote chance of passing before Congress adjourns and the next Congress takes over in early January?
Updates for Pennsylvania’s conventional oil and gas drillers, both environmental protection standards and waste handling standards (two different updates), will now fall to the incoming Josh Shapiro administration. So says the Acting Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), Kurt Klapkowski. In other words, Klapkowski and his boss, Gov. Tom Wolf, are punting these important updates to the anti-drilling Shapiro. Washing their hands of it.