PA Stubbornly Continues to Try and Grab Hydrogen Hub for Itself
Pennsylvania is stubbornly continuing to pursue a $2 billion hydrogen hub (part of the Biden infrastructure bill) on its own, without partnering with other Marcellus/Utica states. As we continue to point out, doing the application process alone jeopardizes attracting the project to our region. Yesterday the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held a public hearing on hydrogen’s potential as an energy source. The opening presenter, Richard DiClaudio, president and CEO of the Energy Innovation Center Institute in Pittsburgh, made the case that hydrogen and the hydrogen hub is important to the future of southwestern PA.
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Pat McDonnell, who was Tom Wolf’s Secretary of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) until July 2nd, has just become the President and CEO of a major PA anti-shale environmental group–PennFuture. McDonnell’s appointment at PennFuture raises disturbing questions about some of the decisions he made during his tenure at DEP. That McDonnell immediately became employed by one of the biggest detractors of and litigators against the DEP indicates McDonnell may have had an anti-drilling agenda and deep conflicts of interest while he served at the DEP. Was McDonnell a wolf in sheep’s clothing (no pun intended)? Was McDonnell Big Green’s inside man at DEP? Will there be an investigation of McDonnell and the decisions he made as head of the DEP? We certainly hope so.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me every time, shame on me. This is the trap that trade unions have fallen into by backing Democrat candidates like Josh Shapiro for Governor in Pennsylvania. On one level, it makes no sense. Why would unions back someone who will, as soon as he takes office, begin to enact policies that kill union jobs (pipeline workers, construction workers, welders, plumbers, etc.)? Shapiro has done nothing but attack the shale industry since he took office as Attorney General. Yet a number of trade unions whose members work on shale jobs have backed Shapiro–to the tune of $3 million. Why?
The so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a tax on carbon dioxide emissions from coal and natural gas-fired power plants aimed at killing off those two sources of energy, held its latest tax auction on Friday. The result was pricing close to an all-time high, although the average price came down just a smidgen from the previous auction. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is trying to force PA to join the RGGI cabal of 11 states (most of them in the northeast), a move endorsed by the man who wants to replace him in November, PA Attorney General Josh Shapiro (see 
One step forward and two steps back. That country tune went through our head as we read about the progress being made by Williams with its Regional Energy Access Expansion Pipeline project in Pennsylvania. The project, aimed at competing with the now-dead PennEast Pipeline project by flowing gas from northeastern Pennsylvania to the Trenton, NJ area, will get a virtual public hearing by the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection on Wednesday, October 5.
In a small but important victory against Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s effort to force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax scheme, the PA Supreme Court on Wednesday opted not to overturn a Commonwealth Court decision that blocks the state from participating in RGGI until several lawsuits play out. The state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), under Wolf’s thumb, argued the state should be allowed to enforce the new tax in advance of a resolution to the lawsuits. Nope. Not gonna happen. It now appears it will be early next year before RGGI can go into effect–if ever.
Get a Democrat nurse to repeat the talking points from two far-left, lying Democrat groups (the Conservation Voters of PA and the NRDC) bashing the Republican candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano, in a TV commercial, and it’s just another regurgitate-the-lies story from lamestream media. This time the lies are that Doug Mastriano loves to pollute–because he stands up for the Marcellus shale industry in the state. We hope PA residents (and U.S. residents across the country) are beginning to see through the lies spread by the Democrat left. The left can’t argue and debate the facts, so they resort to name-calling and lies. The good news is that the left is spending money on this kind of thing, meaning they don’t believe that hardened anti-driller Josh Shapiro (Democrat, currently Attorney General) has the race for governor locked up–as all the “polls” quoted by lamestream media indicate.
Apparently, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf told a fib on Feb. 1 of this year when he said PA had received an initial $25 million cash infusion from the federal government’s new (so-called) infrastructure law for use in plugging orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells (see 
In January 2020, the retirement systems for public employees of various municipalities, including the Allegheny County (PA) Employees’ Retirement System, filed a lawsuit against Energy Transfer and subsidiary Sunoco Logistics alleging top management made false and misleading statements about the construction of three Mariner East 2 and the Revolution natural gas pipeline projects in Pennsylvania. The lawsuit alleges because of those statements, the share price of their stock fell, and investors lost a boatload of money. In April 2021, the lawsuit survived a motion to dismiss by Energy Transfer (see 
If you live in Pennsylvania and listen to (or read) the media at all, you have likely heard about Senate Bill 106. The “short title” for the bill is this: “A Joint Resolution proposing separate and distinct amendments to the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, providing that there is no constitutional right to taxpayer-funded abortion or other right relating to abortion; further providing for action on concurrent orders and resolutions, for Lieutenant Governor and for qualifications of electors; and providing for election audits.” Yeah, not so short. The bill is aimed at amending the PA Constitution to cover several important issues.
Along with Harvard, Yale University used to be one of the top two higher ed schools in the country. Wow, how the mighty have fallen! Yale is a husk, a shell of what it once was. Yale now puts political ideology above science and generates garbage, calling it “research.” Yale is experiencing some major cognitive dissonance. At various points over the past decade, Yale researchers have claimed fracking does NOT contaminate water aquifers (see 
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) released its latest quarterly Natural Gas Production Report for April through June 2022 (full copy below). There were 133 new horizontal wells spud (drilled) in 2Q22, an increase of 13 wells (10.8%) compared to 2Q21. However, natural gas production volume was 1,836 billion cubic feet (Bcf) in 2Q22, a slight decrease (-0.9%) from 2Q21. It is the second quarterly decrease in production in a row. It appears that maybe PA has hit a plateau for natural gas production.
The only thing the so-called Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation (PEDF) “defends” is their own twisted philosophy of trying to gouge out the eyes of the oil and gas industry in PA–even at the expense of de-funding their own beloved PA Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR). In two PA Supreme Court rulings, one in 2017 and another in 2021, PEDF won the right to limit how revenues from oil and gas drilling on state land can be used. The PA legislature reworded its budget directives and began using those revenues to fund day-to-day expenses at DCNR. PEDF sued again. Commonwealth Court rejected PEDF’s arguments against how the legislature allocated the money, and two weeks ago, the PA Supreme Court upheld Commonwealth Court’s rejection. Translation: PEDF just lost a major case they’ve been waging since 2017 to block drilling on state-owned land (by blocking how royalty revenue is used).