PA Gov. Wolf Announces “Aggressive Push” to Get Hydrogen Hub
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia are all scrambling to form working groups or other alliances in an attempt to be THE state chosen for one of four regional hydrogen hubs funded by the recently passed so-called Biden infrastructure bill (see WV, OH, PA Compete Against Each Other to Attract $2B Hydrogen Hub). The new law provides $8 billion for four regional hydrogen hubs. It’s a safe bet one of those hubs will be located in either PA, OH, or WV. Unfortunately, the three states that should be cooperating to attract the hub are instead going their own way, attempting to do it without cooperation. The latest example is an announcement this morning by Gov. Wolf.
Read More “PA Gov. Wolf Announces “Aggressive Push” to Get Hydrogen Hub”
We’re holding on by a thread folks, with respect to PA’s onerous new carbon tax. Back in April, we told you about a lawsuit filed by Big Coal against the Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf administration to block Wolf’s attempt to force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon tax on coal- and gas-fired power plants (see 
As we told you last week, Energy Transfer, during its first quarter update, spoke about the now-completed Mariner East pipeline system that flows NGLs, including ethane, propane, and butane, from eastern Ohio and southwestern Pennsylvania all the way to southeastern PA and the Marcus Hook terminal (see 
In March the Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board (EQB), a sub-agency of the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), approved a final version of onerous new regulations that supposedly will capture every last molecule of stray methane that leaks from shale and conventional drilling operations (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) has, for years, claimed that under a centuries-old law the state of PA “owns” the property under “navigable” waterways–including rivers and streams (see 
Pennsylvania State Sen. Gene Yaw has been a champion in the fight to defeat Gov. Tom Wolf’s hideous carbon tax, otherwise known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). Wolf is trying to force PA to join over the objections of a majority of state legislators. In his latest missive about RGGI, Yaw connects some dots that need to be connected–between Russian money funding Big Green groups, and the groups using that money to lobby, influence, and litigate in an effort to force PA to join RGGI. It’s an effort to force PA to use less fossil energy. Clearly, RGGI is anti-fossil fuel. We would argue, as does Yaw in this excellent editorial below, that RGGI is also anti-American.
Over the past decade or more landowners have been approached about leasing their property and/or mineral rights–for shale drilling, pipelines, solar and wind farms, etc. Here’s a new one to add to the list: pore rights. Pore space is the underground space where carbon dioxide that’s captured from various processes can be injected and stored, keeping it locked away underground where it theoretically won’t damage Mom Earth. The whole concept of storing CO2 underground would be funny if it were not so sad that grownups are actually doing this. But we digress. Leasing pore rights may be the next big thing for landowners and mineral rights owners in the Marcellus/Utica region as carbon capture and storage takes off. However, who owns pore rights? Landowners or mineral rights owners?
The Acting Deputy Secretary for Oil and Gas Management at the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), Kurt Klapkowski, spoke to the DEP’s Oil and Gas Technical Advisory Board (TAB) yesterday, updating the board on his program’s finances (lack thereof). As part of his comments, Klapkowski observed that each year the number of new shale wells drilled in PA decreases. He offered some reasons why that may be happening. We have a few reasons to add that Klapkowski overlooked.
Pennsylvania has already received the first $25 million payment from the so-called infrastructure bill, a down payment on what will eventually be ~$400 million over the next 15 years to plug abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells across the state (see 
Pennsylvania State Rep. Marina White (Republican from Philadelphia, a true rarity) sponsored a bill that’s getting traction in Harrisburg. House Bill (HB) 2458, which passed with a vote by the full House on April 13, creates a task force to study how to establish Philadelphia LNG exports to international markets, particularly those in Europe. The bill creates a task force to study the economic feasibility, financial impact, and the security needed to turn the Port of Philly into an LNG export terminal, exporting PA’s abundant and clean Marcellus Shale gas.
Not content to prosecute years-old accidents as “crimes” for the shale industry in his zeal to attack fossil energy, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a vicious radical running for governor this November, is now targeting mom and pop conventional drillers too. Specifically, he is investigating conventional drillers for spreading non-toxic brine on PA’s dirt roads in the summertime, a legal practice in the Keystone State (at least it was legal until last December), looking to prosecute someone, anyone, to grab another headline and stoke his radicalized base of supporters.