PA Senators Argue “Standing” in Case to Overthrow DRBC Frack Ban
Two northeastern Pennsylvania State Senators, Gene Yaw and Lisa Baker, along with members of the PA Senate Republican Caucus (27 Senators in all, filed a lawsuit in January 2021 against the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) over its illegal ban on fracking (see PA Senators Sue DRBC for “Taking” Property re Frack Ban). The lawsuit accuses the quasi-governmental agency of “taking” the property rights of PA residents without just compensation under the law. Unfortunately, in June 2021, a federal district court judge in Philadelphia appointed by RINO George W. Bush dismissed the case claiming the Senators, who represent people shafted by the DRBC, don’t have “standing” to bring the lawsuit (see Fed Court Dismisses PA Senate Lawsuit Against DRBC Frack Ban). Senators Yaw and Baker appealed the dismissal and yesterday a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit heard oral arguments in the appeal.
Read More “PA Senators Argue “Standing” in Case to Overthrow DRBC Frack Ban”
Democrats are SO predictable. They use the same playbook they’ve used for the past 50+ years. The minute they can’t defend their indefensible, nonsensical ideologies, they resort to calling their opponents bigots and sexists. It happened again Tuesday when northeastern Pennsylvania State Senator John Yukichak, an Independent who used to be a Democrat (but couldn’t stomach the extremism in the party anymore), called out PA Democrats and their environmental “hysteria” for defeating both the PennEast Pipeline project and the New Fortress Energy LNG export plant (both located in northeastern PA). Two PA Senators who happen to be women from the Philadelphia area trotted out the “he’s attacking the girls, he’s a misogynist and sexist” false claim. Typical.
It’s about to get a lot harder to drill a well or build any kind of pipeline in Pennsylvania, if the swamp dwellers at the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) get their way. The DEP recently released a draft Environmental Justice Policy set of regulations that will empower the radical left to block new drilling and new pipelines by using claims of racism.
Last Thursday 
Pennsylvania is the second-largest producer of natural gas in the country. A new poll from Pittsburgh Works Together, a coalition of business and labor groups in Western PA, says Pennsylvanians want to keep PA at the top of the natural gas heap. A poll conducted of 600 PA voters in February finds 73% strongly or somewhat supported the idea that Pennsylvania should ensure that natural gas remains a part of the state’s energy use. That is an overwhelming majority of PA citizens who think natural gas (and natural gas drilling) should continue in the Keystone State.
The Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, chaired by State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (Republican from Butler County) is scheduled to hold a meeting on Monday, March 28 to consider two proposed bills. One is a bill that would give the legislature authority to participate in any decision about adopting the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax scheme. The other bill is a resolution that would be sent to the leftist governors of New York and New Jersey asking them to allow new pipelines to be built into and through their states, to flow more fracked PA gas.
Bitcoin “mining” is a rapidly expanding new customer for natural gas across the country, including in Pennsylvania. Gigantic computer server farms run complex mathematical computations and the result of those computations is a blockchain. When a blockchain is formed, the server farm doing the computations gets compensated with bitcoins, a form of digital money. Bitcoin (the generic term is cryptocurrency) mining uses huge amounts of electricity to run all of those computers. That’s where natural gas comes in. In PA the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has applied different standards to different requests from bitcoin miners to set up shop. A new bill aims to fix the problem of inconsistent treatment of these requests.
It’s always a sad day when radical Big Green groups win a victory over American energy. Such has happened with the New Fortress Energy (NFE) LNG plant proposed for Wyalusing in Bradford County, PA. Three Big Green groups challenged an extension for a permit previously issued for a new liquefaction facility proposed by NFE located in northeastern PA. NFE has caved and agreed that should it proceed with the project, it will need to file all over again and get a new permit–which doesn’t look likely.
Since the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine, we’ve read a number of articles about how American energy can reduce the impact of Putin’s war by supplying Europe with oil and natural gas. However, one such article appearing on Fox Business stands above all the rest. It’s well written and makes a strong case that Pennsylvania, specifically, has a critical role to play in helping to defeat Putin’s war on Ukraine. That role is ramping up Marcellus Shale gas production.
MDN friend Mark Caskey, president and founder of Steel Nation, a company that builds steel buildings used for natural gas compressor and transmission stations, penned an op-ed for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review to respond to lies being published by the leftist group Earthworks. On March 8 a paid anti-fossil fuel “petrochemicals campaigner” published a column in the Tribune-Review regurgitating Big Green lies that fossil fuels are evil and that calls by PA shale drillers to increase domestic energy output is somehow bad. The answer for lefties is always the same–renewable nirvana will ride in to save the day. (See our post today about fossil energy providing 4X more of our energy than renewables from now until 2050 and beyond–according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.)
It’s been fun watching the enviro-left soil themselves over the sudden and dramatic shift in public favorable attitudes toward fossil energy. There is no disputing that if the U.S. was energy independent, as it was under Donald Trump, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine would not be having the impact on oil and gas prices that it has had. Republicans (even a few Democrats) are loudly proclaiming we need to ramp up American oil and natural gas drilling once again. This has the lefties doing all sorts of mental gymnastics to try and explain how increasing oil and gas drilling here would be a bad thing. It’s actually quite funny!