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Top 10 Shale Drillers in PA for 2020, by Number of Wells Drilled
The data crunchers at the Pittsburgh Business Times have been sifting through the data for 2020 and have composed a list of the “Largest Pennsylvania Shale Gas Drillers in 2020.” The PBT list ranks drillers by the number of wells drilled in PA for all time, including right up through the end of 2020. We resorted their list to reveal the number of wells “added” (drilled) in PA for 2020, to generate the following list of the top 10 drillers from 2020:
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On Friday Pennsylvania state legislators held two different remote/video hearings about the future of energy and fossil fuels in the state. Radical leftists who have taken over the Democrat Party are alarmed that the House Democratic Caucus, which lists climate change as a top priority, dedicated more than half of a two-hour hearing on “21st Century Energy Jobs” to speakers extolling the virtues of natural gas and coal. In our new woke, cancel culture where free speech is dead and any idea that doesn’t agree with the left is verboten, this just isn’t acceptable (so say the wokers)!
The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), a quasi-governmental organization composed of four states (NY, PA, DE, NJ) plus the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, voted yesterday to permanently ban fracking within the boundaries of the DRBC’s jurisdiction, which includes Wayne and Pike counties in Pennsylvania where there is abundant Marcellus Shale deposits. But don’t despair. The DRBC is in the midst of two legal challenges and one (or both) is sure to win, reversing the illegal action taken yesterday. Chin up! The sun will rise again.
Remember the statement, uttered by then-candidate Joe Biden as he stood in Bucks County, PA (which sits in the Delaware River Basin) when he emphatically promised PA residents and union workers, “I’m not banning fracking in Pennsylvania or anywhere else!”? It took him slightly less than five weeks to break that promise. Yesterday the Biden administration, in the form of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (which is an Executive Branch agency) abstained and then voiced moral support for the DRBC’s vote to ban fracking in the Delaware River Basin. That action bans fracking in two northeastern PA counties where there are frackable shale deposits (see today’s lead story). FIVE WEEKS. Still happy you voted for lyin’ Biden?
Some good news to share on this Friday. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has given National Fuel Gas Company (NFG) the green light to begin construction on its FM100 pipeline project. The FM100 Project will beef up and extend an existing pipeline network in northwestern Pennsylvania to flow an extra 330 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of Marcellus gas to Williams’ mighty Transco Pipeline (see 
In December MDN brought you the news that the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) is proposing and seeking comments on changes to the state’s Chapter 105 (water obstructions and encroachments) permit (see 
Our headline is a bit cryptic, so we’ll explain right up front that G&P stands for gathering and processing. In pipeline giant Williams’ latest update (covering 4th quarter and full-year 2020) company reps said the Northeast G&P unit “continues to come on very strong producing record results and contributing $29 million of additional EBITDA this quarter.” They also said Northeast (namely Marcellus) gathering volumes grew by 7% in 4Q, and processing volumes grew by 9%.
You have to hand it to Pennsylvania State Sen. Gene Yaw, he sure knows how to set off the crazies in the Keystone State. Yesterday Yaw issued a fantastic op-ed saying if Gov. Wolf gets his bizarre Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax adopted, Pennsylvanians can look forward to power outages like those recently experienced in Texas, which happened in large part because of the failure of “renewable” energy sources like windmills. Yaw’s comments have the lefties yammering away to “correct” Yaw’s non-standard and non-approved speech.
As we reported in January, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (Democrat) has, for the seventh year in a row, introduced a Marcellus-killing severance tax proposal as part of his annual budget proposal (see 
The official state bird for New York State is the tiny Eastern bluebird–no bigger than a chickadee. Here at MDN HQ, we maintain two bird feeders year-round in the front yard. We can remember only maybe 3-4 times over the years we’ve actually seen a bluebird at our feeders. The bluebird is one of our favorites because we see it so rarely. According to researchers at Penn State in State College, PA, loud noise from pipeline compressor stations has the ability to “diminish” the “reproductive success” of bluebirds and other songbirds. Who would even think to conduct such an experiment?
Pennsylvania’s Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) has just thrown up a huge roadblock to Democrat/autocrat PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s attempt to railroad through a proposal to force PA to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a $2.6 billion carbon tax aimed at killing coal and gas-fired power plants. The IRRC told the rule-adopting Environmental Quality Board (EQB) it should delay adoption of the proposed RGGI regulation by one year, from 2022 to 2023.
Yesterday the country’s largest natural gas producer, EQT Corporation, released its 4Q and full-year 2020 update, holding a conference call with analysts to discuss the results. The update shows the company produced an average of 4.45 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of natural gas in 4Q. Although there was plenty of “free cash flow” for the year, on paper the company lost $967 million in 2020, which is an improvement over the year before when it lost $1.2 billion. Perhaps the biggest news (for us) coming from yesterday’s update is that in 4Q EQT turned its drilling attention to the West Virginia Marcellus. EQT plans to do much more drilling in WV this year too.
We hate it when the bad guys win even a small victory, as has just happened. We told you last week about a group of radicalized anti-fossil fuelers who raised a stink with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Proteciton (DEP) over the DEP’s routine, nothing-to-see-here renewal of permits for already-running (with no operational problems) shale wastewater recycling facilities scattered around the state (see 
Here’s a small victory to celebrate. In July 2018 three radical environmental groups dropped their objections to permits the DEP previously granted for the Mariner East 2 Pipeline. Clean Air Council, Mountain Watershed Association, and THE Delaware Riverkeeper “settled” their appeal of 20 permits issued to Sunoco for the ME2 project (see 
Danger, Will Robinson! One of the leading lights in the Pennsylvania legislature against Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf’s idiotic (and dangerous) carbon tax plan, called RGGI (Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative), has been Republican House Rep. Jim Struzzi (from Indiana County). Struzzi sponsored House Bill (HB) 2025 last year giving PA residents a say in whether or not the state should join RGGI (see