PA AG Launches I-HATE-FRACKING Hotline; Report Bashing Shale, DEP
Yesterday Pennsylvania’s corrupt Attorney General, Josh Shapiro (who is running for governor trying to curry favor with Big Green wackadoodles) issued a 243-page report (full copy below), the result of two years of muckraking “investigations” into the Marcellus Shale drilling industry. Shapiro announced a new hotline where people can call and complain about frackers. And he had the gall to issue his own legislative agenda to further restrict fracking! In normal, sane states prosecutors uphold laws created by the legislature (and signed by the executive). In PA, Shapiro (in the judiciary) wants to make new laws. The man is out of control and needs to be locked in a padded room for his own safety.
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The Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) does a good job of guesstimating how much impact fee revenue will get generated in the coming year, based on permit and producing wells activity in the current year. Impact fees are PA’s equivalent of a severance tax–a fee paid by drillers for each new well they drill, paid over a 15-year period. This year IFO is offering up two scenarios for how much money the state will receive in impact fee revenues next year (based on wells drilled and active this year). One scenario is based on natgas prices averaging at least $2.25/MMBtus (million British Thermal Units) on the NYMEX, and the other scenario assumes gas prices slip below that level.
The Washington & Jefferson College Center for Energy Policy and Management (Washington, PA) is hosting a free webinar series on “
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held a virtual hearing on Gov. Wolf’s plan to bypass the state legislature and force the state to join the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a group of northeastern states attempting to assassinate coal and gas-fired power generation by taxing it to death with an insane carbon tax (see 
Last October PA Gov. Tom Wolf, in a naked power-grab, said he would try to force PA to join the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a group of northeastern states attempting to assassinate coal and gas-fired power generation by taxing it to death with an insane carbon tax (see 
In March a worker hired to x-ray welds on sections of the Mariner East 2 pipeline in southwestern Pennsylvania was charged with falsifying records–that he falsely claimed to have performed work when he didn’t (see 
In Ohio, it costs drillers $5,500 to file for and receive a permit to drill a new shale well. In West Virginia, the cost is $10,150. In Pennsylvania, it has cost drillers $5,000 for a new shale well permit. Following a meeting yesterday of the PA Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC), PA’s permit fee is about to zoom to the top of the M-U list: $12,500 (2 1/2 times the previous fee). In fact, the cost of a shale permit in PA will become the highest in the country.
We previously told you that Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzai, a long-time champion for the Marcellus Shale industry, would leave office as of Monday (see 
The door has been closed on “Dimock” (in Susquehanna County, PA) for years. Dimock, you may recall, was made famous by Josh Fox’s so-called documentaries Gasland and Gasland 2, aired endlessly on HBO. His allegations about fracking malfeasance by Cabot Oil & Gas were completely debunked in a real documentary called 
A group of leftwing radical professors (all of the Democrats) from seven universities in Ohio and Pennsylvania have colluded to write a letter to the governors of Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The letter trash talks the billions of dollars in economic impact and tens of thousands of jobs ethane cracker plants and the petrochemical industry will have in the region. The leftist gang of seven poo-poos those estimates and says the proposed PTT cracker is too “risky” to approve. How do they figure?
CNX Resources, one of our favorite Marcellus/Utica drillers, issued an operational update yesterday with some interesting new information. Chief among the tidbits is the fact that CNX, beginning May 1, shut-in some of its production. Specifically around 375 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d). The company expects that number to decline to 300 MMcf/d by July. After that, they’ll play it by ear.
Enverus (formerly known as Drillinginfo) recently released its latest FundamentalEdge report that explores the ongoing supply response to demand destruction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the report, Enverus estimates how much dry gas production each major shale play produced, month by month, from January through May of this year. The numbers show that production from the Marcellus/Utica, which produces the most natural gas of any play, decreased the most of any play–by some 1.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) from January to May.
Going back a year (beginning June 2019) MDN has brought you news about Edge Gathering Virtual Pipelines 2 LLC (EDGE), a company that deploys special LNG units to remote Marcellus wells in PA, converting gas from the well into LNG and selling that gas (