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PA Gov. Wolf Meets Mariner East Antis F2F, Won’t Shut Down Pipes
To his credit (we don’t often heap praise on him), Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf toured a Mariner East 2 pipeline construction site in Chester County near Philadelphia last Thursday, along with some Democrat politicians, and told anti-pipeline residents “NO” to their faces when they asked him to shut down the Mariner East pipeline system. He was polite, but firm, telling them he disagrees with their position of the need to permanently shut down the Mariner pipelines. “Do a better job” with construction and impacts from the project? Sure, according to Wolf. Shut it all down permanently? NO.
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Can it be possible that the shale industry and anti-shale environmentalists (those who irrationally espouse the end of using all fossil fuels) can actually agree on something? Turns out, we can! The something we agree on is opposition to PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to tax a single industry, shale drilling, $4.5 billion in order to use that money for Big Government programs.
In 2006 the Pennsylvania State Legislature passed a bill (signed into law) that protects certain information about pipelines from being divulged via open records requests. It’s all too easy for terrorists (foreign or domestic) to use that information to inflict pain and suffering, even death–or to stop the flows along those pipelines. Good law, good call. But now several PA House members from the Philadelphia area want to pass a new law that would repeal the 2006 law–all in the name of pipeline “transparency.”
CNX Resources has just laid off (i.e. fired) roughly 50 employees company-wide, most of them at company headquarters in Canonsburg. But not all. We heard from an MDN trust source who said at least nine workers got their walking papers in West Virginia. Given the company employs about 500 people, 50 fired represents 10% of the workforce. Question is, will there be more firings?
Some 77 miles of PennEast Pipeline’s $1 billion, 120-mile primarily 36-inch underground pipeline is slated to run through Pennsylvania. The rest runs through New Jersey. In February of this year the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) published draft versions of Erosion and Sediment Control Permits for the project. Just one teeny tiny problem: The DEP screwed up the application number in their official posting in the PA Bulletin. So the DEP has just republished their intent to issue the permits–very soon–in the latest PA Bulletin.
There is no disputing the fact that the Marcellus Shale has fundamentally changed the economic landscape for Pennsylvania–for the better. A former PA state senator and county commissioner from southeast PA recently went on a tour of shale related infrastructure in western PA and wrote an insightful editorial that outlines the case in favor of building *more* natural gas pipelines in the state.
We’re highlighting a second scientific study today, this one real. We told you about Cornell University’s Robert Howarth’s faux study that says methane escaping from shale wells is causing the planet to toast. This second study, from Princeton University, actually performed in-the-field experiments to measure methane escaping from Marcellus Shale wells in Pennsylvania. Real science. The study found some 77% of the methane that escapes into the atmosphere comes from 10% of the wells–and concludes if we can identify and fix the 10%, we’ll go a long way to solving the escaping methane issue.
One of the most liberal governors in America, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, continues his campaign to kill the Marcellus Shale by slapping a severance tax on top of an already-high impact tax. He’s now getting a little help from his lib friends at the polling unit at Franklin & Marshall College. When asked a misleading question, a recent poll of 627 PA residents found 69% of them “strongly” or “somewhat” favor Wolf’s Santa Claus promises in his “Restore PA” plan–if it’s funded by a severance tax on Marcellus Shale.
Pennsylvania state officials in the Gov. Tom Wolf administration (yes, lib Dem Tom Wolf) are drawing up plans, a “playbook,” for how to redevelop the increasing number of coal-fired electric generating plants that are closing in the state. Most of those plans boil down to this: redevelop those sites as natural gas-fired electric plants and/or petrochemical plants. Both are tied directly to PA’s prolific Marcellus Shale. Who knew there was such common sense inside the Wolf Administration?
In March 2017, radical green groups, including the Sierra Club, Lancaster Against Pipelines, Lebanon Pipeline Awareness, Allegheny Defense Project, Clean Air Council, Concerned Citizens of Lebanon County, and Heartwood, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in an attempt to block construction of the $3 billion Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project in Pennsylvania (see 
Another so-called “study” has appeared bashing Pennsylvania Marcellus fracking. This one is co-authored by a global warming Kool Aid drinker affiliated with the Post Carbon Institute, making the claim pregnant women in Pennsylvania have a 4% higher chance of becoming anxious and/or depressed if they live near fracking activities. How these people are not laughed out of any room they walk into is beyond us.
Last December MDN brought you news of a new Transco pipeline expansion project, the Williams “Leidy South Project,” to expand Transco capacity in Pennsylvania (see 
In March, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf traveled to an elementary school in South Philadelphia with the message that only a severance tax on Marcellus Shale production stands in the way of cleaning up lead paint problems that are poisoning the little kiddies at the school (see 
Yet another cockamamie “study” (i.e. propaganda) about the negatives of fracking–this one done by the University of New Hampshire claiming a few hikers and outdoor enthusiasts in Pennsylvania will have to find someplace else to hike and enthuse…because of evil Marcellus fracking. The thing that really angers us is that Pennsylvania taxpayers paid for this “study”!