Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Range Resources Corp | Washington County
SWPA County Judge Rules Range Can’t See Reporters’ Notes/Sources
So-called reporters, like some at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, must have known they were breaking the law by using confidential information (sealed under a court order) in some of their anti-shale articles. Range Resources, fighting against an out-of-control Attorney General (Josh Shapiro) who wants to charge the company with crimes, wants to depose those reporters to try and find out who, exactly, broke the law in leaking information that is sealed by court order. However, a county judge won’t let Range do it. Not yet, anyway.
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CNX Resources released its first quarter 2019 update yesterday, which shows the company lost $87 million, as opposed to making $527 million in profit in 1Q18. Even so, CEO Nicholas DeIuliis announced the company is upping its drilling budget from the previously announced $700 million to instead spend $885 million, largely to drill more “deep dry” Utica wells. Go big or go home!
Last week an Ohio man was arrested for allegedly calling in a bomb threat last November against Myers Well Service, located in Eighty Four (Washington County), PA. A cell phone belonging to Ryan Dougherty of Belmont, OH was used to make the threat. Dougherty claims he called the business, but didn’t make any threats. The investigation took three months. Last Tuesday authorities arrested and charged Dougherty. 
A single township in Washington County, PA, Smith Township, is home to two “sprawling” shale gas complexes that process and separate Marcellus/Utica gas extracted in southwestern Pennsylvania. One is MarkWest Energy’s Harmon Creek complex, and the other Energy Transfer’s Revolution complex. Area residents think they have quite enough infrastructure and are asking town officials to throttle back new development.
Three families who live near a former drill site and frack wastewater impoundment at the Yeager Marcellus Shale site in Washington County, PA sued Range Resources in May 2012 claiming the air they breathe and the water they drink had been contaminated by Range’s operations at the site (see 
Following an extensive (underscore extensive) review, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has approved the permit applications for Shell’s Falcon ethane pipeline project.
As we previously reported, an explosion and fire last week at the MarkWest Energy natural gas processing plant in Chartiers (Washington County), PA sent four people to the hospital–carried there by helicopter (see 
On Monday, CNX Midstream sued West Virginia contractor Ronald Lane Inc. claiming the contractor “without warning or justification ceased work on the Project and abandoned the Project,” the Project being a package of water and gas pipelines in Greene and Washington counties in PA. And that, “Lane informed [CNX] that Lane intended to redirect all of its forces and efforts to other projects that Lane considered to be more profitable than the Project. Lane made it clear to [CNX] that Lane had no intention to perform any more work on the Project.” Lane was the winning bidder for the Project in late 2017 at a total cost of $7.1 million. According to the lawsuit, CNX claims Lane began construction in March and abandoned the Project in June.
Can fracking save butterflies? According to California University of Pennsylvania’s Supervisor of the Fish & Wildlife, you betcha. You heard how important “pollinators” are, right? We immediately think bees when we hear the word pollinator. But monarch butterflies, a species whose population has dropped 90% since 1990, is also a important pollinator. In places across southwestern PA habitats for the monarch have disappeared, long before shale drilling showed up. Range Resources is helping replant vegetation that monarchs love. And it’s having a big impact. Range’s efforts are not just “throw a few seeds here and there” for publicity. Range is working hard and “willing to do it right.”
Yesterday Range Resources, the very first company to sink a Marcellus Shale well back in 2004, announced it has cut a deal to “sell a proportionately reduced 1% overriding royalty in its Washington County, Pennsylvania leases for gross proceeds of $300 million.” Yeah. What, exactly, does that mean? More high finance stuff. The deal, as we try to understand it, reminds us of “factoring” that we learned about in our college business classes. You know, selling the money you will receive in the future from accounts receivable for a lump sum today? We think of this deal as kind of like that. Not exactly, but kind of.