CNX Resources | Energy Companies | Industrywide Issues | Lease & Royalty Payments | Litigation | Noble Energy | Pennsylvania | Westmoreland County
SWPA Reservoir, CNX Reach $600K Settlement re Royalty Deductions
CNX has reached a settlement with the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County (MAWC) in a lawsuit brought by MAWC in 2016 claiming that CNX (and partner Noble Energy) claimed post-production deductions from royalties that should have been paid to MAWC. The original lawsuit sought combined damages of $3.6 million. The final number to be paid by CNX, according to reports, is $600,000.
Read More “SWPA Reservoir, CNX Reach $600K Settlement re Royalty Deductions”
New shale permits issued for Mar. 13-19 in the Marcellus/Utica rose by four from the prior week. There were 34 new permits issued in total last week, including 24 new permits for Pennsylvania, 4 new permits for Ohio, and 6 new permits in West Virginia. Last week the top receiver of new permits across PA and OH was Chesapeake Energy with 7 new permits spread across three PA counties: Bradford, Sullivan, and Wyoming. Range Resources received 6 new permits in Washington County, PA.
Last week the Municipality of Murrysville, PA (in Westmoreland County, near Pittsburgh) voted to allow Olympus Energy to build a well pad on a property straddling the border with Plum Township. The well pad will eventually host eight shale wells. Olympus wants to begin drilling the wells either late this year or early next year. This is good news indeed!
These days we don’t often see the contract details for new leases signed by landowners to allow shale drilling. We used to see and report on large landowner coalitions and the deals they had struck back in the earlier days of the Marcellus/Utica. But today, about the only time you get any kind of insight into deal amounts comes when municipalities lease land for drilling, given that the business dealings of a municipality must be disclosed publicly. We’re always on the lookout for such deals. Allegheny Township in Westmoreland County (near Pittsburgh) has just approved a shale lease with Olympus Energy to drill under (not on) 27.7 acres of the Tredway Trail. The terms of the deal are…
What if we gave the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) a $2.5 million grant to study a link between peanut butter and childhood cancer? Researchers could only use the money to study any potential link between peanut butter and kids getting rare cancers. Sounds absurd, right? What if there is NO link between peanut butter and cancer in kids? What if there IS a link to some other environmental factor like, say, an old uranium dumpsite nearby? But the remit is to ONLY research peanut butter. Sound silly? Sound stupid? Substitute “shale drilling” for “peanut butter,” and you can see how absurd it is for Pitt to study a single potential cause for rare childhood cancers in southwestern PA. Yet they are. Pitt is studying a link solely between fracking and cancer in kids. They are now trying to recruit local families to participate in this sham they call science.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) recently held two public hearings about a plan by the Westmoreland Sanitary Landfill in Westmoreland County, PA (southwestern corner of the state, near Pittsburgh) to build a gas-fired leachate evaporator. Leftist anti-drillers showed up to bash the proposal citing the landfill accepts shale waste, claiming the leachate is radioactive because of the shale waste and will contaminate everything if it’s burned. DEP plans to approve the temporary operation of an evaporator for 180 days to process 45,000 gallons of leachate per day.