PA Frankenstein House Bill Merges Severance Tax & Minimum Royalty
As predicted earlier this week, yesterday the Pennsylvania House Finance Committee voted to approve a 3.2% severance tax on top of the existing 5%+ impact tax (see RINOsaur DiGirolamo Says Vote on PA Severance Tax Coming Soon). Democrats and mainstream media are nearly orgasmic–this is as far as any severance tax bill has ever gotten in PA. The bill, House Bill (HB) 1401, now goes to the full House for a vote–maybe. It remains to be seen whether or not House Speaker Mike Turzai will allow a vote in the full House. There are procedural ways to tie up the bill. While it’s a crap shoot as to whether or not the full House would pass a Marcellus-killing severance tax, there is a section in HB 1401 that is sure to kill the bill–a guaranteed minimum royalty for landowners of 12.5%. Don’t get us wrong–we think the minimum royalty issue is very important and deserves a vote. PA Rep. Garth Everett has championed the issue, introducing a bill to accomplish that objective three times in the last six years (see PA Rep. Garth Everett Reintroduces Minimum Royalty Bill, 3rd Time). No doubt HB 1401’s chief sponsor Gene DiGirolamo (RINOsaur from the Philadelphia area) is hoping to gain support from landowners for the severance tax by grafting on the minimum royalty provision–in the style of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. Take a body part here (severance tax) and a body part there (guaranteed minimum royalty), sew it together (HB 1401) and shock it into life with a vote. Landowners should beware of this ruse. The minimum royalty issue needs to be addressed separately, on it’s own, and not part of a severance tax bill…
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According to the energy experts at RBN Energy, ethane production in the Marcellus/Utica region will go from 470,000 barrels per day now to 800,000 barrels per day by 2022–a 70% increase. Ethane, which is sometimes up to 10% of the hydrocarbons coming out of Marcellus/Utica wells (from wet gas and oil wells), can be an important revenue stream. However, you have to have someplace to sell it. Right now, many Marcellus/Utica producers have to mix in the ethane with the methane stream in order to get rid of it. In other words, it costs them money. It’s a waste product. However, when the Shell cracker plant in Beaver County, PA and (possibly) the PTT Global cracker plant in Belmont County, OH go online, important new markets will open up. But even two huge crackers won’t be able to buy all of the available ethane. There are a slew of new cracker plants coming online in the Gulf Coast over the next five years that could use Marcellus/Utica ethane. But will they? The problem, as always, is pipelines. According to an analysis by RBN, the prospects for moving more of our ethane to the Gulf Coast do not look good…
EmberClear Corp. (and its parent Ember Partners) is a Canadian-based company that builds and operates natural gas-fired electric generation plants in North America. In 2015, EmberClear filed an application to build a new 488-megawatt natural gas-fired electric plant in Birdsboro, in Berks County, near Philadelphia (see 
In May MDN brought you the news that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo had announced plans to construct a new “state-of-the-art, locally-sourced mini-power grid” that will connect to the statewide electric grid but will also be able to operate independently, to power the Empire State Plaza in Albany–a complex of buildings in downtown Albany housing much of New York State government (see 
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Dominion says Cove Point LNG export open for business by end of year; open records petition seeks more sunlight on corrupt NY Attorney General emails re #ExxonKnew; Rex Energy stock hits 12-month low; Total CEO says US shale will see wave of new investment; Obama would have loved Perry’s “resiliency” plan; Japan bets $10B on US natgas; Gazprom & Mitsui talk LNG cooperation; and more!
Last week MDN brought you news about a relatively new company called American Energy Partners, Inc., based in Allentown, PA, and their subsidiary company Gilbert Oil & Gas (see 
Energy Solutions Consortium, aka the father and son team of Andrew and Matthew Dorn–have been trying to build a 750 megawatt natural gas-fired electric plant in Follansbee (Brooke County), WV for years. In fact, the Dorns have a number of gas-fired electric plant projects on the board for WV, and have since 2015 (see 
Yesterday the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed House Bill (HB) 542 to try and finalize the three month plus late PA budget. This latest bill (see the summary below) uses mostly borrowing, against tobacco settlement money and small tax increases on online businesses and fireworks distributors to balance this year’s budget. The bill does NOT include a severance tax. Sounding like Johnny One-Note, PA Gov. Wolf immediately said any final deal must include a Marcellus-killing severance tax, or he won’t sign it. Some of the traitorous Republicans in the Senate still want to see a severance tax too (see 
Rover Pipeline has been served a violation from the Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality claiming the company discharged polluted water from its drilling operations into a wetland. Which may sound familiar, because Rover was cited for fouling a wetland in Ohio with 2 million gallons of drilling mud back in April (see 
A group of anti-fossil/anti-pipeline radicals held a rally yesterday to spread lies and innuendo about the safety of pipelines in general, with a focus on stopping construction of the Mariner East 2 pipeline project in particular. Supposedly 150 people turned up (including Democrat lawmakers) to bash pipeline projects in the Keystone State. What mainstream media reports don’t tell you is that it was a staged event, organized by the loathsome Food & Water Watch–a Big Green group that lobbies against all fossil fuel projects. Media reports tell you a bunch of moms and dads and kids “negatively impacted” by pipelines showed up to plead their case. Bunkum. It was a publicity stunt, and the calls by these radicals to suspend pipeline construction are a pipe dream (pun intended). Here’s how it was reported, followed by the real story…
Huntley & Huntley has plans to drill shale wells in Upper Burrell Township (Westmoreland County), PA. As MDN reported in June, a landowner in Upper Burrell filed an appeal against Upper Burrell’s zoning ordinance that allows drilling in rural, agricultural districts (see 
Greg Guidry is the executive vice president of Shell’s unconventionals business. That is, he’s in charge of shale drilling for the company. Talking to a reporter at the Energy Dialogues LLC’s North American Gas Forum earlier this month, Guidry said shale is “a future growth opportunity because of its long-term growth potential.” Guidry is interested in promoting shale as “a lower-carbon energy source.” He believes the way to properly promote shale gas is by partnerships between the oil and gas industry and non-governmental organizations (NGO). Guidry then used the Center for Responsible Shale Development (CRSD), a group headquartered in Pittsburgh, as the model for how such a partnership can and should be done. In March 2013, the Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD) burst onto the scene. It had been a closely guarded secret, the creation of a few hand-picked people from both industry and the environmental movement working together to see if there is any common ground on which both sides can agree that shale development would be safe, sustainable AND affordable. They worked hard for over a year and finally hammered out a set of 15 standards that if a driller (or midstream company or contractor) would meet, it would get a stamp of approval from both the industry and environmental groups as being a good goobie–a safe driller. In January of this year the CSSD changed its name to CRSD–the Center for Responsible Shale Development (see