PA Dems Continue to Push Severance Tax Instead of Spending Cuts
Pennsylvania does not have a taxing problem, as people like Gov. Tom Wolf pretend–it has a spending problem, as in they spend beyond their means. The last governor that tried to correct that problem–Tom Corbett–got handed one term in the big chair for his efforts at dealing honestly with it. Big Education and Big Labor knifed Corbett in the back, politically, after he cut the mammoth increase in their growth. (FEED ME FEED ME) If you want to know why PA is in budget trouble, look no further than it’s Secretary of the Dept. of Community and Economic Development, Dennis Davin. Every econ growth guy we’ve ever talked to knows that increasing taxes gets less of what you tax–it is an incontrovertible fact in economics. Yet Davin, who’s boss is utter failure Tom Wolf, is pushing hard for a huge tax increase on the Marcellus industry–the very industry that has singlehandedly kept PA out of an economic abyss. And yet the guy who should understand the issue the best, is pushing hardest for the tax. That tells you all you need to know about the Wolf Administration and it’s utter failure…
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The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: New well permit for Columbiana County, OH; Wellsville barge facility ramps up on Ohio River; Italian engineering firm picks Pittsburgh for North American HQ; Trump to promote natgas on Poland trip; how natgas will help countries keep their Paris promises; wind turbines as big as skyscrapers; and more!
NG Advantage is making a concerted effort to dispel false rumors and misunderstanding on the part of neighbors who live near a proposed “virtual pipeline” site that is a series of compressor stations grabbing gas from the Millennium Pipeline in a Binghamton suburb, compressing it and loading onto tanker trucks. As MDN reported yesterday, two different groups have now filed lawsuits to stop work at the site, one by a local elementary school (more than a half mile away) and one by residents living nearby, including a local Catholic church parish (see 
It’s clear that radical environmentalists who (irrationally) oppose the use of fossil fuels believe the recent decision by Pennsylvania Supreme Court is a gift from Gaia (Mother Earth goddess). As MDN previously reported, last week the Pennsylvania Supreme Court of Appeals, in a sharply divided 3-2 decision, sided with a virulent anti-drilling group, the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation, against the state in saying that any revenue generated from leasing and drilling on state-owned land MUST be used solely for conservation and the environment (see 
One of the first steps before a company decides to drill for shale gas (or oil), is to conduct a seismic survey–bouncing sound waves through the rock layers a mile or more down–to “see” what the geology looks like. It helps drillers target locations with the best possibility of success, which is a good thing for everyone (no unnecessary “misses” when drilling a well). One of objectives of the original Act 13 law passed in PA in 2012 was to provide uniform zoning ordinances for the oil and gas industry, so drillers don’t have to work with a crazy quilt patchwork of zoning requirements in every new town in which they drill. That failed when seven selfish towns filed a lawsuit that ultimately went to the PA Supreme Court, where the towns won the right to pass their own zoning regulations for oil and gas drilling (see 
In May 2015 the Obama rogue Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) along with the Obama U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) released a finalized rule clarifying what “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) means vis a vis what can be regulated under the federal Clean Water Act (see 
Pro Oil & Gas Services (formerly Pro Oilfield Services) is an oilfield services company (OFS) providing wireline, pumping services, flowback, frac stacks, wireline lubricators and pressure control, surface drilling and more. The company is headquartered in Houston, TX operating in a number of shale plays, including the Marcellus/Utica. We were unaware of the company until spotting a press release that announces the company has been “recapitalized” by Intervale Capital, a private equity (PE) firm that invests money in companies, adding them to its “portfolio.” The terms of the recapitalization were not disclosed. What all of this high finance language means is this: Pro Oil & Gas was just bought out by Intervale Capital. We expect all of the personnel to remain the same, including the founder/CEO. But make no mistake, Intervale now pulls the strings. It’s their money at risk, and they are now calling the shots…
A new study from ICF International (commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute) reveals some truly mind-blowing numbers. The natural gas supply chain–those companies involved in providing goods and services to the industry–generated $550 billion in economic activity in 2015. More than half a trillion dollars! That’s almost 3% of the country’s GDP. From a single industry. Staggering. Equally staggering: Because we are finding and extracting natgas here at home, American consumers will have saved more than $100 billion on the cost of natural gas by 2040. That’s a private (non-governmental) $100 billion invested in our economy over the next 25 years. The 268-page study, titled “Benefits and Opportunities of Natural Gas Use, Transportation, and Production” (full copy below) projects total employment related to the natgas industry will reach 5.9 million people by 2040. Can you even begin to wrap you brain around this?! The report contains information and data for how natgas benefits EACH of the 50 states. This is a professional study by a professional firm, not just rah rah unsupported pablum like you get from radical environmentalists. These are real numbers you can believe. Frankly, the numbers tell one of the most incredible stories of the 21st century…
Last week Stanford University held their annual Silicon Valley Energy Summit debate. Mark Zoback, head of Stanford’s Natural Gas Initiative (after teaching geophysics at Stanford for 30 years) said of course fracking is safe, and beneficial. On the other side of the debate was a loopy anti-fracker from the abominable Sierra Club. Zoback verbally spanked her–obliterating her arguments against fracking. The question before the debaters: Do U.S. benefits of fracking gas and oil outweigh environmental costs? Arguing for fracking were Zoback and Dane Boysen, the former director of research operations at the Gas Technology Institute. Arguing against fracking were Lena Moffitt of the Sierra Club and Briana Mordick of the equally horrible National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Below is a summary of the debate, along with a full video of the hour-long debate…
It was more than six months in the making, but finally the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection has granted Shell a permit that allows the facility to discharge wastewater and storm water into the Ohio River. Which may sound like Shell just got a permit to pollute the Ohio River–but that’s not what is happening. Shell is building their mighty $6 billion ethane cracker on a site formerly used as a zinc smelter. The old Horsehead Corp. plant held a permit that allowed the plant to discharge wastewater with some total dissolved solids (TDS) into the Ohio. When Shell bought the site, they also inherited the Horsehead permit for wastewater discharge. Shell filed a plan back in December with the PA DEP to modify that permit for the forthcoming cracker plant (see 
Is Kinder Morgan’s NED pipeline project getting reincarnated?! You may recall that over a year ago, in April 2016, anti-fossil fuel nuts in Massachusetts and other northeastern states were orgasmic that Kinder Morgan announced the company had suspended (not necessarily canceled) any further spending/time/effort on the Tennessee Gas Pipeline expansion from NY through MA, otherwise known as the Northeast Energy Direct (NED) project (see 
Just when you thought you’ve seen how low some anti-pipeline fanatics will go, they surprise you and go even lower. Antis set up a fake graveyard with a half dozen authentic, 19th century tombstones, right next to a pipeline right of way for the Williams Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline in Lancaster County, PA. Williams is hypersensitive to ensure they don’t violate any “Native American” or other kinds of historic sites. So when they came across the fake graveyard, they thought it was real and proceeded as such, spending time and money to plan a route for construction that would protect the fake site. And antis, with full knowledge, lied to Williams’ people (not telling them is the same as lying in our book). And laughed their considerable derrieres off the entire time, wondering when those poor dunderheads at Williams would figure it out. Now Williams may have the last laugh, because what the antis did is fraud and prosecutable. So-called local Native Americans (i.e. Indians) were in on the “joke.” And now those Indian activists have the gall to say if Williams didn’t recognize something as fake, how will they recognize real Indian artifacts that need protecting? We ask a different question: Who will ever believe these so-called Native American activists again–when they are self-professed liars?…
In March 2016, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s (TGP) Connecticut Expansion project (see