Maryland Beats Deadline, Submits Onerous New Fracking Rules
Last week the Baltimore Sun ran an article (a portion of which we picked up) that said “sources” were telling the Sun that the Maryland Dept. of the Environment (MDE) would miss a deadline to submit revisions to revisions of revisions of fracking regulations that will allow the state to begin fracking on or about October 1, 2017 (see Maryland Will Miss Important Fracking Deadline on Oct 1). In order to meet the 2017 deadline when the current two-year moratorium expires, the new revisions must be issued by October 1, 2016, a year earlier. The Sun said that wouldn’t happen. But it did. In releasing the new revisions yesterday, Maryland Secretary of the Environment, Ben Grumbles, called the new regulations “the most stringent” regulations in the country. Strangely, a copy of the new revisions just released can’t be found on the MDE website. What we know from various news accounts is that there will be no drilling or fracking within 2,000 feet of a private water well. And that’s just one of the show-stopping requirements. Translation: there never will be any fracking in Maryland, mark our words. Or if there is, it will be isolated and rare as hen’s teeth…
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Landowners from Bradford, Susquehanna, Wyoming and Lycoming counties (Pennsylvania) attended a rally in Harrisburg, at the Capitol, on Tuesday. They were there to lobby for and support passage of House Bill (HB) 1391, a bill that would guarantee landowners a minimum 12.5% royalty payment regardless of post-production costs. We have extensively covered this issue, which is causing a schism between landowners and drillers (see our most recent article: 
Something noteworthy is happening in southwest Pennsylvania. Landowners and pro-gas supporters are turning out at local hearings to support more drilling. Case in point: Range Resources had applied for a permit to build a drill pad near a local elementary school in Mt. Pleasant (Westmoreland County), PA. Moms Clean Air Force and other anti-drillers turned out to oppose the plan. A local town board meeting was packed to capacity. However, a majority of those packing the meeting were pro-gas and wore t-shirts with “Land Owners United” printed on them. Cool! About time our side began to turn up for these meetings to support the industry…
It’s always drama with Williams. Nearly half of the Williams board (6 of 14 board members) were part of a cabal that tried to force the company to sell itself to Energy Transfer Equity–a deal that went horribly wrong. Following the aborted merger, six of Williams’ board members tried to engineer a palace coup to depose current CEO Alan Armstrong. The coup failed and the board members quit in July (see 
Last week MDN told you that evil corporate raider Carl Icahn has thrown in the towel with respect to ever making money from Chesapeake Energy. He recently sold off half his Chessy stock (see 
Every now and again pipeline companies hand out grants to local worthy organizations, like fire departments and schools. PennEast Pipeline is one such organization. Christmas has come early to another group of non-profits. PennEast has just handed out $5,000 each to more than a dozen organizations (see the list below). All told, PennEast had distributed more than $400,000 to local organizations through its “Community Connector Grant” program…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: NE pipelines take on debt; trade groups call for buildout of PA pipelines; PA in the hunt for more natgas end-users; OH counties benefit from sales tax boom created by shale; Duke Energy calls natgas a “game changer”; shale drilling revival as oil prices recover; OPEC agrees to cut production, first time in two years; Harold Hamm calls Hillary energy policy “silly”; and more!
MDN is pleased to bring you another guest post from our very good friend Chris Acker. Chris is a geological engineer with an MBA. He grew up in the oil fields of Venezuela where his father, a petroleum engineer, was a drilling contractor for all the major players, onshore and off. Chris’ interest in energy economics and policy found him working for Exxon, Petroleum Industry Research Associates and Petroleos de Venezuela. He bought a parcel of land in the PA countryside twenty-five years ago and later semi-retired to work on antique pianos (see 
Yesterday MDN reported the big story that Rice Energy is paying $2.7 billion to buy the assets of Vantage Energy (see 
Last July Canadian-based TransCanada, famously known for wanting to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast (a plan that Obama obliterated), didn’t want to be left out of the most important midstream story of the century, so they bought Columbia Pipeline Group this year, closing on the sale in July (see 
2 Corinthians 6:15: “What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever?” The obvious answer to the Apostle Paul’s hypothetical question in that passage is, “There is no harmony. A believer can’t partner with an unbeliever.” Yet that’s just what is happening among the ranks of anti-fossil fuel fools. We’ll explain. On Monday the usual suspects, namely the misnamed and odious Food & Water Watch and 200 or so of their closest “friends”–including the Sierra Clubbers, Natural Resources Defense Council, et al ad naseum (people who never think for themselves)–sent a letter (full copy below) to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy asking her, begging with her, pleading with her, to pretty-please change the results of the EPA’s own scientific study, performed by dozens (hundreds?) of scientists who analyzed 950 studies on fracking, conducting nine of their own primary studies, and concluding that fracking doesn’t contaminate ground water supplies (see 
At last week’s Shale Insight conference, MDN editor Jim Willis had the opportunity to listen to three top legislators, one each from PA, WV and OH. We reported on their panel discussion, titled “Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia Legislative Leaders: The Future of the Industry” (see 