Status Update for 5 Important Bills Affecting PA Fracking Industry
The legal beagles at the Norton Rose Fulbright law firm recently issued a post on their Hydraulic Fracking Blog with updates on five important bills currently before the PA House and Senate that will affect the Marcellus industry (drillers, midstreamers and landowners)–with details for what’s in the bills and the status for each bill. Likely the most controversial of the bills is House Bill (HB) 1391, which would guarantee PA landowners a 12.5% minimum royalty regardless of post-production costs. That bill is due for a procedural vote today. Other bills are in bottled up in various committees where they may or may not make it out for a full vote. The PA House is in session today, tomorrow, and then Oct 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, and Nov 14, 15. That’s it–just 10 more days in session before the end of the year. The PA Senate is in session today, tomorrow, and then Oct 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26. Just 8 more days for the Senate. So whatever is going to happen must happen quickly. Here’s a rundown on the five important bills, including HB 1391 (“Amendments to Oil and Gas Lease Act”), HB 2275 (“Changes to Environmental Quality Board membership”), HB 2277 (“Amendment to Oil & Gas Act related to bonding requirements”), HB 2319 (“Amendment to Oil & Gas Lease Act”), and HB 2361 (“Pennsylvania Turnpike Right-of-Way Act”)…
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Several news sources are reporting that EmberClear has committed to fund and build a new $900 million, 1,000-megawatt electric generating plant in Harrison County, OH. The new plant will be fed by Utica Shale gas. Officials in the county have been working on a deal to lure the plant to the county since December of last year and stress it is a “long-term project” and “not a slam-dunk” because of extensive regulatory hurdles. If the project happens, it will generate 500 temporary construction jobs and 30 permanent jobs and use a huge amount of natural gas to power it (good for drillers!). MDN did some checking and found one potential cloud over the deal. EmberClear was, until July, a Canadian-based company. But it went bankrupt and after emerging from bankruptcy it changed its name to Ember Partners, now based in Houston, TX. Apparently the bankruptcy hasn’t slowed them down–but it does raise a question about the financial stability of the company and its ability to fund a big-money project like the Harrison Power Project. However, these projects are typically funded by one or several investors and not by the company that builds and operates the facility…
We’ve written plenty about President Obama’s so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP), introduced last summer, a plan to force electric generators to convert to using more “renewable” sources of energy–and less fossil fuels (see 
Yet another desperate attempt by radical environmentalists to stop the much-needed PennEast Pipeline from getting built. Yesterday the New Jersey Conservation Foundation (NJCF) and Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association (SBMWA) asked (more liked begged) the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to withdraw the PennEast application, something called a “no alternative” action, and just let it die a stillborn death. Their argument to FERC seems to rely on the old tactic of “if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull$#@!.” Because a few sympathetic rads exist within government agencies like the EPA and Fish & Wildlife Service, and because those agencies were co-opted into sending negative comments about the project to FERC, the radicals at NJ Conservation and Stony Brook Watershed tell FERC it’s best just to scrap the whole thing. No sense in continuing. Move along–nothing else to see here. A nice try at bamboozling FERC, but it’s an agency wise to such deceptions…
Williams continues to face challenges with its board of directors–the people hired to oversee the company and the path it will chart into the future. 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 
In August, Williams announced a deal to sell its Canadian businesses and assets to Inter Pipeline for $1 billion (see 
Last Friday MDN ran a guest post from an executive who works for a Pennsylvania exploration and production company (E&P, what we call a “driller” here on MDN). In the post, titled 
Contrary to irrational fossil fuel haters and the lies they spread about pipeline companies, those companies do listen and work with local communities and individual landowners to tweak the route of a proposed pipeline in an effort to minimize impacts. Case in point: PennEast Pipeline is a $1 billion, 118-mile, primarily 36-inch pipeline that will get built from Dallas (Luzerne County), PA to Transco’s pipeline interconnection near Pennington (Mercer County), NJ. It’s being vigorously opposed by anti-drillers including THE Delaware Riverkeeper, the Sierra Clubbers and others. Last Friday PennEast filed 33 changes to the proposed route with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), to accommodate landowners and communities. This is how adults behave, unlike the childish, petulant, spoiled children who run organizations like Riverkeeper and the Sierra Club. PennEast listened, reflected, and changed. The response from the antis? “You can’t build it. CAN’T CAN’T CAN’T CAN’T CAN’T.” There is no reasoning with people who are un-reasonable. Here’s a description of the changes PennEast made to the route through PA and NJ…
When Aubrey McClendon first trumpeted his find in the Ohio Utica Shale, he famously said the Utica Shale could be worth $500 billion, and the “biggest thing economically to hit Ohio, since maybe the plow.” Not quite as famous, but on the same day at the same event, McClendon also said the Utica “is likely most analogous, but economically superior to, the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas.” That one turned heads and got tongues flapping. McClendon made those remarks five years ago this month at the Ohio Governor’s 21st Century Energy & Economic Summit in Columbus, OH. The reason Aubrey was so excited was because of the oil potential in the Utica. But fate is a funny thing. As it turns out, it is natural gas that’s turned out to be the big story in the Utica. Last Friday the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) published an article that chronicles the development of the Utica and illustrates, with charts and graphs, how the Utica has turned out to be a gas rather than an oil play–at least so far…
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is about to claim another high-level scalp in corruption that seems to pervade New York State. Bharara has already brought cases that convicted both the Speaker of the Assembly Sheldon Silver (a Democrat) and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (a Republican) for corruption and bribes. With each case Bharara gets closer to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Last week he got REALLY close. A former close Cuomo aide was indicted on bribery charges. The unfortunate aspect of this story is that he was bribed in connection with a project MDN has lent moral support to–a $900 million natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Orange County, NY (see 
Natural gas-fired electric plants are a really big deal throughout the Marcellus/Utica region. Each time one of these plants gets built, it injects upward of $1 billion (or more) into the local and regional economy, creates 500 or more temporary jobs and 25-30 permanent jobs. And the gas it uses…oy vey! They are an important new customer for the abundant supplies of natural gas we have. So it’s a big deal when a new plant gets announced, and then, when that plant gets officially approved. Last October (nearly a year ago now) Advanced Power Services announced they want to build a second mega-electric generating plant that taps into and uses Ohio’s Utica Shale. The new plant will generate a whopping 1,100 megawatts of electricity and be located in Columbiana County, OH (see 
Ohio’s Ninth District Court of Appeals has upheld the right of NEXUS Gas Transmission to enter onto private land in order to conduct surveys for a potential pipeline route. Ohio’s Sixth District Court previously made a similar ruing in favor of NEXUS. Top energy law firm Bricker & Eckler argued for NEXUS in both cases and turns in the following report:
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Utica Shale decline curves 2014 to 2016; Permian gas output remains high; Trump promises $50 trillion energy economic stimulus; Kinder Mogan’s biggest failure; trends in midstream M&A; why Japan’s LNG demand will increase; and more!
With apologies to Meghan Trainor, the second and final day at Shale Insight was “All about that Trump, bout that Trump–no Hillary.” However, as exciting as it was to hear The Donald (we’ll share the notes we took during his speech below), we heard an even better speaker yesterday: A young man (kid, really) by the name of Alex Epstein, author of the book “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” and founder of the Center for Industrial Progress. As we did yesterday, we will give you our highlights and impressions of sitting in on several of the days main sessions, followed by a plethora of links to stories from reporters who were there covering the event–mostly those there to cover the Trump speech. We also link to the full text of The Donald’s speech below. Buckle up! Here we go…