PA Senate Approves Bill Tweaking DEP Chapter 78a Shale Regs
PA’s very liberal Governor, Tom Wolf, has been obstinate in demanding onerous new drilling rules for the conventional, as well as unconventional (shale) drilling industry since he took office. Reworked drilling rules were done and ready to go under previous Governor, Tom Corbett. Then Corbett lost to Wolf, and Wolf demanded to change common sense rules everyone had already agreed to (see New Draft Drilling Regulations in PA: Wastewater Impoundments Out). It became obvious that Democrats were trying to run PA’s traditional, small conventional drillers out of business by applying the same regulations to them that will apply to shale drillers. The Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA) represents many of those small conventional drillers and vigorously fought back (see PIOGA Turns Up the Heat on Wolf/Quigley Over TAB/Chapter 78 and PA Board Adopts New Drilling Regs, PIOGA Blasts DEP “Deceptive”). In the end, Wolf’s own Democrat Party legislators in the House and Senate abandoned him and the writing was on the wall: The entire package of drilling rules, for both conventional (Chapter 78) and shale (Chapter 78a) was headed for defeat. The legislature was about to repeal both sets of newly-minted DEP rules–so Wolf pivoted and decided to accept half a loaf–passage of the shale rules, Chapter 78a (see Wolf Really Didn’t Wise Up, He Just Took Half a Loaf re Drilling Regs). However, shale drillers still wanted some changes to Chapter 78a regulations, and yesterday the PA Senate voted to approve a bill that would tweak Chapter 78a rules, setting up another confrontation with Wolf and a threatened veto…
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MDN has previously told you about the temper tantrum by radical environmentalists and the idiot kids they foment to try and get universities to divest from owning stock in fossil fuel companies. The very liberal Cornell University didn’t fall for it (see 
What happens to the regulatory environment for the energy industry, in particular oil and gas, should Donald Trump win the presidency? What if (perish the thought) Hillary Clinton wins? What can we expect under each administration? That was the theme for comments by Tom Sansonetti, partner with the Holland and Hart law firm, at the recent Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) 86th Midyear Meeting, held in Colorado Springs two weeks ago. The IPAA knows a number of people could not make the meeting and wants to disseminate Sansonetti’s comments, so they sent along a copy of his “what if?” analysis. We found it interesting and think you will too…
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The electric power and natural gas sectors are increasingly joined at the hip, as we observed in January (see 
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: How long will Marcellus/Utica well backlog last?; MLPs started announcing projects again in June; how the Marcellus changed life in PA; $195M shortfall in WV severance tax for FY 2016; shale rigs hit bottom in 1H16; oilfield tech to keep an eye on; natgas prices had a tough week; Williams phase-out of MLP won’t be cheap; and more!
This pipeline project has been, until now, completely off our radar screen. As pipeline projects go, it’s pretty small. But building even a single square inch of new pipeline, or expanding a compressor station, is anathema to anti-fossil fuel nutters. So we expect this project will be in the headlines starting this week, with a pair open house meetings in the Philadelphia area (and one in Delaware) where the project will get built. The project is being built by Eastern Shore Natural Gas and is called the 2017 System Expansion project. In March 2015, Eastern Shore ran a non-binding open season to see if customers want more natural gas in the Delmarva Peninsula area (includes most of Delaware and portions of Maryland and Virginia). It looks like Eastern Shore’s customers expressed enough interest that they plan to move forward with an expansion project that will bring new sources of natgas from an interconnection Eastern Shore has with the mighty TETCo (Texas Eastern Company) pipeline near Philadelphia. Below we have details on the expansion project, and details for the open house meetings scheduled for this week in PA and DE…
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We’re starting to crack a smile of hope that drilling has once again picked up. Our first bit of evidence that the tide is turning came last week when we reported that Patterson-UTI Energy’s rig count had gone up by two in June (see 
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Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas is out with their Mid-Year Job Cut Report (full copy below). Overall, across all sectors, it seems that job cuts are slowing down–a good sign to be sure. But what about job cuts in the energy industry? The news there is mixed. While the pace of job cuts in the energy industry is slowing as the year progresses (a good sign), if you look at the raw numbers for the first six months of 2016 versus 2015, the news is not so good. For the first six months of 2015 the energy industry cut 60,500 jobs. For the same period in 2016, the number of jobs cut was 77,211, a 28% increase this year over last. Oy vey! Will the cuts never stop?…
Sunoco Logistics Partners, builder of the Mariner East pipeline projects and operator of the Marcus Hook refinery near Philadelphia (among many other projects) is floating more debt in order to pay off older debt. Last week Sunoco LP announced a new round of debt, or what we call IOUs, to the tune of $550 million. The sale will conclude tomorrow…