PA DEP Sec Quigley Pulls a Fast One, Changes Drilling Rules
Perhaps we now know why PA’s Acting Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection, John Quigley, fired the entire DEP Oil & Gas Technical Advisory Board once he took office, something no other incoming governor/administration has done in more than a generation (see Why did PA DEP Acting Sec Quigley Mass Fired Gas Advisory Board?). Why? To pack the board with new members who will agree to onerous changes to the 1984 PA Oil and Gas Act. Changes to the Act were required under the 2012 Act 13 law (see Rewrite of 1984 PA Oil and Gas Act Underway). A very long and detailed process took place over the past three years and that process was very nearly complete–frankly was complete, until Tom Wolf was elected governor. Wolf’s election put the final adoption of new rules on hold. In came the PennFuture administration (Quigley along with Cindy Dunn as head of the Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources and John Hanger as Wolf’s head of policy are all alumni of the anti-drilling PennFuture). The PennFuture brigade has screwed around with the rules, adding their own anti-drilling changes, and they now want the Technical Advisory Board to rubber stamp it. Needless to say, the Marcellus industry isn’t taking it well…
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This is really big news. It’s really important news. But don’t look for it on ABC/NBC/CBS/MSNBC/CNN/New York Times/Washington Post/Los Angeles Times/Etcetera ad naseum. They won’t run it because of media bias. Dr. Patrick Moore, a Canadian and ecologist, has been a leader in international environmentalism for more than 40 years. He co-founded Greenpeace and currently serves as chairman of Allow Golden Rice. Greenpeace is one of the biggest anti-drilling organizations on the planet (full of wackos). Yet, Dr. Patrick Moore is a climate skeptic. You read that right. Moore does not believe in man-made global warming. In fact, he calls the whole notion of catastrophic global warming from human activity “preposterous.” Below is a portion of a column written by Dr. Moore explaining his sound, scientific reasons for refuting the idiotic notion that mankind is causing the earth to toast…
In February, West Virginia passed a new law “fixing” an old law. The old law, which was itself a new law just a few years ago, stipulated if oil and gas leases/operations change hands, the new owner must apply for permits to drill all over again, even if the previous owner had already been awarded those permits. This was a really big problem for Southwestern Energy that had just purchased $5 billion worth of leases and operations from Chesapeake Energy, most of it in WV. So the WV legislature passed, in record time, a law to fix the problem–and Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin signed it (see