PA DEP Plans to Air Conventional Drilling’s Dirty Laundry
Pennsylvania’s conventional (non-shale) oil and gas drillers have long argued they should be exempt from new rules and regulations that apply to shale drillers. The wells they drill are much shallower, use less water (and less of everything, including truck trips), and in general conventional drillers say shale regulations will drive mom and pop drillers out of business entirely. The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection, however, doesn’t quite see it that way. The DEP has made certain allowances for the difference between shale and non-shale, but the DEP has drawn a line in the frac sand on other matters and plans to press it case that conventional drillers need to step up their game…
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Where’s HG Wells when you need him? We’ve had another Martian sighting! At yesterday’s PA Dept. of Environmental Protection Oil & Gas Technical Advisory Board (TAB) meeting, Amy Nassif, representing some of the parents from the Mars School district in Butler County, PA, addressed TAB members imploring them to “keep oil and gas well pads away from schools.” Aaah, Ms. Nassif–what about well pads that already exist ON SCHOOL PROPERTY? Like the well pad at the Elk Lake School in Susquehanna County (see 
As we told you Tuesday, Ohio is now squarely in the ethane cracker race (see 
Earth Day was celebrated in 192 countries around the world yesterday, including the U.S. We celebrate old Mother Earth here at MDN HQ each and every day. We love this dirt ball on which we live. An MDN reader and friend sent us a link to a Youtube video that properly celebrates and provides context for Earth Day (watch it below). To properly celebrate Earth Day, you need to include a celebration of fossil fuels–which have done more to clean up the earth than any other factor. Yes, you read that right. Fossil fuels are the reason we have cleaner air, cleaner water and live longer than ever. So today, one day late, we celebrate “setting fire to corpses of animals and plants unearthed from 400 million-year-old cemeteries”–which is how anti-driller Sandra Steingraber describes fossil fuels…