Does PA Royalty Bill 1684 Still Have a Chance This Year?
As MDN wrote back in June, Pennsylvania lawmakers punted on doing anything about House Bill (HB) 1684, what MDN calls the “stop Chesapeake Energy from screwing landowners out of their royalties” bill. We also pointed out, at the time, that it seems pretty likely nothing would get done on that bill for the balance of this year (see PA Royalty Bill 1684 Off the Agenda, Likely for Rest of 2014). We’re sorry to say (so far) we were right. However, MDN received a call from an MDN subscriber (and member of the PA National Association of Royalty Owners, or NARO) to say there’s still a chance–albeit a long shot–that if PA landowners and residents flood their representatives with calls and emails over the next few days before the end of this year’s session, HB 1684 may yet get a vote and go to the governor for a signature…
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“This is Dr. Frasier Crane. I’m listening.” Oops. Wrong channel. Click. The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection will conduct a “listening session” to hear people address the mythical topic of climate change and the federal EPA’s draconian efforts to restrict things like carbon–the stuff you breathe out with every breath. The feds are forcing states to clamp down on so-called greenhouse gas emissions and have proposed a “Clean Power Greenhouse Gas Reduction Rule” to do just that. The PA DEP wants to hear from PA residents what they think about all of this nonsense so they can check off the appropriate boxes on their checklist. The “listening session” will be held on September 25 in Harrisburg…
The next round in so-called anti-drilling research into the “health impacts” from fracking have arrived in the form of a study about to be published in the National Institutes of Health journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Titled “Proximity to Natural Gas Wells and Reported Health Status: Results of a Household Survey in Washington County, Pennsylvania” (full copy embedded below), this latest salvo in the fracking wars is DOA. Why? The anti-drilling Heinz Endowments, led by Mamma Teresa Heinz-Kerry, the Schmidt Family Foundation, founded by former Google CEO (and big-time anti-driller) Eric Schmidt, and the Philadelphia-area Claneil Foundation, funder of many anti-drilling “studies” are the main sponsors of this latest “study” that tabulates self-reported ailments of skin rashes and coughing from 492 people (in 180 families) living in Washington County, PA. Guess what they found? If you read the USA Today headline, they found “People near ‘fracking’ wells report health woes,” to which we say, those who don’t live near fracking wells report health woes too! The study itself says this: “…these results should be viewed as hypothesis generating…proximity of natural gas wells may be (emphasis added) associated with the prevalence of health symptoms including dermal and respiratory 3 conditions in residents living near natural gas extraction activities. Further study of these associations, including the role of specific air and water exposures, is warranted.” That is, nothing conclusive was found from this small sample of 180 households in a single county. But let’s not let “nothing conclusive” get in the way of spinning yet another tall tale that fracking causes health problems. Crank up the media lie machine…
Hilcorp is having some bad luck in Mercer County, PA. Three weeks ago two storage tanks at a Hilcorp well pad caught fire and exploded–no one injured. Then, this past Saturday (three weeks later), a separator caught fire at a well pad. No big explosions this time–at least none that were heard. However, up to 20 homes had to be evacuated while the fire was extinguished. Once again, no injuries…
Once again the Marcellus is in the middle of what appears to be a Democrat vs. Republican fight–this time over who will control prime riverfront port facility property in the Delaware River in Philadelphia. Here is our understanding of the situation: the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority (PRPA) is in talks to lease 200 acres at the Southport facility to Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES)–operator of the former Sunoco Inc. refinery in South Philadelphia–who would then turn around and find an operator for the terminal itself. PES wants to ship Marcellus Shale gas from the port facility location after piping it there from other parts of PA. But a bigtime Philly Democrat, John Brown Jr., president of Penn Warehousing and Distribution Inc. (a paper-import company) wants to lease the port facility for himself and the operations of his company. So Brown hired former State Senator Vincent J. Fumo (Democrat with a lot of influence) to pull strings and hose the deal developing between PRPA and PES…