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What Happened to $42 Million in Fines Paid by Mariner East Pipe?
In July, MDN compared the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection to an organized crime mob with its ongoing shakedowns in assessing “fines” on the Mariner East pipeline project (see PA DEP Squeezes Another $660,000 from ME2 Pipe for “Violations”). At that time, we were aware that over $30 million had been extorted (er, a, extracted) from Mariner East in so-called fines. We were grossly wrong. The actual number is over $42 million! The enviro-left was giddy with the fines but is now asking the question, where did all that money go? Because it sure didn’t go into their pockets (as promised)…
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Yesterday, the Intermediate Court of Appeals for West Virginia issued an opinion in a case that had (until now) escaped our radar. Equinor, Norway’s state-owned oil and gas company (previously known as Statoil), said it had overpaid its severance tax bill in West Virginia for the years 2014 and 2016. Equinor said WV miscalculated the value of propane, butane, ethane, and methane produced by the company. A WV judge agreed, also granting Equinor a further 15% safe harbor deduction for transportation and transmission costs.
Ever ridden on an Amtrak train? We have, a number of times. Including the route from New York to Philadelphia, pulling into the 30th Street Station in downtown Philly. Amtrak, the national passenger railroad company of the United States operating in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. states and three Canadian provinces, is openly admitting that a few anti-fossil fuel zealots cowed it into dropping plans to use natural gas boilers in much-needed upgrades at Philly’s 30th Street Station. A few loudmouths convinced the mighty Amtrak to change course.
New shale permits issued for Nov 6 – 12 in the Marcellus/Utica slipped but still turned in a respectable number. There were 22 new permits issued last week, versus 37 issued the week before. Last week’s permit tally included 6 new permits in Pennsylvania, 16 new permits in Ohio, and no new permits in West Virginia. Hilcorp Energy was the winner of most permits issued, with 12 new permits issued for a single well pad in Columbiana County, OH.
NATIONAL: DOE grants $444 million for carbon dioxide storage projects; Energy realities at the nexus of techno-optimism; Oil industry losing talent to big tech, bad reputation; Dark money group wired millions to law firm suing Big Oil; INTERNATIONAL: This winter could usher in a storm for LNG markets; European underground storage starts to see net withdrawal; Sask. introduces law to stop collecting carbon tax on natgas.
Yesterday, the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) met in a public forum and voted to allow shale drilling under (not on top of) three different state-owned tracts of land: all 20,000 acres of Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County, more than 300 acres of Valley Run Wildlife Area in Carroll County, and 66 acres of the Zepernick Wildlife Area in Columbiana County. In addition, commissioners voted against shale drilling under Wolf Run State Park. Approximately 100 anti-fossil fuel zealots were on hand at the meeting and nearly made the votes impossible with their prancing, chanting, and singing. They made horses rear ends of themselves by making the meeting miserable for everyone else.
WhiteHawk Energy, headquartered in Philadelphia with ownership of mineral and royalty interests for 850,000 gross unit acres and over 2,500 producing horizontal shale wells between the Marcellus and the Haynesville, announced yesterday the acquisition of additional Marcellus Shale natural gas mineral and royalty assets for a total purchase price of $54 million. WhiteHawk owns mineral and royalty rights across nearly half a million M-U acres. The deal does not increase WhiteHawk’s total acreage but does increase the company’s percentage of ownership across that acreage.
It’s sad to see a major university like the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) publish fake research to fit a political narrative that fracking can be tied to cancer in kids (see 
In 2019, when then-Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced he would unilaterally force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon tax scheme aimed at forcing coal- and gas-fired plants out of business, he claimed the tax would only amount to a few dollars per short ton of CO2 (see 
Last December, Rice Acquisition Corp II, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) started by the Rice brothers (Danny, Toby, and Derek), announced a deal to acquire NET Power — an electric power developer with revolutionary new technology to capture every last molecule of carbon dioxide from natural gas-fired power plants (see 
In August, MDN brought you the good news that the S&P (Standard & Poor’s) credit rating agency, called S&P Global Rating (the largest of the Big Three credit-rating agencies), had dumped its system of numerically ranking corporate borrowers on their ESG risk on a scale of 1 to 5 — just two years after implementing it (see 
Two weeks ago, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (liberal Democrat) launched, with much fanfare, 
For more than a decade, MDN has brought you stories about shale development on and under land controlled by the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD), an agency formed in 1933 to help control flooding and promote water conservation in the Muskingum River watershed area of Ohio, an area that covers 8,000 square miles (