PA House Bill 170 Kills New Marcellus Drilling Using Setbacks
Danielle Friel Otten, a radical Democrat representing part of Chester County in the Pennsylvania House (since 2019), is a committed anti-fracker. She ran her campaign on a pledge to ban all fracking in the state (see 15 Candidates Running for PA House/Senate Want to Ban Fracking). Otten recently introduced House Bill (HB) 170 to “expand safety zones around oil and gas wells and related natural gas infrastructure.” What a joke! In plain language, the bill increases setback distances from 500 feet of a shale well to 2,500 feet–effectively killing any new shale well drilling anywhere in the state.
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As we reported back in February, the Biden EPA plans to allow private citizens to police oil wells and pipelines for methane leaks–meaning Big Green groups actually do the “policing” (see 
It’s not often we’re rendered speechless, but this is one of those times. To say we are incensed, that we are deeply concerned, outraged, etc. doesn’t begin to cover it. Last Friday, the film “How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” a screen adaption of Eco-Marxist Andreas Malm’s book of the same title, was released. The film, which is a fictional story, justifies eco-terrorism. It encourages people to become terrorists and blow up fossil fuel pipelines.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Tellurian in $1 bln deal for Driftwood LNG project land, shares surge; NATIONAL: USA pipelines get $196 million in repair grants; INTERNATIONAL: Saudi motives for 2020 shakedown revealed; Putin pushes Russian oil exports to record high.
As we have in previous years, MDN will not publish today (Friday) in observance of Good Friday and the Easter holiday. We hope you enjoy this blessed time of year!
An issue that’s been festering for more than two years appears to be coming to a head in western Potter County, PA. In early 2021, Roulette Oil and Gas applied for a Class II Injection Well Permit to drill an injection well in Clara Township. The leftists from Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) immediately began to whisper the siren song of “home rule” into the ears of Clara’s residents (see 
During a routine inspection conducted earlier this week by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), an inspector discovered two of 12 Repsol wells on a pad in Susquehanna County were (gasp!) venting methane into the atmosphere. Call the methane police! There’s fugitive methane escaping! The wells were drilled in 2016. Apparently, there has been an ongoing issue with these two wells since 2017, when the DEP determined the wells have defective casing and/or cementing.
In 2022, the first full year after emerging from the worldwide COVID pandemic, the U.S. and world economies rocketed. Inflation rocketed too, but that’s a different story. Because of the high price for natural gas and oil last year (in response to Russia illegally invading Ukraine), U.S. shale drillers increased capital expenditure spending by a whopping 54% over what they spent in 2021. What about this year? The analysts at RBN Energy have analyzed the announced spending by 42 shale oil and gas producers (with a market cap of at least $500 million) and find this year, shale drillers will only expand spending by a “modest” 17%. What about spending in the Marcellus/Utica?
In his first two days in office, Joe Biden declared war on the oil and gas industry. One of the first things he did was to revive an interagency working group on the “social cost” of greenhouse gas emissions and directed the issuance of an “interim” cost (see 
We don’t write much about RNG because, quite frankly, it doesn’t interest us. We’d rather punch holes in the ground to get natural gas than cap a manure pile to collect it. There’s a lot of hullabaloo about RNG these days, some of it coming from shale circles (which we find odd). Here’s the thing: If you believe producing and using RNG is going to address the concerns of anti-fossil fuel nutters, you are deeply mistaken. The wacko left that hates fossil fuels, including natural gas, hates RNG too.
New shale permits issued for Mar. 27-Apr. 2 in the Marcellus/Utica dropped quite a bit from the prior week. There were 21 new permits issued in total last week, down from 32 in the prior week. Last week’s tally included 15 new permits for Pennsylvania, 6 new permits for Ohio, and no new permits in West Virginia. Last week the top receiver of new permits was Ascent Resources with 6 new permits, 5 in Jefferson County, OH, and 1 in Harrison County, OH. Chesapeake Energy took the #2 slot with 5 new permits in Bradford County, PA.