Pennsylvania is Drilling Fewer Shale Wells Each Year – Why?
The Acting Deputy Secretary for Oil and Gas Management at the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), Kurt Klapkowski, spoke to the DEP’s Oil and Gas Technical Advisory Board (TAB) yesterday, updating the board on his program’s finances (lack thereof). As part of his comments, Klapkowski observed that each year the number of new shale wells drilled in PA decreases. He offered some reasons why that may be happening. We have a few reasons to add that Klapkowski overlooked.
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Pennsylvania has already received the first $25 million payment from the so-called infrastructure bill, a down payment on what will eventually be ~$400 million over the next 15 years to plug abandoned and orphaned oil and gas wells across the state (see 
JobsOhio, a private nonprofit largely funded by liquor sales that the state allows the nonprofit to collect (in essence it collects sales tax on liquor sales), has funded a study from Cleveland State University that promotes the Buckeye State as THE place to locate a $2 billion hydrogen hub. However, the study says such a hub should NOT use Ohio’s abundant, clean, Utica Shale gas as a source to create the hydrogen that would be used by such a hub.
National Grid is desperately trying not to run out of natural gas for its customers in Brooklyn and Queens (on Long Island). For several years the company has fought a battle to run a tiny pipeline to its Greenpoint, Brooklyn facility, to provide extra natural gas. That project is being investigated by the Biden administration on charges of racism (see 
You know how Big Banks have gone woke left, threatening to defund, divest, and refuse to loan money to oil and natural gas companies due to pressure from a small, vocal minority on the environmental left? Big Banks are now facing their worst nightmare: The oil and gas industry is making enough money, generating enough free cash flow, that it can walk away from loans from Big Banks. Goodbye and good riddance.
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Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s (TGP) plan to flow more Marcellus gas to Westchester County, NY and New York City for Consolidated Edison customers, called the East 300 Upgrade Project, took a giant leap forward last Thursday when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued permits that allow TGP to upgrade two existing compressor stations (in PA), and build a brand new compressor station in West Milford (Passaic County, NJ), just across the border and not far from Westchester County. This is a major victory and a sign this project will now get completed.
Pennsylvania State Rep. Marina White (Republican from Philadelphia, a true rarity) sponsored a bill that’s getting traction in Harrisburg. House Bill (HB) 2458, which passed with a vote by the full House on April 13, creates a task force to study how to establish Philadelphia LNG exports to international markets, particularly those in Europe. The bill creates a task force to study the economic feasibility, financial impact, and the security needed to turn the Port of Philly into an LNG export terminal, exporting PA’s abundant and clean Marcellus Shale gas.
Not content to prosecute years-old accidents as “crimes” for the shale industry in his zeal to attack fossil energy, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a vicious radical running for governor this November, is now targeting mom and pop conventional drillers too. Specifically, he is investigating conventional drillers for spreading non-toxic brine on PA’s dirt roads in the summertime, a legal practice in the Keystone State (at least it was legal until last December), looking to prosecute someone, anyone, to grab another headline and stoke his radicalized base of supporters.
The sham “environmental” group Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a litigation factory for Big Green leftist radicals, published (bought) themselves a “study” in the journal Nature Communications attacking conventional oil and gas wells. The so-called study says older conventional oil and gas wells that produce small amounts (less than 15 barrels of oil or the equivalent amount of gas a day), which represent only 6% of America’s total oil and gas production, contribute 50% of the country’s fugitive methane emissions.
Last week the U.S. Energy Information Administration published data from U.S. wells completed from 2010-2021. The data shows that in 2021, 81% of U.S. well completions were horizontal or directional (i.e. shale wells), as opposed to 19% drilled vertical-only (conventional). The data also shows the length of wells has doubled from 2010 to 2021–going from an average of 7,300 feet in 2010 to 15,200 feet in 2021.
It’s a sad day in Pennsylvania. Gov. Tom Wolf and his patsy at the Dept. of Environmental Protection, Sec. Pat McDonnell, have finally prevailed and will publish a final version of new regulations forcing the state to join the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)–a carbon tax that is about to unleash economic hell on PA. The final step before RGGI, a $2.6 billion tax on PA’s electric ratepayers over the next ten years, becomes a defacto new law is for the final version of the regulation to be published in the Pennsylvania Register. Tomorrow’s edition will carry the RGGI regulation (full preview copy below).
Has there been a more dysfunctional White House than the Biden White House…ever? No, there hasn’t. While Joe Biden mouths words (that someone has written for him, appearing on a teleprompter) supporting natural gas and encouraging more natgas exports to help Europe, the Biden EPA and others in the administration (see today’s story about the haughty John Kerry) attack natural gas, calling for programs to phase out its use here in the United States. We’ve given up trying to understand psychotic leftists. There is no understanding and reconciling “drill more to help our allies” with “but we’re going to ban its use here at home.”