PA Senators Appeal Dismissed DRBC Frack Ban Lawsuit
In a brilliant move aimed at boxing in the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), two northeastern Pennsylvania State Senators–Gene Yaw and Lisa Baker–along with members of the PA Senate Republican Caucus (27 Senators in all), filed a lawsuit in January against the DRBC accusing the quasi-governmental agency of “taking” the property rights of PA residents without just compensation under the law (see PA Senators Sue DRBC for “Taking” Property re Frack Ban). Unfortunately, in June a federal district court judge in Philadelphia appointed by RINO George W. Bush dismissed the case claiming the Senators, who represent people shafted by the DRBC, don’t have “standing” to bring the lawsuit (see Fed Court Dismisses PA Senate Lawsuit Against DRBC Frack Ban). Senators Yaw and Baker have just appealed the dismissal to a higher court.
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MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Ravago Group sets up shop near cracker plant, ready to do business with Shell; NATIONAL: U.S. oil consumption surging with industry firing at full blast; Oil has become the hottest commodity on Wall Street; U.S. natural gas skies to highest in two-and-a-half years; New Enverus M&A report details interesting times for U.S. shale; It’s time to unplug the hype over electric vehicles.
A relatively short jury trial last week in a Belmont County, OH court resulted in a quick, three-and-a-half-hour decision in favor of a landowner against Rice Drilling (now EQT) and Gulfport Energy in a trespass case. The jury awarded the landowner, Tera LLC (owned by Thomas Shaw), a $40 million judgment. It’s believed to be the single largest jury award in Belmont County history.
Some 102,000 jobs in the oil and gas industry disappeared due to the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic (thank you China). Since the recovery began earlier this year, the oil and gas sector has restored roughly 18,600 of those jobs, or 18%, according to the latest monthly employment report issued by the Energy Workforce & Technology Council (EWTC). Here in the Marcellus/Utica region, all three M-U states that drill and produce gas added new jobs in June.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf pulled a fast one. He pressured the PA Environmental Quality Board (EQB), a powerful committee operating under the larger umbrella of the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), to hold a hearing and cast a vote yesterday (in the dead of summer with everyone out of town) on whether or not PA should join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an obscene tax on carbon for power generators including natgas power plants. The EQB, packed with people who depend on Wolf for their jobs (he’s their boss), voted in favor of advancing the $2.6 billion RGGI carbon tax proposal by 15-4. No surprise there. It was an inside job.
This is so tiresome. The Chester County District Attorney’s office continues to persecute two lowly Pennsylvania Constables for doing their job in warning off crazy anti-fossil fuel fanatics who approached a construction site for the Mariner East 2 pipeline project. The DA’s office thought it could fool everyone with a catchy slogan, calling what the constables did a “buy a badge scheme.” What it was, was two guys working for near minimum wage who happen to have a badge, using that badge to keep people from hurting themselves. And for that, they’re being prosecuted by the Chester DA. Shameful. The case is being tried before a jury right now.
Last week not a whole lot of permit action was goin’ on. Pennsylvania scored only a single (1) new permit. We can’t remember the last time that happened! The PA permit was for a well that will be drilled by EQT in Greene County. Ohio’s Utica got skunked with no new permits. West Virginia rode in to save the day, posting 5 new permits–4 of them for Tug Hill and 1 for Antero Resources.
In a letter dated May 27, federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Wetlands Branch Chief Jeffrey Lapp pressured the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to deny Equitrans’ Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) a Section 404 Clean Water Act permit that would allow the 303-mile pipeline project (now 92% complete) to finish crossing some 300+ streams and swamps in West Virginia and Virginia. Gee, the Biden EPA trying to close down an almost completed pipeline project. Why are we not surprised?
Although Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a 303-mile project from West Virginia to southern Virginia to flow Marcellus/Utica molecules south (critically needed) is under withering attacks by America-hating leftists, the project soldiers on and (we hope) will get completed. Part of the charade the project must engage in to get finished is bowing to the global warming gods. The latest attempt to appease the warming gods is an announcement yesterday by MVP that it will purchase “carbon offsets” (the old Catholic equivalent of buying indulgences for sins) to help the builder, Equitrans, reach its goal of mythical net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Antis and leftwing environmentalists in New Jersey continue their mission to block more natural gas from flowing to New York City, threatening the residents of the city, by attacking two compressor stations in the NJ suburbs. The latest conscripts to the holy mission of defeating “fossil fuels” can be found among the weaklings who sit on the Vernon Township (NJ) Council, who voted 4-1 to oppose a proposed expansion of Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company’s compressor station in Wantage (Sussex County).
Seneca Resources Company, the exploration and production subsidiary of National Fuel Gas Company (NFG), is the latest company to jump on the ESG (environmental, social, governance) bandwagon. Seneca is partnering with NexTier Oilfield Solutions, an oilfield services company that fracks and completes wells for companies like Seneca, to study the carbon emissions that come from fracking shale wells.
One year ago, in July 2020, we brought you the bombshell news that Dominion Energy was calling it quits in the pipeline business, abandoning the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project (on which they had already spent billions of dollars) and selling its existing (extensive) pipeline network to Warren Buffett for $9.7 billion (see 
How can anyone say, with a straight face, that Biden has been “better for fossil fuel companies” than Trump? Some very short-sighted individuals say we should look at the price of oil and gas, and the stock price of oil and gas companies, and pronounce that Biden has actually been better for our industry than four years of Donald Trump. Yet Biden’s own Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, is warning Big Banks to quit funding fossil fuel companies…or else. She is threatening them! This isn’t Stalin’s Soviet Union!! It’s the land of the free and the home of the brave. Or at least it used to be.