Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA
PA AG Colludes with Big Green to Double Down re Anti-Fracking
Pennsylvania’s hard-left Attorney General, Josh Shapiro, is doubling down on the fraudulent so-called grand jury report that bashes the state’s Marcellus Shale industry. Yesterday afternoon Shapiro spoke on a webinar sponsored by leftist fringe group PennEnvironment. Shapiro once again lied about fracking chemical transparency and threatened he will indict more shale companies. Shapiro is off the reservation and out of control.
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A number of far-left anti-fossil fuel (nutty) organizations aren’t getting any traction. Nobody listens to them. So they’ve banded together to form a new umbrella organization called ReImagine Appalachia. In other words, they’ve put lipstick on an anti-fossil fuel pig, hoping they can now, finally, get someone to pay attention to them. Ain’t gonna happen.
There were 27 (!) new permits issued in Pennsylvania for shale drilling July 13-17. There were, once again, no new permits issued in Ohio. What’s up in Ohio? Is nobody filing new permit requests? Or does the ODNR have a backlog of unprocessed requests? There were 7 new permits issued in West Virginia for shale drilling last week. In PA, new permits were issued in Armstrong, Bradford, Greene, Lycoming, Susquehanna, and Westmoreland Counties. In WV all 7 permits were issued for the same well pad in Wetzel County.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Grand jury report on fracking will not help Pennsylvanians; Toomey and Heidelbaugh sign pro-natural gas group pledge; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: AG rejects Brookline’s ban on oil, gas pipes in new buildings; NATIONAL: Joe Biden’s climate and energy plan is a gift for China; Joe Biden’s carbon tax will cost uou $5.31/Mcf for natural gas; The new oil and gas governance.
TC Energy’s Columbia Gas Transmission subsidiary has not given up on building a 3.37-mile, 8-inch pipeline under the Potomac River. The pipeline, from Maryland on one side of the river to West Virginia on the other side, will be built to feed a larger pipeline project from Mountaineer Gas called the Eastern Panhandle Expansion. The crazy anti-fossil fuel loons who run Maryland are trying to block the project. Columbia is asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for more time to get it built because of Maryland’s interference.
The devious minds at THE Delaware Riverkeeper are working in overdrive. In an apparent concession that their lawsuits to try and stop the New Fortress Energy LNG liquefaction facility from getting built in Wyalusing (in northeastern PA) by stopping the construction of a new dock New Fortress wants to build on the Delaware River, Riverkeeper is changing strategies. If they can’t stop the facility and they can’t stop construction of the loading dock (in Gibbstown, NJ), Riverkeeper hopes to convince towns between Wyalusing and Gibbstown to pass zoning ordinances forbidding the transport, via truck or rail car, of LNG through their communities.
Yesterday Halliburton was the first of the big three oilfield services companies (Baker Hughes and Schlumberger being the other two) to release second-quarter numbers. While on paper the company lost $1.7 billion due to an impairment charge, Halliburton actually made $456 million in free cash flow–after axing workers and cutting dividend payments. But the big news (for us) from yesterday’s 2Q update was a comment by Halliburton CEO Jeff Miller that the company will look to markets outside the U.S. to grow in the future.
Last year Chevron tried to buy Permian driller Anadarko Petroleum for $50 billion. Occidental Petroleum swooped in at the last minute and lured Anadarko away in a $57 billion deal. Chevron left the marriage altar with a cool $1 billion in breakup fees (see 
We’ve read a lot of stories in mainstream media about the cancelation of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) by Dominion Energy announced earlier this month (see 
In December 2018 Williams announced a new project to increase capacity along the Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line (Transco) in PA by an extra 582,400 dekatherms (582 million cubic feet) per day. Williams officially filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build the “Leidy South Project” in August 2019 (see 
Energy Transfer’s subsidiary Sunoco Logistics is trying to finish up final construction of the Mariner East 2X pipeline in southeast Pennsylvania. ME2 and ME2X flow natural gas liquids including ethane and propane from eastern Ohio and western PA all the way to the Marcus Hook refinery near Philadelphia. As the pipe travels through Philly neighborhoods, some of the geography is limestone (porous) and when drilling to install pipes, it has led to sinkholes. Another seven such sinkholes have appeared since June and the state Public Utility Commission (PUC) is investigating.
The Philadelphia Inquirer published a story today that is (surprise!) totally one-sided and biased. The story has the provocative title of, “‘Dark money’ groups spent $517,000 against two Philly-area candidates who oppose the Mariner East pipeline.” Oooohhh. It’s dark money and sinister and it was used against two virtuous, pure-as-the-wind-driven-snow Democrat candidates in primaries. Completely absent from the story is any reference to Big Green dark money that was poured into those same races (see 
Last week we brought you news that Shell had temporarily suspended adding back some 300 workers per week at its ethane cracker construction site in Beaver County, PA following a spike in COVID-19 coronavirus cases (see 
NEXUS Pipeline, a $2.6 billion, 255-mile interstate pipeline that runs from Ohio into Michigan, has been fully online since October 2018 (see