Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Research | Statewide PA
So-Called “Study” Links PA Fracking to Birth Defect in Horses
A new so-called “study” published in the journal Science of The Total Environment claims it has uncovered a link between fracking chemicals in farm water and a rare birth defect in horses. The researchers say this study “could” serve as a warning about fracking and human infant health. Is this it? Were we wrong for the past 11 years about the safety of fracking? Is this THE END?
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Summit Midstream Partners, formed in 2009 and headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas, operates natural gas, crude oil and produced water gathering (pipeline) systems in six unconventional resource basins, including the Marcellus and Utica. The company concentrates its time and money on four “core focus areas” including the Utica, the Williston (i.e. Bakken), the DJ Basin, and the Permian. The company announced yesterday it has completed the buyout of a subsidiary and merged it in. Hidden in the bowels of the press release we discovered Bob McNally, former (ousted) CEO of EQT Corporation, has joined the board of directors at Summit.
Two weeks ago MDN brought you the news that consulting powerhouse PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), which had been hired to liquidate the assets of Australian company LNG Limited (LNGL), had found a buyer for the Magnolia LNG export project for $2.25 million (see 
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Gas, oil industry working way through pandemic; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Don’t knock natural gas in Massachusetts; NATIONAL: Chevron to cut up to 15% of staff amid restructuring; David C. Lawler named next chief of bp America; Reservoir commentary: potential implications of long-term shut-ins on reservoir; Natural gas powerburn: fuel switching, summer outlook & what it means for gas prices, energy stocks; Natural gas – weather returns as the dominant driving force for prices; INTERNATIONAL: Turkey replacing natural gas imports from Iran, Russia with LNG from the US.
No sooner had we started producing weekly new shale permits issued reports than the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) website experienced some sort of catastrophic failure. While portions of the site have now returned, they still do not have the database reconnected that delivers weekly updates for new permits. We decided we could not wait any longer on ODNR to get their act together. Below are weekly reports detailing the names and locations for each new permit issued in both PA and WV for the weeks of May 11-15, and May 18-22.
Yesterday the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 790, a bill that restores sanity to regulations for conventional oil and gas drillers in the Keystone State. For years PA’s small, independent conventional oil and gas drillers have objected to the one-size-fits-all regulations concocted by the Gov. Tom Wolf Administration that applies the same regulations to them as to big shale drillers. The two types of drilling are apples and oranges. To make small conventional drillers jump through the same hoops as big shale drillers will bankrupt many of the smaller companies. SB 790 helps correct the situation.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the “lifeblood” of the global energy system is…investment. That is, money. Without investment, new sources of energy don’t appear. In 2016 IEA began to publish an annual report called World Energy Investment, in order to track spending on all forms of energy worldwide. Earlier this week IEA published its fifth annual version of the report. In the report, IEA says 2020, because of the coronavirus pandemic, will mark the largest-ever collapse in global energy investment in history. IEA says the coming investment decline will impact oil the most.
David Blackmon, a senior contributor to the Forbes magazine website and 39-year veteran working for various oil companies including Burlington Resources, Shell, and El Paso Corporation, is one of our favorite experts to read on matters relating to the oil patch. He is a strong O&G supporter. So when we spotted a recent Forbes article Blackmon wrote titled, “Why The Brief Era Of American Energy Dominance Is Over,” that sure got our attention.
Last week MDN editor Jim Willis had the pleasure and honor of being the 
EQT announced yesterday it has closed on a deal to sell “certain non-strategic assets” to Diversified Gas & Oil (DGO) for $125 million, plus another potential $20 million later on. MDN first told you about this deal on May 13 (see 
In late April PTT Global Chemical, the huge Thailand-based petrochemical company looking to build a world-class ethane cracker plant in Belmont County, OH, announced it would not make a final investment decision (FID) about whether to build the Ohio cracker by mid-2020 (see 
The last nine months haven’t been the best for Enbridge’s Texas Eastern Pipeline Company (TETCO) pipeline in Kentucky. Last August one of the TETCO lines exploded in Lincoln County, Kentucky, killing one and sending six to the hospital (see 
MDN previously told you that Pennsylvania would finally adopt insanely new high permit fees for Marcellus Shale drilling when the state Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC) meets on June 3 (see