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PA AG Josh Shapiro Bashes Marcellus with Anti-Pipe Lawsuit Support
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is no friend of the Marcellus industry, and frankly, he’s no friend to PA landowners either. At every turn, Shapiro investigates and attempts to block the Marcellus industry in the state. The latest evidence: Shapiro has used the full weight of the entire state in signing on to an amicus (friend of the court) brief in a federal court case that challenges the approval of Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline–a Williams PA pipeline that’s been in the ground and operating since 2018.
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We are sad to report that over 1,000 dedicated workers who used to work at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) oil refinery in Philly will permanently remain out of the jobs they once held at the facility. The owner of PES has decided to sell the now-closed refinery to a real estate developer from Chicago who intends to convert the property from a refinery (the nation’s oldest and largest refinery along the East Coast) into…warehouses. Yeah, warehouses. Complete with an increase in truck traffic, diesel fumes, and all sorts of headaches that come from a massive warehouse complex located in an urban area. It’s sad.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Restricting natural gas access in Westchester is a bad play; EQT wants out of stock-drop suit over Rice Energy merger; NATIONAL: McDermott expects natural gas, oil projects to ‘seamlessly’ continue through Chapter 11 process; Kinder Morgan and Baker Hughes find profits amid shale slump; U.S. shale has already peaked for major service companies; Democrats’ war on fracking will cost them in battleground states; Industrials call for extra US FERC oversight of gas pipe capacity reliability.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and their monthly Drilling Productivity Report (DPR), the Marcellus/Utica region will produce 56 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) less of natural gas in the coming month of February than it will have produced in this month of January. That’s the second month in a row M-U gas production has dropped in the modern shale era. Last month’s DPR forecast a 74 MMcf/d drop for this month (see 
In a coordinated attack on Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 1100, aimed at attracting NEW petrochemical investment to the state, Big Green has launched a letter-writing campaign to newspapers to try and shame PA Senate Republicans into voting against the state’s future economic and jobs bonanza. Fat chance Big Green!
The ticket to getting elected in uber-liberal southeastern Pennsylvania (in the Philadelphia suburbs) is to track left with your politics. Even the few elected Republicans in SEPA are nothing more than Democrat-lite in their philosophy and voting. Two Democrats who unseated PA House Republicans in Chester County in 2018 by running against the Mariner East pipeline project, are now being challenged because of their pipeline positions.
The sleaziest of Pennsylvania’s Big Green groups–THE Delaware Riverkeeper and PennFuture–have filed a “friend of the court” (amicus) brief in a federal lawsuit hoping they can help gut the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by denying FERC the only way the agency has of combating these sleazy groups–something called a tolling order.
Andrew Cuomo makes us puke. Literally. Cuomo, Governor of New York, became a dictator and stripped away the property rights of citizens living in NY in 2015 when he autocratically decided to prohibit shale fracking throughout the state (see 
It’s full speed ahead for the Adelphia Gateway Pipeline project in southeastern Pennsylvania. In December the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a final approval for the project (see 
Seneca Resources, the drilling arm of National Fuel Gas Company, does most of its exploration and production in central and western Pennsylvania (although it also does some drilling in California). A spokesman for Seneca recently went on the record to talk about the company’s prolific 2019 production, with a forecast for 2020 (production is going UP). However, the company plans to ax one of its three rigs in 2020.
Electric fracking (or e-fracking) continues to displace traditional fracking in the Marcellus/Utica. What’s the difference between the two? Traditional fracking uses diesel-fueled engines to produce electricity to power pressure pumps for hydraulic fracturing operations. Electric fracking uses natural gas from the well pad to power turbines to create electricity. Electric fracking fleets are roughly half the size of traditional diesel fleets–and a whole lot quieter.