PA House Passes Bill Restoring Sanity to Enviro Regulations
Last year the Pennsylvania House of Representatives debated and voted to approve a slate of five bills aimed at fixing not only the slowmo way the DEP approves shale permits, but also roll back some of the egregious regulatory overreach that now exists in PA (see PA House Passes 5 Bills to Fix Broken DEP, Environuts React). That vote alarmed and angered Big Green and its supporters. Ultimately the Senate did not vote on the bills, and they died. This year those same bills in various forms have reappeared. Yesterday the full PA House voted to approve one of those bills–House Bill (HB) 1055.
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Our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), published an article yesterday in which their expert number crunchers predict the world will use 50% more energy than it does today by 2050–in 30 short years. While so-called renewable sources of energy (which include hydro as well as solar and wind) will see a big jump up in supplying that increased need, the very sobering observation is that then, as today, fossil fuels will continue to supply the lion’s share of energy worldwide. How much?
MDN Editor Jim Willis had the pleasure of being interviewed on The Crude Life podcast earlier this week. Jason Spiess, an award-winning multimedia journalist, hosts several radio shows in addition to his podcast. The podcast/radio shows focus mainly on the Bakken Shale (where Jason lives and works), but he also branches out to talk with those in other plays. Jim talked about what he sees as the main stories happening here in the Marcellus/Utica region, as well as waxing philosophical about the role of fossil fuels–and those who (in Jim’s words) irrationally hate them. Give it a listen!
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: UGI officials open CNG fueling station; Amid battles over natural gas pipelines, why not look to propane?; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: No surprise: AOC gets the facts wrong in visit to Colorado; The Caliche NGL storage project in Beaumont, TX; NATIONAL: Feds recommend new requirements after Mass. natural gas disaster; A climate change for lawsuits; INTERNATIONAL: In Scotland, a town evolved with its refinery. Shale gas arrived to help the plant; Natural gas will make Africa greener.
There is no way to track exactly how much royalty revenue is received by Pennsylvania landowners, because royalty income is not reported separately on the Pennsylvania income tax return. Royalty income is combined with rental, patent and copyright income on line 6 of the PA-40 state income tax return. However, the crack researchers at the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office, a state government agency created in 2010, has a way of estimating how much revenue has been generated by oil and gas royalties. The IFO just released a report (full copy below) that shows they estimate royalties in 2018 hit their highest level since they began tracking oil & gas royalty revenue in 2010.
The Sierra Club, along with some lesser-known but equally radical enviro groups, filed a court challenge to an air quality permit granted by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for the PTT Global Chemical ethane cracker plant project in Belmont County, OH back in January (see 
Pennsylvania is the #2 top producing natural gas state in the union, producing 6.2 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 2018. Ohio is the #5 top producing natgas state, producing 2.4 Tcf last year. However, West Virginia is rapidly moving up the ranks. In 2018, WV produced 1.8 Tcf of natural gas, the #7 spot, thanks to the Marcellus and, increasingly, the Utica Shale. It’s time to give WV the respect it’s due.
Although we haven’t (yet) had the pleasure of a tour at the massive Shell ethane cracker plant complex in Beaver County, PA (near Pittsburgh), we’ve spoken to others who have. Universally they say it is a marvel to behold. The world’s second largest crane, dubbed “the Mother of All Cranes” is on site, along with about 100 other cranes (no lie, at least 100 cranes). The site is teeming with thousands (yes thousands) of construction workers–some 5,000 right now, and will reach 6,000 by year’s end. But we’ve turned a corner. According to officials, most of the large structures have now been built and the work is shifting to connect them all. Come along with us for a video tour of the facility.
We recently received a press release from IHS Markit, a major analytics company that tracks data in the oil and gas industry. They have a new report that says (sit down please, we’re talking to you MDN reader)…the average price for natural gas over the course of 2020 at the Henry Hub (the NYMEX traded price) will average less than $2 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf). In other words, get ready, the bottom is about to fall out of the market for the price of gas once again. And it’s going to be far worse than a few years go. The last time the price was lower than $2/Mcf on average was in 1995–nearly 25 years ago!
West Virginia shale producers pay a 5% severance tax on all natural gas produced–you knew that, right? And in 2018 WV’s oil and gas producers (mostly shale) paid $138 million in severance taxes (see 
The town of East Goshen, in Chester County, PA (near Philadelphia) has a noise ordinance in place from 10 pm to 7 am. Sunoco Logisitics, working on installing a section of the Mariner East 2 pipeline through the township, requested an exemption to allow them to work all night long. Their argument is that once you start pulling pipe through the hole you’ve just drilled, you can’t just stop. Last week the town supervisors voted against granting the exception. Shhh, quiet after 10.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) recently pulled together a report (“findings”) that were circulated to Congress, making the case for a large-scale natural gas liquids (NGL) storage and trading hub in the Marcellus/Utica region. No doubt this report was a response to moves by the radical left to prevent such a hub from receiving any kind of federal loan guarantees.