PA DEP Goes WAY Too Far in Approving New Methane Regulations

You know when eco-leftists stand up and cheer for proposed new government regulations to “curb methane emissions”–those regulations are precisely what you DON’T want to have enacted. That’s what happened yesterday as the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) Environmental Quality Board (EQB) approved onerous new regulations that supposedly will capture every last molecule of stray methane that leaks from shale drilling operations. The new regs are unnecessary and will shut down even more shale drilling operations in the state.
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For months MDN has brought you bits and pieces of news from individual drillers, detailing plans to cut back on spending for new drilling in the Marcellus/Utica in 2020. It’s not just happening in the M-U–it’s happening across the country. The experts at RBN Energy have a terrific new post that pulls information about major drillers scaling back into one place. They analyze spending by three different groups of drillers: oil-focused, diversified, and gas-focused drillers. In the third category, all but one of the gas-focused drillers have major operations in the M-U. The stats are sobering. As a collective group, M-U gas drillers have pledged to cut their 2020 budgets 25% from the already-lower spending that happened this year. Ouch.
Keystone Clearwater Solutions, a company that provides water services for shale drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, is “coming home” in a sense. We told you in November that SC Water, LLC, a Pennsylvania-based natural gas and oil industry investment group, announced it had signed an agreement to buy Keystone Clearwater from American Water for an undisclosed amount (see 
Several weeks ago the founder and CEO of Tallgrass Energy, David G. Dehaemers Jr.,
In May, Weatherford International, the world’s fourth largest oilfield services (OFS) company, finally succumbed and announced it was filing for a “prepackaged” bankruptcy (see
The Heinz Endowments, a grantmaking organization in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that sits under the thumb of Mamma Teresa Heinz Kerry (wacko lefty Democrat), has long been viewed as a community pillar in western Pennsylvania. What you may not know is that Heinz Endowments has spent over $120 million in “environmental grants” between 2008 and 2016, much of that money funding anti-shale and anti-fossil fuel campaigns. The Heinz Endowments is no friend to the working class in western PA.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: A natural gas blowout in Ohio released more methane than many countries do in an entire year; Natural gas initiative shifts to statewide action; Oil and Gas industry partners with first responders; NATIONAL: Is Wall Street turning its back on fossil fuels?; Aly Energy Services, Inc. goes dark, no longer filing SEC updates; Fight over flaring: Industry, enviros contrasting accounts over burning excess natural gas; Michael Moore & Me (video); INTERNATIONAL: Ontario expanding natural gas to more communities across Ontario.
Last month MDN warned readers that we were likely at a peak, the point when the Marcellus/Utica would, after many years, begin to produce less natural gas each month than it had the month before (see
West Virginia’s co-tenancy law was signed into law by Gov. Jim Justice in March 2018 (see
Last week Chesapeake Energy received a notification from the New York Stock Exchange that its shares of stock have fallen below the $1/share threshold for more than 30 consecutive trading days and because of it, Chessy’s stock will be delisted from the exchange. Unless. Unless they can get the per share price over the $1/share average in a certain period of time. Chesapeake has responded they are taking several actions, the most relevant/likely being a reverse stock split.

In August the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ruled that the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) took too long to deny a federal Clean Water Act “Section 401” water crossing permit for the Williams Constitution Pipeline project (see 