Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA | Wayne County
3 PA Senators Still Trying to Join Lawsuit Against DRBC Frack Ban
In May 2016, a landowner in Wayne County, PA filed a lawsuit against the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) asking a judge to declare that the DRBC does not have jurisdiction to prevent construction of a natural gas well (see Wayne County, PA Landowner Sues DRBC Over Fracking Ban). Last fall three PA State Senators asked the court to allow them to join the lawsuit on the side of the landowner (see 3 PA Senators Seek to Join Lawsuit Against DRBC Frack Ban). In May the judge turned them down. The three brave Senators have filed an appeal of that denial.
Read More “3 PA Senators Still Trying to Join Lawsuit Against DRBC Frack Ban”
A week ago MDN told you that Joe Manchin, one of West Virginia’s two U.S. Senators, is not happy that details of the deal signed between WV and China in which China agreed to invest $83.7 billion (with a “b”) in WV’s shale and petrochemcial industries is secret (see 
CNX Resources Corporation, formerly CONSOL Energy, released its “Corporate Responsibility Report” on Friday. CNX is headquartered in Pittsburgh and focuses totally on the Appalachian region. Corporate responsibility, sometimes called “Corporate social responsibility” (CSR), is an effort by a company to be socially accountable…to itself, its stakeholders, and the public. Companies like CNX aim to be conscious of the impacts they have on all aspects of society–including economic, social, and environmental. CNX (and others) want to leave the world a better place. How did CNX do in 2018?
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Workforce development in Susquehanna County takes place on its own; NATIONAL: Schlumberger Appoints Olivier Le Peuch as CEO; U.S. natural gas prices sinking again; INTERNATIONAL: LNG Limited move business to USA; So you think we’re reducing fossil fuel? — think again.
A newspaper in the Philippines is reporting that New Fortress Energy, the company currently building one (rumored to be two) liquefied natural gas (LNG) liquefaction plants in the northeastern Pennsylvania Marcellus, has approached the Philippines Department of Energy (DoE) about building an onshore LNG import terminal that would be integrated with a gas-fired power plant.
A federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation meant to ban wastewater coming from unconventional (shale) wells from being disposed via municipal sewage treatment plants is about to go into effect in August. The new reg, which was first issued by the Obama EPA in 2016 (see 
The State of Connecticut’s “Siting Council” has changed its mind. In 2016, NTE Energy proposed building a 650-megawatt natural gas-fired electric plant in Killingly. The Siting Council said NTE couldn’t justify the plant and refused to issue a certificate. In February, we reported the Siting Council was once again actively considering the project (see 
It’s not every day you read an editorial in a prominent Pennsylvania newspaper lending a full-throated endorsement for PA’s impact fee over a so-called severance tax, but it just happened in Williamsport. The Sun-Gazette editorial board published a column pointing out the superiority of an impact fee (actually an impact tax) over a severance tax. They make some great points, pointing out the numbers speak for themselves…
In May 2018, Liberty Utilities, a New Hampshire company, announced a new pipeline project called Granite Bridge–27 miles of new natural gas pipeline to be buried along Route 101 from Stratham to Manchester (see 
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tried to stop a fully built, brand new natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Orange County from going operational last year by instructing his Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to deny renewing an air permit it had approved just five years earlier (see 
This is a momentous occasion, nearly 13 years in the making. The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) issued permits on June 28 to drill two Utica Shale wells in Monroe County. Both wells begin on privately owned land, but then travel under sections of Wayne National Forest (WNF). As near as we can tell, these are the first two such wells to pass under WNF land. Below we tell you exactly where they’re located, and which company received the permits to drill them.
Columbia Transmission is on a mission to flow more Marcellus/Utica gas south–all the way to the Gulf Coast in Louisiana. Earlier this week Columbia filed a new application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build the Louisiana XPress Project, a project to beef up flows along the existing Columbia pipeline system by an additional 850 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) by adding and expanding several compressor stations in Louisiana. Most, if not all of the M-U gas that will flow through it, is heading to Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass LNG export facility in Lake Charles.
Kinder Morgan (KM), perhaps the largest pipeline company in the United States, was first out of the chute yesterday with a financial and operational update for the second quarter. While KM maintains a number of pipelines in the northeast, primarily the Tennessee Gas Pipeline, our main focus in reviewing yesterday’s update is for new information about the long-delayed Elba Island LNG export facility along the coast of Georgia. Elba Island will export Marcellus/Utica molecules.