PA PUC Distributes $252M from Impact Tax – Highest Ever!
Each June the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC), the agency charged with keeping tabs on impact fee revenue from shale drillers (PA’s version of a severance tax) releases the final numbers of impact fee revenues and disbursements for the prior calendar year. Yesterday was the appointed day for 2018 fee revenue generated. The PUC reports impact fees on natural gas producers in 2018 totaled $242,964,000–the highest-ever yearly amount of revenue generated since the fee/tax was implemented in 2011. If you add in another $8,866,900 disbursed after a court case was settled about “stripper wells,” the total that was disbursed this year amounts to a whopping $251,830,900–a quarter of a billion dollars!
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Oilfield services company (OFS) Mammoth Energy Services, headquartered in Oklahoma City, OK, operates in the Marcellus/Utica Shale, Permian Basin, SCOOP/STACK in Oklahoma, and in Canada’s oil sands region. Mammoth not only works in OFS, they also dabble in electrical transmission and distribution (“T&D”) work. Following the 2017 disaster when Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, Mammoth was hired to help rebuild the electric utility infrastructure on the island (see 
Pieridae Energy wants to build an LNG export plant in Nova Scotia, Canada. The project is called the Goldboro LNG project. Nearly a year ago we told you that Pieridae had purchased a small natural gas producer in Western Canada to help provide supplies of gas to the East Coast plant (see 
It’s no secret that the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) had a hand in the original research that resulted in the shale revolution. It was George Mitchell who pioneered the first shale wells–but he did so based on research performed by the federal government. The DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy remains active to this day in researching new and better ways to extract and use fossil fuels, much to the dismay of global warming fundamentalists. One of the ways Fossil Energy accomplishes its mission is to fund research projects by academic institutions–and even private companies. Fossil Energy has just announced a new round of $44.5 million in grants aimed at improving fracking (yes! fracking) technology, and improving our understanding of shale plays.
Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES), which operates the East Coast’s largest refinery on the banks of the Delaware River, was already wobbling because of onerous federal regulations that require refiners to blend in biofuel with gasoline and diesel, or purchase very expensive credits. PES can’t blend, so they must buy the credits, which put them under water financially, forcing them into bankruptcy last year (see 
In February MDN told you that Dominion Energy planned to appeal a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit blocking an important permit for Atlantic Coast Pipeline to drill under the Appalachian Trail directly to the U.S. Supreme Court (see 
Global warming fundamentalists (our new term for radical environmentalists who irrationally hate all fossil fuels) are ramping up to oppose a plan to prevent a now-closed coal-fired electric power plant in Baltimore from reopening powered by natural gas. Because you know, global warming. And because we MUST dump the use of all fossil fuels by 2050 (the new “it” date) or earth will explode. This plant would have a useful life much longer than 2050. Can’t have that.
The Manhattan Institute, a leading free-market think tank based in the Big Apple, has just published a new report (full copy below) that shows by blocking new natural gas pipeline projects, NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo is actually causing MORE harm to the environment. How? Blocking natural gas means building owners and power producers will continue to rely on oil, which emits 27% more carbon dioxide than natural gas. The report also shows lack of pipelines is forcing energy prices in the northeast to rocket skyward, which in some cases already exceed the national average by more than 90%.
OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Frackers go electric as negative gas prices spur switch; NATIONAL: Williams releases 2018 sustainability report; Williams pipeline support highlights Environmental Defense Fund’s long, cozy relationship with fracking pseudoscience; As coal fades in the U.S., natural gas becomes the climate battleground; Jones Act changes could disrupt offshore oil and gas sector; INTERNATIONAL: Why climate activists threaten endangered species with extinction; Fracking has enhanced the U.S. strategic position in the Persian Gulf region; Loosening Russia’s stranglehold on European natural gas.