Accidents | Energy Companies | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Lycoming County | Pennsylvania | Pennsylvania General Energy | Stallion Oilfield | Wastewater
Truck Accident Spills 4,200 Gal. of Wastewater in Lycoming County
A truck hauling produced water–naturally occurring water from the depths that continues coming out of a drilled well long after it’s been fracked–overturned and spilled approximately 4,200 gallons of that wastewater. The wastewater, often called “brine” due to its minerally or salty composition, came from Pennsylvania General Energy (PGE) shale wells and was being hauled by Stallion Oilfield Services. It spilled on the ground “adjacent” to a “native trout stream” in the Pine Creek area in Lycoming County, PA.
Read More “Truck Accident Spills 4,200 Gal. of Wastewater in Lycoming County”
The evidence continues to pour in that the addition of Williams’ Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline, a 200-mile greenfield pipeline from northeastern to southeastern PA where it joins the Transco Pipeline, is having a dramatic and ongoing effect on natural gas prices in northeastern PA. As in, the price drillers get for their gas has doubled. Atlantic Sunrise went online in early October (see 
How much “diligence” is required when trying to locate the heirs of mineral rights owners in Ohio, as stipulated by the Ohio Dormant Minerals Rights Act (DMA)? That issue was addressed, once again, last week–this time by Ohio’s 7th District Court of Appeals. The DMA requires a surface owner to exercise “reasonable due diligence” to ascertain the names and addresses of mineral holders and their heirs prior to serving notice of abandonment by publication. The question is, what is “reasonable due diligence”? Is there a common standard? The 7th District decided there is no common standard, and what’s reasonable in one case may not be reasonable in another. In other words, it all depends–and is unique in each case.
In May of this year, Elizabeth Barnes, an administration law judge for the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC), unilaterally ordered Sunoco Logistics Partners to “cease and desist all current operation, construction, including drilling activities on the Mariner East 1, 2 and Mariner East 2X pipeline” in West Whiteland Township in Chester County, PA (
Last week the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency held an information session (to give out info) along with a public hearing (to accept comments) on the draft air pollution permit for PTT Global Chemical’s proposed ethane cracker plant complex in Belmont County, OH (see 
Events related (or of interest) to the Marcellus and Utica Shale, primarily pro-drilling events. To have your event included (or if you are aware of a worthy event you believe should be on this page), please send the details and/or a link to have it included to the calendar@marcellusdrilling.com email address.
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading: New law allows ODNR to plug more wells; Tompkins County Legislature opposes natural gas at Cayuga Power Plant; U.S. shale production set to surge in 2019; Winter demand offsets NGL fractionation capacity constraints; Natural gas prices at multi-year highs, will demand grow further?; Details of the horrible carbon tax bill; Qatar is pulling out of OPEC; RWE to buy more U.S. LNG as Trump promotes gas in Europe; The physics of extracting gas from shale formations; New rules at Panama Canal expected to boost U.S. LNG industry; Magnetic sun storms could hold the secret to natural gas prices; Global natural gas prices tied to sunspot activity.
Well this wasn’t supposed to happen. The Delaware County (PA) Council hired a company in July of this year at a cost of $115,000 to conduct an independent risk assessment study of both the Mariner East 2 (ME2) and Adelphia Gateway pipeline projects (both running through Delaware County), to assess just how much risk each pipeline poses to residents in the county, a heavily populated Philadelphia suburb. A group of antis paid $50,000 to Quest Consultants for the same thing. The antis released their “report” in October (see 
Each year (for the 12th year running) the Canadian-based Fraser Institute surveys petroleum industry executives and managers (256 of them for 2018) asking them their opinions on the barriers to investing in exploration and production in various geographies across the globe. That is, what makes them more likely or less likely to spend money drilling in a particular location? The Global Petroleum Survey (full copy below), tallies the survey responses and ranks each geography from most desirable place to invest, to least desirable. Last year West Virginia was ranked as the fifth most desirable place to invest (see 
The preliminary numbers are in from the West Virginia Department of Tax and Revenue, and the numbers show that severance taxes paid by drillers in Mountain State hit a new high of $138 million, up 4.3% from in 2017. Six Marcellus/Utica shale counties–Doddridge, Wetzel, Ritchie, Tyler, Marshall, and Harrison–received $1 million or more of that back into county coffers. At the county level, the tax revenue goes for vital public services including first responders, community projects and social programs. Here’s a high-level rundown on who got what from this year’s severance tax honeypot.
Two schools in rural Susquehanna County, PA are saving big bucks and helping the environment at the same time–by switching to burning natural gas. One of those schools, Elk Lake, has made millions of dollars in royalties by hosting two shale wells *on school property* (see 
It takes a loooong time for the wheels of justice to turn, but (usually) turn they do. In 2016 Kathleen Kane, former Pennsylvania Attorney General who prosecuted and persecuted others, particularly in the gas drilling industry, was convicted of committing perjury (i.e. lying under oath) about leaking privileged grand jury information in a case unrelated to gas drilling. She was, in October 2016, sentenced to jail (see