PA Enviros Resist Transferring Surplus to Help Balance State Budget
Last September, amidst a heated state budget battle in Pennsylvania (where the phrase “severance tax” was on the lips of every Democrat and RINO in Harrisburg), a group of PA House Republicans did the hard work Gov. Tom Wolf and his cronies in the legislature refused to do: They figured out how to fund a wildly overspent budget without raising a single tax (see PA House Introduces Balanced Budget with NO Severance Tax). How did House Republicans do it? They went looking for state agencies hording money, with a plan to relieve them of their surplus. You know how it goes. Each year agencies don’t spend all of their allotted money, yet they ask for more the following year anyway, knowing legislators may shave some from the request. It’s obscene. Yet that’s how the game is played. When Republicans went looking, they found even the Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) and Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) have been squirreling money away, unused in some of their programs. The House Republican plan from last September was not adopted, but elements of it were included in the final budget. The final budget passed in October instructs Gov. Wolf to reallocate $300 million from surpluses at various state agencies–from the agencies of his own choosing–as part of the “funding” for this year’s budget. The House Appropriations Committee will hold a meeting on Jan. 25 to question representatives from DCNR and DEP about the use and operation of special funds under their administration–to see if there’s a bit of surplus there that can be used for the state budget. Judging by the reaction from a former DEP Secretary, it seems both agencies take umbrage at having to subject themselves and their surpluses for scrutiny. At its core, this issue is about who will pay bloated teacher’s salaries in Philadelphia. Big Green wants to target the Marcellus industry to pay “for the children.” Yet when they themselves are asked to contribute a small amount of their bloated excess (give it up for the Philly teacher’s unions), THEY resist! They are all for raiding another industry, but refuse to have their own departments “raided” in order to balance a hugely overspent state budget. Anyone else smell rank hypocrisy?…
Read More “PA Enviros Resist Transferring Surplus to Help Balance State Budget”
Big Green insanity continues at the so-called Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation (PEDF). The only thing they “defend” is their own twisted philosophy of trying to gouge out the eyes of the oil and gas industry in PA–even at the expense of de-funding their own beloved PA Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources. Last June, the PEDF won a case at the PA Supreme Court by the skin of their teeth (see 
Unstable people tend to create instability wherever they go–it’s just something we’ve noticed. Other people have noticed it too, at the highest levels of Pennsylvania state government. Business groups in PA are pointing a finger at unstable PA Gov. Tom Wolf. His repeated calls, his maniacal mission to force a severance tax on the Marcellus industry on top of the existing impact tax, is causing “instability” in the industry in PA. That is, companies are pulling back, not willing to drill as much, and investors are not willing to invest, because of the uncertainty of whether or not there will be a severance tax. It’s spooking the industry. These business groups, representing hundreds of thousands of PA residents, are calling on Wolf to end his unstable ways and quit calling for a severance tax. Specifically, they say, “He needs to stop it.” Is that blunt enough? Instead, these groups call on Wolf to reign in out-of-control spending. The less you spend, the less you need to rob from hardworking companies–companies providing tens of thousands of jobs and over a billion dollars of tax revenue for the state so far…
It never ceases to amaze us at how an unshakable belief in the myth of man-made global warming drives normally sane people to do insane things. Like using millions in taxpayer dollars (“grants”) to figure out a way to convert shale gas into a more “environmental friendly” form of fuel for energy usage–explosive hydrogen. Methane (i.e. natural gas) has one carbon atom along with four hydrogen atoms–CH4. What do you do with that carbon atom when you split methane into its component parts? We can’t have that carbon atom mating with a couple of oxygen atoms and forming CO2 (carbon dioxide)! Perish the thought!! (Even though CO2 is what you exhale every time you breathe, CO2 has been bastardized into being considered a pollutant by the general population thanks to the efforts of Big Green.) West Virginia University, along with Southern California Gas Company and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is launching new research this month that aims to convert “methane to CO2-free hydrogen and solid carbon nanotubes”–that is, into hydrogen and “good” carbon, not “bad” CO2 carbon. Whatever…
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye over the break that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Blasting for Atlantic Sunrise Pipe; heding keeps M-U natgas production flowing; construction to begin on Mid-Ohio Valley compressor stations; NYC mayor adopts Cuomo playbook on o&g industry; DRBC in high stakes game of high-tech colonialism; science replaces art in oil drilling; U.S. withdrew record amount of natgas during cold snap; carbon capture hopes & questions; renewable power not the only solution to energy poverty; Japan natgas prices hit 2-year high; and more!
Dear MDN Reader:
Events related (or of interest) to the Marcellus and Utica Shale, primarily pro-drilling events.
This is a bitter and sad day. The five Commissioners of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) released a decision yesterday (copy below) that FERC will not overrule an illegal decision by the corrupt Cuomo Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to block construction of the Constitution Pipeline (which FERC approved in 2014). Is this truly “lights out” for the Constitution? It would seem so. Cuomo’s DEC took more than two years to evaluate and eventually reject the Constitution Pipeline–a $683 million, 124-mile pipeline from Susquehanna County, PA to Schoharie County, NY to move Marcellus gas into NY and New England (see 
1/24/18 Note: We have edited this post to be less incendiary and more respectful of the opposing viewpoint. 
On Wednesday, Dominion Energy filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to expand capacity along the existing Dominion Energy Transmission Inc. (DETI) pipeline from Pennsylvania to Ohio. Why? To flow more gas that will be used to generate electricity for the Midwest market. The project, called the Sweden Valley Project, is projected to cost $48 million and add another 120 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of PA Marcellus Shale gas to the existing flow along DETI. Dominion says all 120 MMcf/d are already contracted and spoken for–by an unnamed customer. Notice the headline says “expand” and not “extend.” This project would build a tiny three miles of new pipeline, with the new pipeline lying next to existing pipeline (in Greene County, PA). The only greenfield construction is building a 1.75-mile pipeline to connect with the Tennessee Gas Pipeline in Tuscarawas County, OH. The other main part of the project is updating three units a compressor station in Licking County, OH. In the constellation of pipeline projects that disturb earth and disrupt landowners, this one is pretty minor–yet it will deliver big results by flowing an extra 120 MMcf/d of gas west to a new market…
The dunderhead leaders of Monroeville, PA (Allegheny County, suburb of Pittsburgh) are at it again, acting hostile toward the shale industry, attempting to stymie any kind of shale activity within its borders. In September, Monroeville Council voted to enact a super-restrictive seismic testing ordinance (see 
In the fourth quarter of 2017 (Oct-Dec), 2.3 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of new/extra pipeline capacity was added in the Marcellus/Utica region, to carry our gas to markets outside the region. Even though production in the Marcellus/Utica has continued to climb every single month, that 2.3 Bcf/d of extra “takeaway” capacity had an immediate effect–prices for our gas began to rise. Here’s a bit of exciting news: By the end of the first quarter this year (that is, by Mar. 31st), another 3 Bcf/d of pipeline takeaway capacity will be online. We expect this new takeaway, combined with last quarter’s increase in takeaway, will continue to drive prices for our gas higher…
Last June, radical anti-drillers from the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation (PEDF) won a case at the PA Supreme Court by the skin of their teeth (see 
In the end, even the ultra-liberal editors of the Boston Globe couldn’t ignore and deny reality–the reality that their own favorite sons and daughters are to blame for sky high energy prices and dirtier air, because they’ve fought against new natural gas pipelines. We’ve been blowing the horn that New England is getting hosed on energy prices, paying the highest average prices in the world for natural gas, because of their stubborn refusal to allow new Marcellus gas pipelines into the region (see