Industrywide Issues

Frack Water Spill at Eureka Resources Plant in Williamsport, PA

An undetermined amount of fracking wastewater spilled at the Eureka Resources wastewater recycling facility in Williamsport (Lycoming County), PA, at about 9:10 a.m. yesterday. The incident prompted a response by city firefighters and police. The water came from a valve on a tank inside the facility, where oil, chemicals and other substances are removed from…

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Ohio Extends Time to Build 2nd Utica-Fired Elec Plant Near Toledo

In December 2017, MDN told you about a second proposed natural gas-fired power plant planned by CME Energy for Oregon (Lucas County), Ohio (see Ohio Approves 2nd Oregon Utica-Fired Elec Plant (Near Toledo)). The first plant was called the Oregon Clean Energy Center. The second plant project was named Clean Energy Future – Oregon. The…

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Antis Demand PA Gov Shapiro Drop Enviro Deal with CNX Resources

Grab the popcorn! It’s fun to sit back and watch the other side eat its own for a change. We’re talking about the civil war that has erupted on the Democrat Left over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s “bold” agreement signed with CNX Resources to “move the ball forward” on “environmental progress” in PA (see Civil…

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What Happened to $42 Million in Fines Paid by Mariner East Pipe?

In July, MDN compared the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection to an organized crime mob with its ongoing shakedowns in assessing “fines” on the Mariner East pipeline project (see PA DEP Squeezes Another $660,000 from ME2 Pipe for “Violations”). At that time, we were aware that over $30 million had been extorted (er, a, extracted)…

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Equinor Wins Refund of Gas Severance Tax Paid in WV for Two Years

Yesterday, the Intermediate Court of Appeals for West Virginia issued an opinion in a case that had (until now) escaped our radar. Equinor, Norway’s state-owned oil and gas company (previously known as Statoil), said it had overpaid its severance tax bill in West Virginia for the years 2014 and 2016. Equinor said WV miscalculated the…

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Amtrak Caves to Radicals, Won’t Install Gas Boilers in Philly Stn

Ever ridden on an Amtrak train? We have, a number of times. Including the route from New York to Philadelphia, pulling into the 30th Street Station in downtown Philly. Amtrak, the national passenger railroad company of the United States operating in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. states and three Canadian provinces, is openly admitting…

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OGLMC Votes to Allow Fracking Under Ohio’s Salt Fork State Park

Yesterday, the Ohio Oil & Gas Land Management Commission (OGLMC) met in a public forum and voted to allow shale drilling under (not on top of) three different state-owned tracts of land: all 20,000 acres of Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County, more than 300 acres of Valley Run Wildlife Area in Carroll County,…

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WhiteHawk Energy Spends $54M to Grow M-U Mineral & Royalty Assets

WhiteHawk Energy, headquartered in Philadelphia with ownership of mineral and royalty interests for 850,000 gross unit acres and over 2,500 producing horizontal shale wells between the Marcellus and the Haynesville, announced yesterday the acquisition of additional Marcellus Shale natural gas mineral and royalty assets for a total purchase price of $54 million. WhiteHawk owns mineral…

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Shapiro’s Dept. of Health Using Pitt Fake Research to Bash Fracking

It’s sad to see a major university like the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) publish fake research to fit a political narrative that fracking can be tied to cancer in kids (see Pitt Releases Fake Research, Claims PA Fracking Linked to Kid Cancer). It’s angering that Gov. Josh Shapiro’s Dept. of Health is using Pitt’s fake…

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RGGI Carbon Tax Price Hits Near-Record-High of $13.85 Per Ton CO2

In 2019, when then-Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced he would unilaterally force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon tax scheme aimed at forcing coal- and gas-fired plants out of business, he claimed the tax would only amount to a few dollars per short ton of CO2 (see Gov. Wolf…

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NET Power Delays World’s 1st NatGas Plant with Zero Emissions

Last December, Rice Acquisition Corp II, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) started by the Rice brothers (Danny, Toby, and Derek), announced a deal to acquire NET Power — an electric power developer with revolutionary new technology to capture every last molecule of carbon dioxide from natural gas-fired power plants (see Dan Rice Buys Co….

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S&P Global Re-Wokeifies? Offers Gas Carbon Intensity Measures

In August, MDN brought you the good news that the S&P (Standard & Poor’s) credit rating agency, called S&P Global Rating (the largest of the Big Three credit-rating agencies), had dumped its system of numerically ranking corporate borrowers on their ESG risk on a scale of 1 to 5 — just two years after implementing…

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JPMorgan Signals It Will Stop Funding Certain O&G Projects

Supposedly JPMorgan Chase remains the world’s #1 largest funder of fossil fuels since the so-called Paris Agreement was adopted by 196 of the world’s countries in December 2015. The Paris Agreement calls on governments to use force to ensure the global average temperature (that nobody seems to be able to pinpoint accurately) doesn’t rise more…

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Shapiro’s DEP Money-Back Guarantee for Permit Delays is Bogus

Two weeks ago, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (liberal Democrat) launched, with much fanfare, PAyback.pa.gov, a new online money-back guarantee system that allows residents, businesses, charities, and schools to check their eligibility for a refund of their permit, license, or certification application fee and request a refund if they believe they are eligible. Shapiro promised individuals…

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Muskingum Watershed Generated $1B in Econ Impact from Utica Drilling

For more than a decade, MDN has brought you stories about shale development on and under land controlled by the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD), an agency formed in 1933 to help control flooding and promote water conservation in the Muskingum River watershed area of Ohio, an area that covers 8,000 square miles (see our…

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