Industrywide Issues

Radical Green Groups Sue PA to Overturn Well Plugging Law

Last summer, Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 2644 was passed into law, becoming Act 96 of 2022 (see New PA Act 96 Helps Boost Plugging Orphan Wells – Left Goes Nuts). Part of the new law keeps the power to raise bonding amounts for conventional wells with the legislature rather than allowing PA’s unelected Democrat bureaucrats…

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Olympus Applies to Build Compressor Stn at West Deer Well Pad Site

Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) drills in the Greater Pittsburgh region, in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties. Olympus owns a pipeline subsidiary called Hyperion Midstream that builds gathering lines to the company’s wells. Hyperion applied to build a compressor station on a recently approved Olympus well pad in rural West Deer Township (Allegheny County). The…

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Report: Rager Mountain Gas Storage Well Casing Failed from Corrosion

Last November, one of the ten natural gas storage wells at the Equitrans Rager Mountain Gas Storage Area in Jackson Township, Cambria County (in Pennsylvania) began to leak. The well leaked roughly 100 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of gas into the atmosphere (see Equitrans Gas Storage Well in Cambria County, PA is Leaking)….

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Analyst Says MVP Not Ready Until Mid-2024; Won’t Spur New Drilling

East Daley Analytics, based in Colorado, is a consulting firm that specializes in identifying, understanding, and monitoring operational risk throughout the oil and gas value chain. A “Daley Note” published yesterday by the company focused on the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), providing a status update and a couple of intriguing (some might say controversial) comments….

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SWPA Republican Rep. Sells Out, Turns Against Marcellus Industry

We’re naming names. Pennsylvania State Rep. Charity Grimm Krupa (Republican from Fayette County) has turned against the Marcellus industry. She is introducing legislation that would ban drilling new wastewater injection wells in the state, making it much harder to drill new shale wells. Companies end up drilling fewer wells without a place to dispose of…

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DOE Gives Duke Energy & Williams $1M to Monitor for Methane Leaks

The U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) is giving utility giant Duke Energy (mega profitable) and one of its natural gas suppliers, Williams (i.e., the Transco Pipeline, also mega profitable) $1 million of taxpayer money to do their jobs of monitoring for methane leaks. Dontcha love corporate welfare? Of course, if the government is going to…

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PA PUC Hires Lib Dem Retread from Wolf Admin as Executive Director

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) is the public utility commission in Pennsylvania. The PUC has five commissioners appointed by the Governor with the consent of the state Senate. The PUC oversees public utility and services operations in the Commonwealth, in sectors including water, energy, telecommunications, and transportation. The decisions made by the PUC impact…

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Cambridge Study Finds Carbon Offsets Using Trees is a Scam

Carbon offsets are the same thing as carbon taxes. A carbon offset refers to reducing so-called greenhouse gas emissions by buying a credit from someone who plants trees or agrees not to cut down trees. A company gets to keep on polluting as long as it pays a tax to do it–pretending they are helping…

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Climate Crazies Turn on One of Their Own: Mass. Gov. Maura Healey

Bonus post today! Something we came across after completing our list of stories to write and share–but just too good to pass up. This story perfectly illustrates what has happened inside the Democrat Party from its fearmongering about climate change and demonization of fossil energy. A group of kids in their early 20s (thoroughly brainwashed…

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MVP Restarted Va. Construction Aug 4th, 8 Stream Crossings So Far

An Act of Congress (the Fiscal Responsibility Act) cleared away the remaining obstacles to completing the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (see Equitrans Announces Mountain Valley Pipe to Get Completed in 2023). After a final appeal by antis with their colluding buddies of the 4th Circuit threatened to block the Fiscal Responsibility Act’s MVP provisions, the…

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Judge Rules WV Lawsuit Against SWN for ‘Well Bashing’ Continues

Two Marshall County, WV landowners with the same last name (obviously related) sued Southwestern Energy (SWN), accusing the company of “well bashing,” in March of this year (see WV Mineral Owners’ Lawsuit Accuses Southwestern of ‘Well Bashing’). The landowners seek to have the lawsuit certified as a class action. Well bashing happens when drilling a…

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Blue States v FERC – Left Using Transco Case to Defeat New Pipes

Two weeks ago MDN told you that eight “blue” states, including New Jersey (the Blue State Mafia), are challenging the Williams Regional Energy Access Expansion (REAE) project, a plan to beef up the Transco pipeline in Pennsylvania and New Jersey to deliver an extra 829 MMcf/d of Marcellus gas to PA, NJ, and Maryland (see…

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ORVI Updates Fake Report Claiming No $ Benefits from M-U Fracking

In early 2021, MDN told you about a so-called “research report” issued by a front organization for the Heinz Endowments called the Ohio River Valley Institute (see Heinz Endowments Launches Another Fake ‘Report’ Bashing the M-U). ORVI published a “report” that purported to show the fracking miracle in the Marcellus/Utica hadn’t actually created all that…

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Potential Ethics Violations at FERC Spur Court Orders, Hearings

The stench coming from inside the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is growing. Since early this year, Kevin Mooney, an investigative reporter with the PA-based Commonwealth Foundation and D.C.-based Heritage Foundation, has been digging into potential ethics (and legal) violations by FERC commissioners. His work has focused on FERC Commissioner Allison Clements, a former attorney…

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EQT Finally Completes Acquisition of Tug Hill and XcL Midstream

Nearly one year after EQT announced a deal to buy privately-owned Tug Hill Operating’s West Virginia shale assets for roughly $5.2 billion (see Confirmed: EQT Buys Tug Hill’s THQ Appalachia for $5.2 Billion), the deal is finally done. EQT announced yesterday it had closed on the purchase (revised price ~$4.6 billion), adding roughly 90,000 acres…

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