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…
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…
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)….
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…
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…
New shale permits issued for Aug 14 – 20 in the Marcellus/Utica finally turned around. There were 27 new permits issued last week, way up from the 10 issued the prior week. Last week’s permit tally included 21 new permits in Pennsylvania, 2 new permits in Ohio, and 4 new permits in West Virginia (after…
Natural Gas – 100 Years Ago Today, August 25, 1923 Tom Shepstone Shepstone Management Company, Inc. …. …. Natural gas news from a hundred years ago offers great perspective for discussing one of the cleanest sources of energy available then and still today. It’s fun and illuminating to look back 100 years ago at what
Shapiro Rashly Bets Pennsylvanian Future on Dicey Energy Gordon Tomb Senior Advisor, CO2 Coalition .. …. [Editor’s Note: There’s nothing more dicey at the moment than green energy, which is failing everywhere, but Josh Shapiro is willing to bet Pennsylvania’s future on fantasies.] Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has asked regional power grid operators to
Yesterday, the Pennsylvania House Philadelphia LNG Natural Gas Export Task Force, chaired by Rep. Martina White (R-Philadelphia), held its third and final public hearing at Widener University in Chester, Delaware County. The purpose was to get public feedback on a proposal to build an LNG natural gas export facility in Chester. From the press accounts…
Let’s face it: Josh Shapiro has been a major disappointment as Governor of Pennsylvania. He promised the moon to voters–that he would be both pro-gas and anti-gas at the same time. Some believed him, but we didn’t. Each week, new information comes along that reveals Shapiro’s true nature as a radical leftist Democrat. Shapiro said…
One year ago, in July 2022, MDN brought you news of a possible frac-out, or “inadvertent return” that happens when drilling mud pops out of places where it’s not supposed to–places outside the borehole being drilled (see Possible Frac-Out Reported at EQT Well Site in Greene County, PA). A landowner who lives near a well…
It’s really sad, and sick, and twisted to watch what’s happening after Pittsburgh University (Pitt) researchers released three deeply flawed “studies” that don’t prove anything (see Pitt Releases Fake Research, Claims PA Fracking Linked to Kid Cancer). Parents in southwestern PA who have kids with cancer (or have died from cancer) have been fed a…
It’s getting even uglier out there. For the sixth week in a row and the 15th of the last 16 weeks, the U.S. active rig count lost rigs. A lot of rigs. Last week the number decreased by a whopping 12 rigs after falling by five rigs per week for the three weeks prior. The…
This is so frustrating. Last week Pittsburgh University (Pitt) issued fake research reports that supposedly link proximity to shale wells with a minuscule (less than one-tenth of one percent) rise in one type of childhood cancer (see Pitt Releases Fake Research, Claims PA Fracking Linked to Kid Cancer). The so-called research has been destroyed by…
Natural Gas Now Best Picks – August 19, 2023 Tom Shepstone Shepstone Management Company, Inc. … … Readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy. This week: Hawaii suffers from stupid energy policies, a fracking study that doesn’t tell many what