Range Resources – Appalachia was fined $294,000 by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for inaccurately listing wells that should have been abandoned and plugged as inactive, according to Farm and Dairy. After receiving a consent assessment of civil penalty from the DEP Jan. 7, the company paid the penalty on Jan. 8 for violating
Read More...The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), a quasi-governmental organization composed of four states (NY, PA, DE, NJ) plus the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, voted yesterday to permanently ban fracking within the boundaries of the DRBC’s jurisdiction, which includes Wayne and Pike counties in Pennsylvania where there is abundant Marcellus Shale deposits. But don’t despair.
Read More...Remember the statement, uttered by then-candidate Joe Biden as he stood in Bucks County, PA (which sits in the Delaware River Basin) when he emphatically promised PA residents and union workers, “I’m not banning fracking in Pennsylvania or anywhere else!”? It took him slightly less than five weeks to break that promise. Yesterday the Biden
Read More...Some good news to share on this Friday. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has given National Fuel Gas Company (NFG) the green light to begin construction on its FM100 pipeline project. The FM100 Project will beef up and extend an existing pipeline network in northwestern Pennsylvania to flow an extra 330 million cubic feet
Read More...The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) is sticking its sticky fingers into the pocket of Energy Transfer/Sunoco one more time, and this time drawing out nearly half a million dollars to pay for a series of small spills of nontoxic drilling mud in Snitz Creek in Lebanon County. It isn’t the first time the
Read More...Yesterday, CNX Resources, Bettis Brothers, and The Bus Stops Here Foundation announced a partnership intended to bring greater awareness and access to opportunities in the natural gas industry to disadvantaged urban and rural communities in the Pittsburgh region. Does the Bettis name ring any bells? It should. Pittsburgh-based IntegrServ, a trucking company partly owned by
Read More...Tom ShepstoneShepstone Management Company, Inc. . … You may imagine I’m putting lipstick on a pig but, mark my words, the DRBC ban is a fatal misstep by this gang of public agency thieves. Yesterday, I pointed out why the DRBC fracking ban was a fatal misstep for the agency. It brought to a culmination
Read More...Tom ShepstoneShepstone Management Company, Inc. . … You may imagine I’m putting lipstick on a pig but, mark my words, the DRBC ban is a fatal misstep by this gang of public agency thieves. Well, after a decade of pretending they weren’t stealing the gas rights of Upper Delaware landowners, the Commissioners of the Delaware
Read More...Yesterday Cabot Oil & Gas issued its fourth-quarter and full-year 2020 update. Cabot continues to be one of the few drillers that consistently makes a profit quarter after quarter, year after year–even during a downturns like what happened in 2020. Although down from 2019, in 2020 Cabot made just over $200 million in net income.
Read More...In December MDN brought you the news that the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) is proposing and seeking comments on changes to the state’s Chapter 105 (water obstructions and encroachments) permit (see PA DEP Proposes Changes to Ch. 105 Water Permits). It’s a fundamental permit almost all outdoor construction projects in PA are required
Read More...Jim WillisEditor & Publisher, Marcellus Drilling News (MDN) [Editor’s Note: If the third time wasn’t the charm, the seventh time is surely dead on arrival for Tom the Trust-Funder Wolf’s severance tax obsession.] As we reported in January, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (Democrat) has, for the seventh year in a row, introduced a Marcellus-killing severance tax proposal
Read More...Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf unveiled a program dubbed Back to Work PA earlier this month in his budget proposal that would impose an extraction tax on natural gas in addition to the impact fee producers already pay to state and local governments, according to The Morning Call. The proposed tax would produce an estimated $300
Read More...Bob NolanWayne County, Pennsylvania, Landowner …. Our friend Bob Nolan uses Dickens and Blazing Saddles to illustrate what a bunch of phonies the DRBC amounts to when it comes to us. Ironic how relevant Charles Dickens’ novel “Martin Chuzzlewit” remains in today’s world.“Seth Pecksniff, a character with a holier-than-thou attitude in Charles Dickens’s 1844 novel
Read More...Tom ShepstoneShepstone Management Company, Inc. . … Illinois landowners have gotten some attention with their Petition to the Supreme Court for Certiorari and the DRBC should be worried. The DRBC has spent a decade frustrating the efforts of landowners in the basin to develop their natural gas resources. It has done so with an illegal
Read More...Nearly three and a half years: That’s how long the Delaware River Basin Commission has been sitting on regulations it opened for public comment that could decide the fate of oil and natural gas development within the region. It appears this week the commission will finally (maybe) answer the question: Can shale development occur in
Read More...