Newly-elected Gov. Josh Shapiro, who appears to be completely ineffective since taking office (which is not necessarily a bad thing), appointed a working group in April to help guide him on what he should do concerning the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon tax and the broader issue of global warming (see PA Gov Appoints…
Read More...In July, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced that it had appointed a 17-member committee to figure out how to dole out $5 million to fund local community projects located near the Shell cracker plant in Beaver County, PA, following a $10 million fine against the plant for violating air emissions standards (see…
Read More...Permitting in Pennsylvania, especially those overseen by the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), has been broken for years. A Chapter 102 Erosion and Sedimentation permit sometimes takes two, three, even six to eight months for approval–instead of the law-mandated 14 days. It got so bad that in the fall of 2019, PA State Sen. Gene…
Read More...For the third week in a row and the 12th time in the last 13 weeks, the U.S. active rig count lost rigs. Last week the number decreased by five rigs after falling six rigs the week before (see U.S. Rig Count Drops Another 6 Rigs, Now Lowest Level in 16 Mos.). Both the Marcellus…
Read More...This is a cautionary tale of choosing your joint venture partner carefully. The Pennsylvania Superior Court threw out a $2.4 million arbitration award against Marcellus driller PennEnergy in a business dispute in a precedential ruling last week. The Superior Court judges overruled an award by an arbitrator. PennEnergy maintained the case should never have been…
Read More...A group of Pennsylvania State Senators are (once again) trying to expand the swampy bureaucracy of the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). A group of six Democrat state senators issued a co-sponsorship memorandum last Thursday to say they want to expand the DEP’s power to reject “facilities such as incinerators, landfills, and sewage plants”…
Read More...Researchers with the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) recently published a study in the journal Ecological Indicators. The study’s intent was to measure whether or not frack waste dumped in local landfills has radiation that is leaking out in groundwater (leachate) from those facilities. Research like this, if legitimate (and accurate), is a good thing. We…
Read More...In a process that began in December 2021, Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) announced it had contracted with Project Canary to monitor methane emissions from both the company’s drilling operations and the company’s pipeline operations (see Olympus Using Proj Canary to Monitor Drilling & Pipes for Methane). Last July, Olympus achieved Project Canary certification…
Read More...Two years ago, Chesapeake Energy announced that it would seek responsible gas certification from two organizations–Equitable Origin (EO) and MiQ–to certify the production of its natural gas produced in both its Marcellus and Haynesville operations (see Chesapeake Goes Whole Hog on ESG, Certifying Gas Across 2 Basins). Yesterday Chessy announced it had received recertification from…
Read More...Last week we told you that the shale production situation in Pennsylvania has caught the eye of the number crunchers at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (see EIA Observes M-U Gas Production Flat, Key PA Counties in Decline). Production in PA, overall, is flat and possibly decreasing. Nationally, production is up in other plays and…
Read More...The analysts at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) have been looking at natural gas production in the Marcellus/Utica (i.e., Appalachia) for 2022. The M-U is the largest-producing natural gas shale play in the world. Pennsylvania is the second-largest producer of natural gas in the U.S. after Texas. The EIA looked at PA’s production, specifically…
Read More...For years we’ve railed against what we consider the theft of royalties and bonus payments by the state of Pennsylvania from landowners with creeks and rivers running through their leased (for shale drilling) property. The Pennsylvania Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) claims that under a centuries-old law, the state of PA “owns” the…
Read More...What a disappointment Rich Negrin has turned out to be as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection. During a DEP Citizens Advisory Council meeting held yesterday in Harrisburg (and remotely, via teleconference), several virulent anti-fossil fuelers addressed the council, making wild claims against the DEP. Negrin simply accepted their babbling and told them…
Read More...In the fall of 2021, President Biden signed into law the so-called Infrastructure bill, some $1.2 trillion in pork barrel spending, passed with the help of turncoat Republicans (see Biden So-Called $1.2T Infrastructure Bill Passes Thanks to RINOs). Only about 9% of the $1.2 trillion will go to actual infrastructure projects like roads and bridges….
Read More...Pennsylvania has a crazy quilt patchwork of regulations that apply to unconventional (shale) drillers. Many of those regulations come from various divisions inside the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). However, there are other agencies where regs apply to shale too. Take, for example, the requirement to meet all of the confusing (sometimes contradictory) regulations related…
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