According to Reuters, oilfield service companies and drillers have put the brakes on hiring and “further job cuts could loom” as natural gas producers respond to sliding prices by slashing spending on new wells to reduce excess production. We told you yesterday that Chesapeake Energy announced a coming rig and frac crew cut in the…
Read More...Democrats will never be satisfied until they tax you for breathing and even existing, which was perfectly illustrated by a proposal submitted by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to its so-called Climate Change Advisory Committee on Tuesday. Not satisfied to try and force a Marcellus-killing carbon tax (called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative,…
Read More...Townships and local municipalities in Pennsylvania are now beginning to deal with a new issue, particularly where there is active natural gas drilling. For years, local towns in PA have dealt with the issue of zoning and where to allow gas drilling. A recent (past few years) development is that cryptocurrency “miners” are beginning to…
Read More...Last week, MDN told you about landmen knocking on doors in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, looking to sign up landowners for a big carbon capture and sequestration project (see Landmen Knocking Doors in PA, OH, WV to Sign for CCS, Pore Rights). Tenaska is looking to sink 20-30 wells across a massive 80,000 acres…
Read More...The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has an excellent article reporting on an effort by Tenaska, one of the largest privately operated companies in the U.S., to build a carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) hub spanning tens of thousands of acres in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. Landmen are “knocking on doors again” in all three states, looking…
Read More...Tenaska, one of the largest privately operated companies in the U.S., announced it has purchased six 21-megawatt (MW) natural gas power plants in Northeast Pennsylvania from IMG Energy Solutions. Tenaska currently operates approximately 22,000 MW of natural gas-fueled and renewables electric generation. We don’t know where the time has gone, but the last time we…
Read More...There is no doubt that recently issued regulations by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) aimed at reducing methane emissions are having a deleterious effect on the Marcellus industry in the Keystone State. The Bidenistas are proposing a huge tax on oil and gas drillers that will…
Read More...Both conventional and unconventional (shale) drillers in Pennsylvania were supposed to submit a new annual report to the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) on December 10 detailing volatile organic compound (VOC) and methane emissions from their operations over the past one-year period. Shortly before that deadline, the DEP suspended the due date. This past…
Read More...Big, breathless news coming from the do-nothing Josh Shapiro gubernatorial operation last Friday. THE MAN has made an edict to those waskily Marcellus drillers: You WILL disclose the chemicals you will use to frack and drill any given well you receive a permit for. Lights! Fireworks! Loud claps of thunder (and an echo) as if…
Read More...In December, Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office (IFO), the agency charged with providing revenue projections along with impartial and objective analysis of fiscal, economic, and budgetary issues for the citizens and legislature of Pennsylvania, provided its best guess as to how much revenue the PA impact fee (i.e., severance tax) will generate from shale wells drilled…
Read More...Pennsylvania House Bill (HB) 170, introduced early last year, would increase setback distances for shale wells from 500 feet to 2,500 feet — effectively killing any new shale well drilling anywhere in the state (see PA House Bill 170 Kills New Marcellus Drilling Using Setbacks). In June, Democrat Party bosses shut down action on HB…
Read More...From time to time, the issue of wells that need plugging appears in the news. We highlighted one such story earlier this week (see XTO Begins to Plug 4 Shale Wells in Butler County Starting Today). There is some confusion over the terms inactive, abandoned, and orphaned wells. What’s the difference? And how does this…
Read More...Whenever the government mandates which energy sources residents can and cannot use, residents lose. The government’s micromanaging of energy is a prescription for high prices and supply chain failures (i.e., blackouts). Yet leftists like Pennsylvania Rep. Danielle Friel Otten (a radical Democrat from the Philadelphia area) never seem to learn. She introduced a bill, House…
Read More...Horizontal directional drilling (HDD) is a form of trenchless drilling to install pipelines, like natural gas pipelines, underground without digging a big trench first. It uses directional drilling, similar to drilling a horizontal shale well, in order to install the pipeline. In 2018, Energy Transfer’s Sunoco Logisitics unit, which was building the Mariner East 2…
Read More...During a Pennsylvania House Republican Policy Committee hearing on strengthening rural communities held on Wednesday, Rep. Bud Cook (R-Waynesburg) didn’t hold back when assigning blame for why the state’s rural communities are losing population and experiencing economic growth. Cook said, “The overriding impediment is Governor Shapiro’s DEP,” referring to the Dept. of Environmental Protection. One…
Read More...