Operators and investors are more concerned than ever about the remaining inventory of drillable locations. Who has it? Where is it? Will it be economic? The North American inventory rankings by shale play are always of interest. Enverus Intelligence Research (EIR), a subsidiary of Enverus, recently issued a report that ranks the plays by the…
Read More...A civil war in the Pennsylvania environmental movement is not getting any attention from mainstream media. Why are we not surprised? We told you about the civil war earlier this week (see PA Antis Split Over Issue of Carbon Capture & Sequestration). One set of environmentalist wacko groups, including the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, Environmental Defense…
Read More...Permitting in Pennsylvania overseen by the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has been a hot mess for years. A Chapter 102 Erosion and Sedimentation permit sometimes takes two, three, or 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…
Read More...The Heinz Endowments, the “legacy” of former Senator and Heinz ketchup baron John Heinz (a Republican!), continues to fund virulent, wildly left anti-fossil fuel groups. Two days ago, Heinz announced another $9.3 million in grants. The vast majority of the money was given to groups that actively attack the Marcellus industry, including PennFuture ($400,000), PennEnvironment…
Read More...In March, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro traveled to Scranton, PA, to announce a proposal to “immediately pull Pennsylvania out of a multi-state carbon cap-and-trade program” (the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI) and instead enroll PA in its very own RGGI-like carbon tax program (see PA Gov. Shapiro Proposes Own Version of Marcellus-Killing Carbon…
Read More...Last Friday, MDN told you about a problem brewing that will block new hydrogen projects from getting built in the Marcellus/Utica (see Biden IRS 45V Tax Rule Endangers Hydrogen Hub Projects in M-U). It’s an obscure tax rule known as the 45V tax credit, part of the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The Bidenistas at…
Read More...For months, MDN has told you about a problem brewing that will block new hydrogen projects from getting built in the Marcellus/Utica. It’s an obscure tax rule known as the 45V tax credit, part of the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The Bidenistas at the White House, Treasury Department, and Dept. of Energy proposed a…
Read More...Only in the dysfunctional Josh Shapiro administration. Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced it had added a Customer Experience Management Advisory Council (CXMAC) to advise the DEP’s Acting Secretary and so-called Chief Customer Experience Officer on strategies and improvements to enhance service delivery to the public. The thing is, none of the…
Read More...Did you know that the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) is responsible for processing and issuing some 800 different types of permits? Does that not seem a bit excessive? (Is there a permit for applying for a permit?) Being responsible for issuing 800 permits sure sounds like government run amok. Big government. PA State…
Read More...Every now and again, the liberal Democrat editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette publish an unsigned editorial (from the editors) that surprises us. Yesterday was another such instance when Post-Gazette editors said Pennsylvania should leverage frack wastewater to extract lithium, which can be used to make electric vehicle batteries for Joementia’s EV fantasies. The editors cited…
Read More...Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) released its latest quarterly Natural Gas Production Report for January through March 2024 (full copy below). There were 100 new horizontal wells spud (drilled) in 1Q24, a decrease of 20 wells (-16.7%) compared to 1Q23. That number was also down from the 110 wells spud in 4Q23. This…
Read More...A new scientific study published in the June issue of Science of the Total Environment by two Penn State researchers confirms what everyone has known for the last 13 years: Recycling brine (frack wastewater) and releasing that recycled brine into groundwater supplies is not a good idea. The researchers sampled freshwater mussels downstream from a…
Read More...One of the aspects of the Austin Master Services (AMS) story (from Ohio) that captures people’s attention is that the frack waste at the facility contains drill cuttings, some of it with a low level of radioactivity. The headline-grabbing media touts that aspect of the story, overplaying just how “radioactive” it actually is. “OMG! If…
Read More...Yeah, the bottom pretty much fell out of the rig count last week, both nationally and for the Marcellus/Utica region. We’re hitting new lows with both counts. For the M-U, Pennsylvania stayed the same with 21 active rigs, but Ohio lost one rig, and West Virginia lost two rigs last week, for a net loss…
Read More...We’ve had more than a few MDN readers pass along links from recent mainstream media stories about the treasure trove of lithium available “beneath Pennsylvania” in the state’s brine (shale wastewater) production. Which makes us a little bit crazy and amuses us at the same time because we’ve been reporting on this story since 2019!…
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