Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Senate approved Senate Bill (SB) 1058 that would repeal the state’s participation in the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an illegal carbon tax enacted via executive order by then Gov. Tom Wolf in 2019 (see Gov. Wolf Goes Bonkers: EO Destroying Gas-Fired Elec, Carbon Tax). Republican Senators voted in favor, and…
Read More...In yet another attempt to deflect attention away from Kamala Harris’ extreme position on fracking (she wanted to ban it completely everywhere in 2019), mainstream news continues to publish stories on other Pennsylvania energy topics. For example, yesterday, the New York Times published a story with this headline: “Big Energy Issue in Pennsylvania Is Low…
Read More...Hidden in last Friday’s weekly Baker Hughes official rig count is a big story happening in the Marcellus/Utica. From the 30,000-foot level, Friday’s latest rig count report appeared just fine. The national rig count, which counts all oil and gas rigs, added an astonishing eight rigs to the count after languishing for months — the…
Read More...The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) wants to spend some of the $214+ million it’s receiving from the federal government’s Phase 1 & 2 program to plug orphaned conventional oil and gas wells on a research project to determine the potential health impacts of living near such wells. You may recall the flawed (totally…
Read More...Last Thursday (Sept. 12), the Pennsylvania State Senate Republican Policy Committee held a hearing in Pittsburgh to explore ways to simplify and make more effective PA’s expanded abandoned and orphan conventional oil and gas well plugging programs. As a reminder, abandoned wells are those with no production for at least 12 months in a row….
Read More...It’s really fascinating to watch this presidential election. Yes, we’ve promised to try and keep the politics to a minimum, but we must report on things we notice that have the potential to affect the shale drilling industry in general, and the Marcellus/Utica in particular. Here’s an issue we cannot keep silent about. As we’ve…
Read More...Once a month, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) analysts issue the agency’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), their best guess about where energy prices and production will go in the next 12 months. Starting in June, the EIA axed its monthly Drilling Productivity Report that focused on shale plays and instead rolled it into the…
Read More...A very big story is unfolding in the Marcellus/Utica, and nobody else is talking about it. There is a major reshuffling of rigs in the M-U, with Pennsylvania losing active rigs and West Virginia picking them up. Two weeks ago, PA dropped from 21 to 18 active rigs, the lowest count it has had in…
Read More...In 2019, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) began formulating new regulations for intrastate pipelines transporting gasoline, petroleum, crude oil, and natural gas liquids like ethane. In July 2021, the PUC finally published a draft of new regulations (see PA PUC Proposes New Regs for Pipelines—Landmen Must be Licensed). The onerous regulations landed with a…
Read More...Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) released its latest quarterly Natural Gas Production Report for April through June 2024 (full copy below). There were 63 new horizontal wells spud (drilled) in 2Q24, a decrease of 26 wells (-29%) compared to 2Q23. That number was also down significantly (37%) from the 100 wells spud in…
Read More...In 2019, when then-Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced he would unilaterally force the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon tax scheme aimed at forcing coal- and gas-fired plants out of business, he claimed the tax would only amount to a few dollars per allowance (or “short ton”) of CO2 (see…
Read More...In 2015, a group of nearly 60 landowners in northeastern Pennsylvania who had leased their land for fracking filed a lawsuit against Chesapeake Energy, Anadarko, Statoil (now Equinor), Mitsui E&P, and Access Midstream (later bought by Williams), alleging the companies had improperly deducted post-production costs (e.g., gas gathering and transportation expenses) from royalties owed to…
Read More...What’s your price, Pennsylvania oil and gas industry? Are you willing to sell yourselves to the Democrats for $152 million (revised down to $114 million) in bribes? How about if Biden-Harris sweetens the pot and rushes a check for $76 million to the state, as they did yesterday? Can you not see through this sleazy…
Read More...The big news (for us) with the weekly Baker Hughes rig count is that last week, Pennsylvania laid down its use of three active drilling rigs, resulting in the lowest rig count in the state in 2 1/2 years. PA now operates 18 active rigs, down from 21 the week prior. The last time PA…
Read More...There is no excerpt because this is a protected post. The post PA Climate Zealots Spit and Sputter Over Harris’ Fracking Flip-Flop first appeared on Marcellus Drilling News. This post appeared first on Marcellus Drilling News.
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