The Daily Digger

WEEK ENDING 01/25/20 New permits issued last week:   11  (Previous week:  2 )   +9 Total horizontal permits issued:  3184  (Previous week:  3184 )    +-0 Total horizontal wells drilled:  2711  (Previous week:  2711 )   +-0 Total horizontal wells producing:  2434  (Previous week:  2431 )   +3 Utica rig count:  11  (Previous week:  11 )   +-0

by Nicole Jacobs, Energy in Depth Rolling Stone  author Justin Nobel has been spending a lot of time in the Appalachian Basin recently, and not because some of the biggest bands in history will be touring here this year, as one would expect from the music magazine. Instead, Nobel has been conducting a  tour of his own , amplifying “Keep It In the Ground” research and messaging, and writing his  latest misleading hit piece  on the oil and natural gas industry. His latest article claims that the industry is knowingly exposing workers and communities to high levels of radiation through the produced water and solids that result from drilling. And while he peppers in statements from regulatory officials, the overall image he paints is a false one, of an unregulated industry, despite this being one of the most regulated industries in the country. Here are three key things to keep in mind when reading the  Rolling Stone  article: Fact #1: This isn’t the ...

WEEK ENDING 01/18/20 New permits issued last week:   2  (Previous week:  4 )   -2 Total horizontal permits issued:  3184  (Previous week:  3184 )    +-0 Total horizontal wells drilled:  2711  (Previous week:  2711 )   +-0 Total horizontal wells producing:  2431  (Previous week:  2423 )   +8 Utica rig count:  11  (Previous week:  11 )   +-0

From The Times Leader: For some of the nearly 50 people who turned out to view a documentary film screening, the film not only provided a new perspective about how widespread the plastic waste problem is worldwide — but it also validated their concerns about the proposed PTT Global Chemical America plant for Belmont County. The Ohio Valley citizens group, Concerned Ohio River Residents, made the educational documentary prerelease screening of “The Story of Plastic” available Saturday afternoon at the Grave Creek Mound Historical Site theater in Moundsville. The group invited dozens of invited local “decision makers” and politicians in an effort to showcase the global plastic pollution crisis that the world now faces, according to Bev Reed, an organizer of the group.  She said while the 90-minute film still has still not been released to the public by its creator, Deia Schlosberg, she is hopeful the film will be made available to the public as soon as possible. Reed said the fil...

From The Oklahoman: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday it has reached an agreement to end an enforcement action against Gulfport Energy that accused the company of violating air emissions standards at 17 well pad locations it operates in eastern Ohio’s Utica Basin.  EPA officials said the settlement, which includes an agreement by Gufport to pay a $1.7 million penalty, addresses Clean Air Act violations regulators assert they found at the locations during inspections they conducted in 2015.  The company, investigators found, failed to capture and control emissions from storage vessels on the pads.  It also failed to comply with associated inspection, record-keeping and reporting requirements related to operations at those locations. The violations were issued in December 2016. You can read the rest of this article by clicking here. 

From Law360: The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to review a Sixth Circuit ruling that a TC Energy Corp. unit didn’t need landowner permission to access an underground natural gas storage facility with a valid Federal Energy Regulatory Commission operating certificate.  Landowners whose property sits atop Columbia Gas Transmission LLC’s storage field near Medina, Ohio, claimed the Sixth Circuit wrongly held in July that the Natural Gas Act doesn’t require companies that hold FERC certificates for storage fields to acquire the property they need for those fields. That means companies have the right to use that land without getting the go-ahead from landowners first, the appeals court said.  In urging the Supreme Court to reject the landowners’ petition, Columbia argued that the dispute is a matter of state law, not the NGA, and that the landowners never even raised the federal law issue in the lower court.  The dispute stretches back to 2013, when 29 landowner...

From World Construction Network: Gemma Power Systems, a subsidiary of Argan, has secured an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services contract from Harrison Power to build the 1.08GW Harrison Energy Center in Ohio, US. Harrison Power’s parent firm EmberClear is developing the natural gas-fired power plant in Harrison County. Construction works are due to begin this year with commercial operations planned in the first quarter of 2023. Being developed at a total cost of $900m, the 1.08GW Harrison Energy Center It will be located 50 miles west of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the Village of Cadiz, Harrison County, Ohio. The project will be constructed in the Harrison County Industrial Park on a 100-acre site allocated for a power plant. It is expected to create nearly 600 construction jobs and 30 permanent jobs. EmberClear president and CEO Raj Suri said: “Harrison Energy Center will be a reliable, highly efficient world class power generating facility offering stab...