Governor

Pennsylvania State Sen. Scott Wagner, who owns a waste-hauling business in south-central part of the state, has won the Republican primary to challenge Democratic incumbent Gov. Tom Wolf in the November general election. Wagner, whose acerbic style has been compared to President Trump’s, is a supporter of the natural gas industry, advocating to cut regulations and pushing back against repeated calls from Wolf to implement a severance tax on production. Wagner beat two other Republican candidates with about 44% of the vote. Wolf began his first term in office in 2015.

Democrat Richard Cordray and Republican Mike DeWine will faceoff to be Ohio’s next governor in the November general election after they won their respective party primaries by wide margins. DeWine, who is the state’s attorney general, ousted Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor with roughly 60% of the vote. Cordray, who once served as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under President Obama, beat runner-up Dennis Kucinich with about 62% of the vote. DeWine, a moderate Republican, has heaped praise on the oil and gas industry and the role Utica Shale development has played in the economy. Cordray has said little about energy issues, but scoffed at Kucinich’s call to ban all oil and gas drilling in the state.

Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia have extended for another three years a cooperative agreement to promote the region’s shale gas resources and create more economic opportunities.

Western governors are giving the Trump administration some feedback, and it is not all favorable, regarding the president’s executive orders on the handling of federal lands — on and offshore.

Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan this week signed the state’s proposed hydraulic fracturing (fracking) ban into law, a move that was expected after he reversed his position to come out against the practice in a pronouncement last month.

Among seven resolutions passed on Tuesday, the Western Governors’ Association (WGA) adopted strong states-rights stances in two of them, regarding the need for statutory changes in the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) and future policies aimed at energy use and development during the conclusion of the association’s three-day annual meeting in Jackson, WY.

A bipartisan group of governors from 17 states on Tuesday announced the formation of a clean energy accord that they see as a multi-state economic development tool.

After securing pledges of commitment to the Alaska LNG project from North Slope producers BP plc and ConocoPhillips, Gov. Bill Walker has dropped his plan to introduce legislation to create a reserves tax during a special session of the state legislature now in progress.

Despite the expectation that New York's top environmental regulator is days from announcing a ban on high-volume hydraulic fracturing…