Study

There has been little debate in the Pennsylvania General Assembly about Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposal for a 5% severance tax on natural gas production as lawmakers work to pass a budget by July 1, according to a top trade group with a heavy lobbying presence at the state capitol.

There has been little debate in the Pennsylvania General Assembly about Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's proposal for a 5% severance tax on natural gas production as lawmakers work to pass a budget by July 1, according to a top trade group with a heavy lobbying presence at the state capitol.

An industry-backed study of methane emissions from natural gas pipeline and storage infrastructure has found that the majority of measured emissions came from only a handful of the sites studied. This suggests that such emissions generally result from faulty equipment and are not endemic to natural gas infrastructure.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) released the results of what it believes to be “the most comprehensive radiological study of the oil and gas industry ever conducted,” finding in most cases that the radioactivity of shale rock is of little danger to the public and workers.

Dual-fuel capability “has a much lower cost for a new combined-cycle plant” than firm natural gas transportation for power generators in the Eastern Connection, and for simple-cycle plants the difference is even more pronounced, according to a study summarized in the last of eight Gas-Electric Coordination Quarterly Update reports issued by FERC Thursday.

Population change varied notably across four Pennsylvania counties and in nearby cities and towns that are home to a majority of the state’s Marcellus Shale development from 2000 to 2010, suggesting such trends are not linked to the level of economic activities in the areas examined, according to a new study.

On average, North Dakota oil production, which surged past the 1 million b/d mark earlier this year, will continue to grow steadily at a rate of about 18,000 b/d each month through 2019, according to a study completed in September for the state legislature.

A study published in the journal Seismological Research Letters suggests that horizontal hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in Ohio’s Utica Shale triggered a series of 400 small earthquakes in Harrison County over a two-month period last year.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) has awarded a Pennsylvania-based environmental consulting firm with a contract to coordinate and oversee a wide-ranging study for the analysis of methane in groundwater samples.