Posts Tagged ‘gas’

The law team at Dougherty, Leventhal and Price, LLP has filed a Federal Lawsuit this week against a drilling company and its’ driver who caused a violent accident causing multiple injuries and a fatality.  A Mack Truck loaded with approximately 3,000 gallons of mud was overweight and driving at speeds greater than posted. As a result, it failed to stop at a stop sign. The driver turned into an oncoming lane and violently impacted a Subaru legacy carrying two passengers seriously injuring one and killing the other.

There is no end to the debate on hydrofracking. Opponents are as enraged about the idea in New York as are supporters determined. Both sides regularly devolve in arguements to emotional bouts of illogic, thrusting feelings about other issues into the fray. Worst is when facts are subsititued for partisan political positions.

The twelve lawyers at DLP continue to review and handle serious Pennsylvania truck accident cases.  Increased truck volume caused by the burgeoning gas drilling industry has led to an increase in Pennsylvania truck accidents.  DLP recently resolved a Pennsylvania truck accident case for 1.75 million dollars.

DLP was recently retained by a clint working in the natural gas drilling industry who was involved in a serious automobile accident in Susquehanna County.  DLP is currently investigating the matter on behalf of its new client.  The twelve lawyers at DLP handle serious truck accident and automobile accident cases throughout Nortest  and Central Pennsylvania.

Canonsburg, Pa. – The myth that those developing Marcellus Shale natural gas resources are not paying taxes just became even more difficult to peddle by those opposed to responsible, job-creating energy production in the Commonwealth. In fact, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue, the Marcellus Shale has been, and continues to be, a major tax windfall for Pennsylvania – one that is becoming even more lucrative every year. Following are a few highlights of the department’s latest report:

• Pa. Dept. of Revenue: “Drilling Industry Paid More Than $1 Billion in State Taxes Since 2006, Tax Payments in First Quarter of 2011 Already Surpass 2010 Totals”: At the direction of Governor Tom Corbett, the Department of Revenue today released an analysis showing that companies engaged in and related to natural gas drilling activities in Pennsylvania have paid more than $1.1 billion in state taxes since 2006. Those taxes came on top of the billions of dollars of infrastructure investments, royalty payments and permit fees paid by the industry. The Revenue Department’s analysis, which breaks out tax payments from oil and gas companies and their affiliates through April 2011, indicates that 857 of these companies have already paid $238.4 million in capital stock/foreign franchise tax, corporate net income tax, sales/use tax and employer withholding to the state in 2011. These figures from the first quarter of this year already exceed by nearly $20 million the total tax payments made in all of 2010. (Dept. of Revenue Release, 5/211)

• “Pa. Revenue Department offers view of Marcellus Shale tax payments”: It has become the billion-dollar question in the Capitol: How much, exactly, do the big natural-gas drilling companies pay in taxes? The state Department of Revenue on Monday weighed in with its official version: $1.1 billion since 2006. That figure includes an array of taxes, from corporate taxes and sales tax the companies paid on goods to the taxes they withheld from employees. … Revenue Secretary Dan Meuser [said] “it provides the full level of data that can be offered. … And it tells us that the Marcellus gas industry is paying taxes, they are paying their fair share.” (Philadelphia Inquirer,5/3/11)

• “Natural gas drilling helping state’s economy”: The [Revenue] department’s analysis also identified $214.2 million in personal income taxes paid since 2006 attributable to Marcellus Shale lease payments to individuals, royalty income and sales of assets. (CBS 21, 5/2/11)

• “Pennsylvania revenue official says drillers pay big taxes”: That [Department of Revenue] data, dating to 2006, credits the drilling industry with sending more than $219 million to state coffers last year. The total includes two key business taxes — the corporate net income tax and the capital stock and franchise tax — as well as sales and employee withholdings that companies submit. An early look at this year’s taxes already shows more than $238 million in payments from companies extracting natural gas and their direct suppliers, said Acting Revenue Secretary Daniel Meuser. In an interview, he said the data showed that gas drillers “pay the same level of taxes as any business in the state.” … Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition. She said that while it didn’t include millions of dollars spent in permit fees and road repairs, the analysis “sets the record straight” on tax payments. (Post-Gazette, 5/3/11)

• “Revenue Department: $1.1B in taxes from natural gas firms since ‘06”: The state Department of Revenue has waded into the controversy over how much the Marcellus Shale industry contributes to state tax revenue. “[C]ompanies engaged in and related to natural gas drilling activities in Pennsylvania have paid more than $1.1 billion in state taxes since 2006,” the department said in a statement Monday afternoon. “Those taxes came on top of the billions of dollars of infrastructure investments, royalty payments and permit fees paid by the industry,” the department said. (Central Penn Business Journal, 5/3/11)

READ MORE

• Pa. Chamber of Business and Industry: Shoddy reporting underscores group’s ‘say anything’ campaign for higher taxes

• Commonwealth Foundation: Fact-Checking on Natural Gas Taxes in PA

• Wilkes Barre Times-Leader: Tax paid by drillers disputed‎

• Washington Observer-Reporter: Report on gas industry’s taxes flawed

• Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Group admits errors in energy tax report

• Williamsport Sun-Gazette: “The natural gas industry pumped an estimated $2 billion into the state funding till last year”

• Penn State Study: State, Local Tax Revenues Soar in PA’s Marcellus Shale Counties

Copyright: Marcellus Shale Coalition.org

Bands play at Brews Brothers West at a fundraiser for Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition.

By Jerry Lynott [email protected]
Business Writer

LUZERNE – Half came for the music, half came in support of efforts to protect the region’s water and land against potential harm from the natural gas drilling industry, and the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition thanked them all.

The coalition held a $10-a-person fundraiser Sunday night at Brews Brothers West and approximately 300 people attended, said spokeswoman Paula Chaiken.

The bands Southern Sky and As Is performed. XCountry reunited for the event. The money raised will help with the coalition’s public awareness campaign.

“We’d love to do more billboards” and other forms of advertising, said Chaiken.

Two issues top the coalition’s list of concerns: the proposed location of a natural gas compressor station near the Dallas School District campus on Hildebrandt Road, and the possible construction of a treatment facility at the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority for waste water from hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” used to extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale formation.

“If they want to do it, it should be located where there aren’t population centers,” Chaiken said of the compressor.

The treatment facility would bring heavy traffic of tanker trucks through the neighborhoods around the sanitary authority in Hanover Township, added coalition and XCountry member Scott Cannon. In addition, the sanitary authority is located in a flood plain along the Susquehanna River and he wondered what would happen to the “fracking” fluid in the event the Susquehanna River spills over the levee system protecting the Wyoming Valley.

There has been numerous accidents from drilling that have contaminated the water and soil, said Tom Jiunta, founder and president of the coalition.

“We wouldn’t put up with it with any other industry,” said Jiunta.

Even though Encana Oil & Gas USA Inc. decided not to continue drilling in Luzerne County, it doesn’t mean it’s over, he said. People who signed leases with Encana are looking to get other companies interested in them, said Jiunta.

State Rep. Phyllis Mundy, D-Kingston, attended the fundraiser and said she supported the coalition’s efforts to alert people to the possible dangers of natural gas drilling. Mundy said she introduced a number of bills including calling for a one-year moratorium on drilling and buffer zones around reservoirs. She planned to reintroduce them again and attach them as amendments to any legislation dealing with the Marcellus Shale.

Jerry Lynott, a Times Leader staff writer, can be contacted at 570 829-7237.

Copyright: Times Leader

PENNSYLVANIA SO far missed out on an estimated $121 million in revenue from theMarcellus Shale natural gas industry, and the tally spurts higher with each day that drillers siphon the resource from below our forests and farms.

How much more money will we lose? 250 million? A billion?

How much can we afford to lose?

A recent survey suggests that most state residents favor a so-called severance tax on natural gas drillers, a levy that is common in major gas-producing states. And those states don’t offer the geographical advantage of Pennsylvania, which is close to the lucrative East Coast cities where natural gas is piped, saving gas producers big bucks in transportation costs.

The state Legislature last year promised as part of its belated budget deal to enact a severance tax by October. It broke that promise.

Results of the survey conducted after Christmas by Susquehanna Polling & Research show widespread support for a gas tax from people in most parts of Pennsylvania – except in Gov.-elect Tom Corbett’s house. Corbett, whose campaign tallied more than $1 million in gas industry contributions, steadfastly parrots the industry spin, suggesting a tax would be a drag on the industry’s growth and stymie job gains.

His contention is unlikely; these are not mom-and-pop drilling outfits. Unless you consider Exxon Mobil Corp (whose stock ticker symbol is XOM) a mom or a pop.

Debated for much of 2010, the gas tax is no longer solely a political issue. As the range and number of new wells grows, it is a matter of public safety for people who live – and will continue to live – in drilling territory. It also is becoming a financial imperative for this cash-strapped state.

The tax should be collected from drilling companies to pay for possible short- and long-term environmental damages and to compensate communities such as those in Wyoming County where the industry’s impacts are seen and felt.

A majority of Republican respondents to the recent survey conducted for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper say they favor the tax. If you do, too, express your thoughts to state Sen. Lisa Baker, R-Lehman Township, state Sen. John Yudichak, D-Nanticoke, or Shavertown resident Dan Meuser, Corbett’s newly appointed secretary of the Department of Revenue.

Someone needs to get Corbett’s ear and to convince him to change his foolhardy, holdout stance on the gas tax.

Copyright: Times Leader

MATT HUGHES [email protected]

Just two days after natural gas exploration company Encana announced it is pulling out of the Back Mountain, Realtor Bob Cook said property owners have already called him about putting large tracts of land back on the market.

“I believe we’re going to see more vacant lands available at more reasonable prices than before, and I believe we’re going to see more people coming to the Back Mountain to live, which is going to stimulate the market,” Cook said.

Cook is a life-long Harveys Lake resident and has represented real estate buyers and sellers for more than 20 years. He is a realtor associate at Prudential Poggi and Jones Realtors, Shavertown, and specializes in properties at Harveys Lake and the Back Mountain.

He said that the presence of Encana, which leased more than 25,000 acres in Luzerne County and drilled exploratory natural gas wells in Lake and Fairmount townships, brought uncertainty to the Back Mountain real estate market, and that the driller’s announcement Thursday that the company will leave the county because it failed to find commercial quantities of natural gas at its wells will bring stability back to the market.

“I feel things have definitely been uncertain in the overall market, and the natural gas industry left all the more uncertainty here,” Cook said. “Once you start drilling in the county, then you open a whole can of worms about how many wells are going to be drilled, and is it going to be my neighbor.”

Now that Encana is gone, Cook said home values in the region are likely to stabilize and increase, while the value of undeveloped land will likely decrease as associated gas rights have apparently lost much of their value.

Cook said shale gas drilling offered a “mixed blessing” to the Back Mountain Real Estate Market.
“It was a double-edged sword,” Cook said. “On one hand, it would bring in a lot of jobs to the area and stimulate the economy, so that people could buy more houses. The negative side was the environmental issues that come with any type of new industry that hasn’t proven itself 100 percent safe when it comes to the environment.”

“I did have people who did not want to move to the Back Mountain, the upper Luzerne County area, because they were scared of the gas drilling because of what happened in the Dimock area,” he added.

For himself, Cook, who also works from a lakefront home office at Harvey’s Lake, said he is happy to see Encana pack its bags for the time being.

“I personally feel that the environment is more important than the monetary value of the gas,” Cook said. “If you see fish floating in Harveys Lake …You’re killing the goose that laid the golden egg.”

Copyright: Times Leader

W HOOSH! THAT giant sucking sound heard around Luzerne County last week was Encana Oil & Gas USA Inc., pulling up stakes and exiting the state.

As it rapidly withdraws from the county’s Back Mountain region and the commonwealth, Encana carries in its draft a flurry of emotions, not the least of which are certain residents’ dashed hopes. The natural gas firm and its partner company, Whitmar Exploration Co., had drilled two exploratory wells in this territory and recently deemed it unlikely to produce sufficient amounts of natural gas to be profitable.

So long, land leases. (The companies had signed renewable deals for the rights to more than 25,000 acres in the county).

See ya, royalty checks. (They remain but a fantasy, for now.)

In many corners of the county, the gas company’s decision drew a massive sigh of relief. Area residents rightfully worried that widespread drilling might cause havoc in communities unprepared for the industry’s arrival. In particular, they wondered if it would do lasting harm to drinking water supplies.

Residents who have been anxiously eyeing the industry’s actions here, for whatever reasons, would be wise not to view the latest development as a final act, but rather a lengthy intermission. (A moratorium, if you will.)

It seems reasonable to conclude that one day other natural gas companies or changing conditions, either in fuel prices or technology, might put Luzerne County back in play.

Regardless of whether that day arrives, let’s use this reprieve in the Marcellus Shale melodrama as an opportunity for personal introspection and public action. Did our state, county and local governments respond appropriately to the industry’s potential threats, or its possible economic upside? If not, why not? What weaknesses have been exposed that can be addressed? Was cooperation evident among governing bodies?

Are adequate safeguards in place for our water supplies today? What about tomorrow?

Were our decisions related to the natural gas industry motivated mostly by self-interest, civic good or something else entirely?

The next time drilling companies, or another outside force, begin to influence our communities, how can we be better prepared to handle the situation smoothly, swiftly and collaboratively?

Copyright: Times Leader