Nfm
- Thread starter Nittany Ned2
- Start date
Well, we know about the ties to Corbett.
I can't imagine - given the nature of that business - that he doesn't have a lot of ties to Pegula (ie Benson's "string-puller")
Pegula sold most of his holdings to Shell. But in June 2014, he sold $1.7 billion to American Energy Partners, the company founded by McClendon after he was forced out at Chesapeake.
Chesapeake was also a major sponsor at PSU, having major advertising/sponsorship on the jumbo-tron at Beaver Stadium. Not surprising since CHK has leases all over Pa. I know of no investigations into bid/price fixing on leases in Pa but there are several landowner lawsuits against CHK on royalties and lease violations, a lot that have occurred after he left CHK.
CHK's rep was so bad that many landowners would not even talk to their landmen....I know one landowner that insisted on a clause in their lease stating the lease can never be assigned to CHK or its affiliates.
BTW, Pegula's daughter is a pro tennis player. If you google her name there are a lot freaky photos that appear to be a different woman by the same name.
Chesapeake was also a major sponsor at PSU, having major advertising/sponsorship on the jumbo-tron at Beaver Stadium. Not surprising since CHK has leases all over Pa. I know of no investigations into bid/price fixing on leases in Pa but there are several landowner lawsuits against CHK on royalties and lease violations, a lot that have occurred after he left CHK.
CHK's rep was so bad that many landowners would not even talk to their landmen....I know one landowner that insisted on a clause in their lease stating the lease can never be assigned to CHK or its affiliates.
BTW, Pegula's daughter is a pro tennis player. If you google her name there are a lot freaky photos that appear to be a different woman by the same name.
Last edited:
Both Aubrey and Louis appear to have attended the same drivers-ed school.
----
The pipeline deal mentioned in your linked article was an inventive financing deal. CHK sold a pipeline for what appeared to be way more than it was worth and raised a lot of money it then used to pay off debts. But they agreed to pay very high fees to that company for at least five years, thus 'repaying' them for the high initial selling price. And CHK then deducted those fees from the landowner royalties as was permitted in the leases.
So CHK got a huge upfront payment, paid off debts, paid high fees over many years as a repayment for that high selling price, and deducted those fees from landowners. Have no idea of how legal it was.
I am sure that Corbutt took donations but that doesn't necessarily mean he was bought and paid for. And I have no idea if any BoT members had close ties to CHK, AEP, or McClendon. CHK moved into Pa after Range Resources announced its huge success of a Marcellus well drilled in 2004 so I am reasonably confident that CHK and/or McClendon had little dealings in Pa prior to 2005 or 2006. But that also doesn't mean they have not crossed paths in other endeavors. I just don't know.
Last edited:
-----
He crossed over a median strip and two lanes of traffic and hit the overpass pillar. I doubt it was suicide as that is a risky way to do it and put other people at risk. If your gonna suicide by car you would pick a less traveled road and hit a bridge or some object on your own side....I would think.
I am guessing it was a heart attack, stroke, seizure, or some other medical event. He was under tremendous stress as he was to turn himself in at 11 AM, two hours later. CNBC said reports say he was so broke that he couldn't post bail and would be jailed. And he had been through many major legal issues before, was tossed out of the company he founded, and had always came back bigger and stronger. Not the type to give up. But then again, this was a really big hole he was in and may have given up. We will probably never know unless the autopsy shows a definitive medical event.
Keith Eckel is a shale trustee. I don't know which particular operator/s he's in bed with.
Surma was a shale guy and I suppose that by extension we can assume that his puppet, D'Andrea, is too.
And of course Tom Corbett was totally in bed with Chesapeake, so any of his appointees are suspect.
They are all in the Jeopardy! category "Reprehensible human beings with no moral compass." Given the staggering pieces of excrement on the BoT, McClendon only was worth $400 in the Double Jeopardy round.
I watched Terry Pegula's daughter win a match at the us open this past yr on a side ct. Didn't see Terry or Kim
It's a 2 lane road (1 northbound, 1 southbound) - and not very busy. Not far (1 mile or so) from one of my favorite places to get the hell away from humans for a few hours. May not have been a suicide - or a Krusty the Clown type disappearance - but my office's General Disarray spent all day screaming "Simpsons did it!"
-
How about some particulars? I don't know what a 'shale trustee' means. What was/is Surma's connection to shale?
no extraction tax, for one thing- they pay one in other states, but get a free ride in PA
Pa has the highest corp tax in the nation, high personal income tax compared to Texas, motel taxes for workers, and high sales taxes.
Texas and many oil states have no income tax or corp tax. Additionally Pa has impact fees that generated an average of over $200 million/year...about the same that a severance tax would generate under current prices of nat gas. (In much of Pa, nat gas at wellhead is selling for under $1.25/MCF) And the impact fees go to the municipalities where the drilling is impacting them offsetting the costs to those municipalities.
Pa is also much more difficult to do business in not only for the taxes and regulations but also because of the fragmented land ownership. In the Midwest, much of the land is held in huge ranches of single owners, often 20,000 to 30,000 acres. Much easier to work with one owner instead of a thousand.
--
You are correct. Thought I heard it was a divided road but I was wrong. Thanks for correction.
From the EIA weekly report;
Marcellus prices down slightly. At Dominion South in northwest Pennsylvania, prices began at $1.05/MMBtu last Wednesday and ended the report week at $1.02 yesterday. On Transco's Leidy Line in northern Pennsylvania, prices mirrored this movement, falling from $1.04/MMBtu last Wednesday to $1.02 yesterday.
At $1/MCF, a severance tax won't collect much. Adding taxes now will reduce drilling even more, losing jobs and other related taxes. A severance tax now may result in lower total revenues for the state.
Marcellus prices down slightly. At Dominion South in northwest Pennsylvania, prices began at $1.05/MMBtu last Wednesday and ended the report week at $1.02 yesterday. On Transco's Leidy Line in northern Pennsylvania, prices mirrored this movement, falling from $1.04/MMBtu last Wednesday to $1.02 yesterday.
At $1/MCF, a severance tax won't collect much. Adding taxes now will reduce drilling even more, losing jobs and other related taxes. A severance tax now may result in lower total revenues for the state.
yeah, it's too late now- but Corbutt left a lot of money on the table for his buddies to scoop up
But if severance taxes had been factored into the original leases, a lot of the money-losing drilling wouldn't have been done in the first place, making a mess out of the PA economy & environment.
I know that you have a dog in this fight, but I don't (don't live in PA) and this business is not sustainable. Never has been, never will be. There are better ways to fix the PA economy. Resources are inherently cyclical and were always a bad bet.
Which is much ado about another subject. Is Chesapeake a Pennsylvania based corporation.? I doubt it. If I extract minerals and pose expenses upon the state of Utah and don't pay an extraction tax then the people running utari idiots. Likewise davai extract minerals in Pennsylvania. My corporation is a Florida corporation operating in multiple states I don't pay corporate taxes in those other states. All about you stated may well be true but it is not an excuse for not getting an extraction tax out of a natural resource consumer from outside of your state. Corruption is on the other hand.
--------
Appears you missed the part where they pay impact fees for every well drilled and the money goes to where it was drilled. And the total impacts fees are around $200 million/yr, which is about what a severance tax would get. They also pay many other taxes. Pa has the highest corp taxes in the country at 9.9% Several E & Ps are located here and are at a serious disadvantage because of those high taxes.
Other states have severance taxes but no or little corp and/or personal income taxes. I would like to see a study showing total taxes paid in Pa compared to that paid in those high severance tax states. And if Pa institutes a severance tax, then they should lower corp & personal taxes so that Pa businesses can compete better. It would also encourage more to locate here and help people that want to start businesses here.
----
Severance taxes are not part of the leases, they are state generated and collected. Companies drilled here because there are huge reserves here. They were so successful they drove prices down....classic O & G cycle. It will go back up.
As for the 'mess' they made of the economy, they created tens thousands of jobs, paid hundreds of millions in taxes, paid huge amounts to landowners in lease and royalty payments, saving farms and making many farmers into millionaires, sparked the steel/pipeline industry, sparked the legal/financial industries, and probably pumped a trillion dollars into Pa over the last ten years (thats only $200 billion/yr), probably more. If it all stopped today and they never spent another penny, Pa still benefited. Who else was going to put in any where near that kind of monetary infusion?
All this occurred when the rest of the country went through a huge economic downturn. Without this huge infusion, Pa would have been much worse off.
Additionally, it helped drive down heating bills, electric bills, gasoline and diesel costs, and helped clean the air which benefited each and every one of us.
Try as you might, no one will understand "impact fee" versus "severance tax." The narrative has been set in stone that gas companies don't pay taxes because there is no severance tax. There is no incentive for a Philly guy to understand the difference since the impact fee goes mainly to the impacted counties--what's in it for him? While you do a good job posing the main question which is how much tax is fair and equitable, you have the same problem that I have in that I don't know the overall outcome of the various taxes.
Suffice it to say that gas companies do pay taxes. Corbett created a severance tax but named it "impact fee" to try to satisfy his friends and some constituents. Remember that he promised no severance tax when he ran for his first term, so he kind of got sneaky. The problem is that Harrisburg and Philly want control of that money and the only way to do that is with a severance tax.
Was it worth all the environment destruction it has caused that will never be corrected.
==
Big bingo to that. Exactly the issue. Harrisburg and Philly politicians don't control it so it doesn't count.
----------
In every human endeavor there are environmental consequences. But I would be very confident that the overall affect of nat gas drilling has been to the positive for Pa and the country. A few water wells may have been damaged in Dimmock but that has yet to be determined according to both the Pa DEP and federal EPA. There have been other problems, almost all of which were re-mediated. Disturbances for pads and pipelines, chemical spills, some gases emitted. But most problems were early on and very issues have happened in the last five years. Every year the industry gets better.
But nat gas has also greatly reduced coal burning, cleaning our air. Did you know that the US is the only western country that has met the Kyoto Protocols on reducing CO2, even though we didn't sign on? The EPA has said that while better fleet fuel mileage helped there is no doubt that the biggest cause is the switch from coal to nat gas. Reducing coal burning has also reduced mercury, arsenic, cadmium, particulates, ozone and more. Coal is also a big source of methane which why they explode so often and why mines are heavily vented......to the atmosphere. Coal mining is very destructive, especially to water sources. An awful of rivers run red and are void of most life due to coal mine waste. Most likely, our water is cleaner due to reduced coal mining. And as more vehicles convert to run on nat gas, emissions from diesel and gasoline will be reduced much further.
Other benefits; I was always told that people struggling financially have higher rates of depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, spouse abuse, violence. Poor and unemployed don't have health insurance and have higher rates of disease, premature births, premature deaths. Nat gas has a history of high paying jobs with full benefits which reduces all those negatives. It seems only fair to consider all the good along with the bad that makes headlines.
I am certainly for strong regulations and solid monitoring of activities to keep them honest. I have seen poor practices, especially early on. I have also talked to filed workers that saw a lot of corners being cut in both environmental and safety issues.
Similar threads
