War has broken out between West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania over who can give away more tax dollars to Shell Oil.

Tim Puko at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review uncovered a $56 million mistake in the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue’s reporting of personal income tax (PIT) collections attributed to Marcellus Shale drilling for last year.

Back in May, the Department estimated that taxable Marcellus Shale royalties generated $102.7 million in PIT collections in 2010. Now the Department says that figure is a tad lower — $46.2 million, a decrease of $56.5 million or over 55% from what was reported six months ago. To quote Britney Spears, “Oops!”

Things will start to move fast next week as the Pennsylvania Senate votes on its Marcellus bill.

One might consider the slashing and burning of Pennsylvania’s budget a necessary condition for spurring job growth — new jobs — in the Keystone State. Taxes on capital and profits allegedly deter investment. Investment in plant includes jobs as an unavoidable consequence. One might consider these things if one were a Republican! Now that I have reiterated the orthodox take on this matter, I wish to point out that the Keystone Research Center reports that the Marcellus Shale jobs premium has been modest so far.

A relatively new natural gas drilling technique – hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” – is being rushed into wide scale use with the same heedless abandon as deep water oil drilling. Activists are trying to put the brakes on it before fracking has the chance to produce its own version of last year’s BP oil spill.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Homeland Security has employed an entity called the Institute for Terrorism Research and Response to monitor the web traffic of anti-drilling activists in that state. The effort was purportedly started to fulfill national requirements to protect critical infrastructure.

Okay boys and girls, it’s time for a little more “energy-based geology” courtesy of your Aunt Toby. You didn’t know that I know anything about geology, did you? Well, I had better since I live smack dab in an area which given the amount of natural gas formation there is, has the potential to make the BP oil volcano pollution look like small change.

The good news in the latest episode of “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution”: 1000 people got taught how to make chicken stir fry in a massive week-long cook-a-thon and flash mob attack (or, at least that’s what I think they called it) AND the big noise at the local radio station is finally on Jamie’s side (the DJ was #1000 in the cooking classes; even the Governor of West Virginia was earlier).

The bad news: FRENCH FRIES ARE STILL CONSIDERED A QUALIFYING VEGETABLE FOR A REIMBURSABLE MEAL. Salad, on the other hand, is ‘optional’. People, we have GOT to do something about school lunch guidelines in this country.

Anyone else? Any good news in your area?

For those of you who have not yet heard, there is problem here in the US Northeast not too different from the ANWR problem in Alaska. There is a formation of shale underground called the Marcellus Shale. This shale contains a tremendous amount of natural gas….