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New Condensate Processing Coming to Utica/Marcellus from Ergon

coming soonNew condensate processing is on the way later this year from Ergon, Inc.–a company headquartered in Mississippi but with refineries and processing facilities in Ohio and West Virginia (and operations that include western Pennsylvania, Kentucky and New York). Ergon announced yesterday the company has spent over $75 million in the past two years to upgrade facilities, and continues to spend. Coming later this year is a 10,000 barrel per day condensate stabilization facility in Marietta, OH. Coming next year, the same kind of facility (also 10,000 bbl/d) in Newell, WV…
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Federal Court Dismisses Doctor Lawsuit re Act 13 “Gag Rule”

The lawsuit brought by seven selfish towns against Pennsylvania’s Act 13 drilling law has had more twists and turns than a back road in the Pocono Mountains. The litigious towns, plus a doctor, sued over various provisions in the Act 13 law. The towns didn’t like being told they couldn’t zone drilling out of existence within their borders, and the doctor didn’t like being told he couldn’t blab drillers’ trade secrets all over the place. So it went to PA’s Supreme Court and they ruled in favor of the towns, but sent parts of the lawsuit back to a lower court, including the doctor’s portion (see Act 13 Goes Back to Lower Court, Disturbing Comments from Judge). A second lawsuit was filed by a different doctor along the same lines (so-called “gag rule”)…
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Anti Groups Seek to Help Those with Utica Drilling Grievances

Live in Ohio and feel like those big, nasty, greedy shale drillers have screwed you out of your version of the American dream? Feel like rent on your dumpy apartment is sky high because of an influx of “foreigners” (from Texas and Oklahoma) snapping up apartments, driving up prices? Did you sign a lease a year or two too early and found out if you’d waited, you could have gotten 10x what you got? The communistic-sounding Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC) and the Communities United for Responsible Energy (CURE) have a so-called town hall meeting just for you, on Thursday, July 10 in Carrollton, OH…
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Long Labor & Delivery: Seventy Seven Energy Born Yesterday

A few weeks ago MDN told you that Chesapeake Energy had gone into labor with the prospect of birthing a spinoff of their oilfield services division. At the time labor began, we thought (based on Chessy’s statements) that the new baby would be born sometime around June 17 (see Chesapeake Oilfield Services Birth Date: June 17, 2014). Looks like it was an unusually long labor and delivery for the new baby company. Seventy Seven Energy (SSE) was born yesterday, on July 1…
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Bloomberg: Natgas, Solar Big Winners for New Investment by 2030

Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has just published a new report titled “2030 Market Outlook” in which they predict there will be $1.3 trillion of investment in new power generation capacity over the next 15 years. The big winner for that pile of new investment ($314 billion of it) will go to–you guessed it–natural gas-fired electric generating plants. Also a big winner, according to BNEF, will be solar ($231 billion for rooftop solar panels) and wind ($200 billion spent for onshore wind farms). BNEF also makes some gutsy predictions with respect to coal…
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Yet Another “Natgas Worse than Coal” Study from Tony Ingraffea

Our old friend Tony “shut all fracking down” Ingraffea, who happens to (still) hold a job teaching at Cornell University, is back with yet another “research study” that (surprise!) bashes fracking. Or more properly shale drilling. This time around Tony, who has a lucrative side job by gallivanting from anti-drilling meeting to anti-drilling meeting to spread the word that fracking is evil (see Cornell Hydraulic Fracturing Expert Headlines First Meeting of New York Residents Against Drilling (NYRAD) in Vestal, NY), says shale wells have a higher rate of failure in the cement casings in Pennsylvania and he can prove it. How?…
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Officials: New England Faces Blackouts Without New Nagas Pipeline

Listen up Massachusetts anti-drillers who don’t want Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline expansion running through your backyard (see Small Group in Ashfield, MA Vote to Oppose Kinder’s TGP Pipeline). Without that pipeline, you’re faced with impending blackouts. No electricity. For extended periods. And that’s according to the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources. At a joint meeting held in Manchaster, NH on Monday, officials warned that although there were no blackouts this past winter (a very brutal winter in New England), “That doesn’t mean that they can’t.”…
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