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Cracker Plant in Scotland “Brought Back to Life” Thx to Marcellus Ethane

ineosThe Swiss-based company INEOS is a young but rapidly growing chemical company with roughly $40 billion in sales per year. INEOS’ competitors would be companies like BASF, Bayer and Dow Chemical. One of the projects owned by INEOS is an ethane cracker/chemical plant complex in Grangemouth, Scotland. It is Scotland’s biggest manufacturing complex hosting Europe’s biggest ethane storage tank–able to store up to 33,000 tonnes of liquid natural gas. INEOS announced yesterday that the second manufacturing unit at the Grangemouth plant has been “brought back to life” some eight years after being mothballed. The reason? To begin processing Marcellus shale ethane that will be shipped to it later this year from the Marcus Hook refinery near Philadelphia…
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Marcellus King in PA – Which Other Layers are Actively Drilled?

Over the past few years MDN has highlighted and brought to your attention an excellent data service called MarcellusGas.org. The service contains data on every Marcellus (and other layer) wells drilled in Pennsylvania. It also covers waste disposal and injection wells. And it posts detailed statistics–down to the individual well level–including production numbers. It’s a really great service that only charges $20 per year for a membership. We highly recommend a membership if you’re into data and numbers. Note: We have no vested interest in the service. We’ve never even received a simple “thank you” for mentioning it and no doubt driving a number of subscriptions their way. No matter. We promote it because it’s a great service. Recently MarcellusGas sent an email to members (yes, we pay our $20/year like everyone else) to highlight how many wells have been permitted, and actually drilled–by rock layer. As you can imagine the Marcellus is king, head and shoulders above all the rest, with 9,359 actively producing wells and another 7,125 wells permitted (for a total of 16,484 Marcellus wells). What caught our eye is the numbers for the other layers. You might guess the second highest number of producing wells would be from the Utica Shale layer–but you would be wrong…
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NY Comptroller Attacks Natural Gas Pipelines with Safety “Audit”

New York State’s Comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, is a hard-left Democrat who has repeatedly targeted the fossil fuel industry in the Empire State–and beyond. As we’ve previously observed, DiNapoli is an anti-drilling bully (see our extensive list of MDN articles on DiNapoli’s attacks here). His latest attempt to smear the fossil fuel industry is to attack pipeline infrastructure. His office conducted an “audit” of pipeline safety from 1995 through 2014 (full copy below) and has supposedly found 194 pipeline “incidents” resulting in 23 fatalities, 123 injuries and $77 million in property damage. The aim, of course, is to imply pipelines are unsafe. There is no context in DiNapoli’s report. For example, during the same period, how many bridges have had “incidents” and how many deaths have there been from bridge accidents? During the same period how many railroad “incidents” have there been and how many deaths? When you stack up pipelines against any other form of transportation, pipelines are the safest mode of transport by far–it’s not even close. But you wouldn’t know that from DiNapoli’s slanted report…
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Climate Change Hucksters, Incl. NY AG & Al Gore, Threaten O&G

A small group of rabidly partisan Democrats who have drunk deeply from global warming Kool Aid–including New York’s corrupt Attorney General Eric Schniederman and global warming huckster Al Gore–gathered yesterday in New York to declare they are ready to litigate from sunup to sundown to ensure Dictator in Chief Obama’s Clean Power Plan (currently being challenged in court) is implemented–both now and by the next El Presidente. It is, of course, a sham. They don’t really believe in global warming–most of them anyway. They’re not that stupid (although Al Gore may be). They want total control over the source of energy you use–because it personally empowers them (in the case of New York Attorney General Schneiderman) and enriches them (in the case of Al Gore who buys and sells energy credits). It’s corruption at the highest levels…
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Prime PA Recreational Land w/Marcellus Rights Up for Auction

Sponsored Post: For the past few years MDN has enjoyed bringing you advertising from United Country Real Estate. They have auctioned various properties for sale located in the Marcellus region–typically in Pennsylvania. We’re happy to bring you another such announcement. You may have noticed an advertisement running along the right side of each page on MDN, and a blurb at the bottom of your daily email alerts, for United’s next auction on April 15 (tax day!). The property up for auction this time is 250 acres of recreational land with a hunting camp, in prime Marcellus territory–Tioga County, PA. The land includes all mineral rights. See the description below for details…
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LNGL Applies to Build Pipeline to Bear Head LNG Export Facility

Yesterday MDN told you that Bear Head LNG in Nova Scotia, Canada continues to make progress toward opening an LNG export facility that will export U.S. Marcellus and Utica Shale gas (see Bear Head LNG Facility Buys More Land, Opens Halifax Office). The very next day (today!) the parent company of Bear Head, LNG Limited (from Australia) issued another announcement to say they’ve registered for an environmental assessment for a pipeline they want to build–the Bear Paw Pipeline. It is the first (and perhaps most important) step in getting a new 39-mile pipeline built that will run from the Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline to the new Bear Head LNG facility. Yes it’s a story about Canada, but it’s mostly a story about the Marcellus and Utica…
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Virginia Approves State’s Largest NatGas-Powered Electric Plant

Last July Dominion filed a request with the Virginia State Corporate Commission (SCC) to build a $1.3 billion state-of-the-art natural gas-fired electric generating station in Greensville County, VA (see Dominion to Build Electric Plant in S VA Powered by Marcellus Gas). The new power station will generate 1,600 megawatts–enough electricity to power 400,000 homes. It will be the biggest electric plant in Virginia. The plant would be powered by–you guessed it–Marcellus Shale gas (see Virginia’s Largest Electric Plant to be Powered by Marcellus Gas). We have some great news to report. The SCC has approved the project. Construction, according to Dominion, will begin “later this year”…
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Tallgrass Buys Out Sempra’s Portion of REX Pipeline for $440M

Just a few years ago that Tallgrass Energy, majority owner of the Rockies East Express (REX) pipeline–a 1,712-mile pipeline which runs from Colorado and Wyoming to Ohio–had an “Oh crap!” moment. The pipeline was built to bring then-abundant natural gas from the West to markets in the Midwest (like Chicago) and the East–via connections with other pipelines. Then the Marcellus and Utica happened, forever changing the natural gas dynamic in the United States. Nobody in the Midwest and East wanted western gas anymore. What to do?! Tallgrass knows how to pivot, and pivot they did–deciding to reverse the flow for a portion of the REX pipeline (see REX Reverses Pipeline Flow from OH for Mystery Utica Customer). Their bright idea worked, and beginning last August, the REX pipeline from Monroe County, OH to Mexico, MO reversed its flow (see 1.8 Bcf/d of Marcellus/Utica Gas Heads West on REX Starting Aug 1). What was a huge negative turned into a big positive for Tallgrass. Now Marcellus/Utica rides the pipeline west every single day–and there’s no sign of it letting up. If anything, REX will reverse more of the line at some point. That got Tallgrass to thinking, maybe REX had become the crown jewel of the company. So Tallgrass has decided to buy out one of partners in REX, Sempra Energy, to the tune of $440 million…
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Harvard Says Shale Spells the End of Boom & Bust Cycle in Oil/Gas

Thanks to our right hand, Chris Acker, MDN was alerted to a fascinating article in the Harvard Business Review. The very first time MDN heard Cornell professor and climate change huckster Tong Ingraffea (see Cornell Hydraulic Fracturing Expert Headlines First Meeting of New York Residents Against Drilling (NYRAD) in Vestal, NY), was the first time we’d heard of “boom and bust” cycles in relation to natural resources. During that meeting Ingraffea discussed “Gilmore’s 4 Stages of Boomtown Attitudes” and described how extracting coal, or cutting timber, etc. leads to cycles where communities are rapidly built up, only to later be devastated when that industry runs it course and leaves town–after exhausting the natural resource it sprang up to tap. Ingraffea described nightmare scenarios that awaited communities “foolish” enough to buy into shale gas development. Our response was and always has been–we’ll take that development, and any “bust” that comes with it–over never having had any investment at all! No industry stays in a particular geography forever. Back to the HBR article. The authors theorize that boom and bust–at least for oil and gas–may now be over. Why? Because with shale drillers can literally overnight begin producing more oil and gas when prices reach an attractive level. Meaning the price of oil will eventually hit and likely stay at around $50 barrel–like, forever…
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Marcellus & Utica Shale Story Links: Wed, Mar 30, 2016

The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Opportunity abounds for Marcellus/Utica; Philly energy hub supporters keep up the push; Michigan court says OK to drill in town; ExxonMobil retreats from shale oil in the West; Rockefellers admit paying for anti-drilling campaign; gas war between U.S. and Canada; and more!
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