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Big News! Marcellus LNG Export Plant Coming to Landlocked NEPA

We have some exciting news to share. A company called New Fortress Energy is planning to build an LNG (liquefied natural gas) liquefaction plant in Wyalusing (Bradford County), PA. The $800 million (!) plant will supercool and liquefy locally extracted Marcellus Shale gas and ship it first by truck, eventually by rail, to “customers in the U.S. as well as abroad.” Meaning exports. How cool is that? It seems that LNG liquefaction plants no longer have to be located along a shoreline to engage in exports. Which company will provide the gas to liquefy and export? MDN has the exclusive answer, and yes, you need to be an MDN paying subscriber to find out…
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LNG Liquefaction Plant May be Coming to Central Massachusetts

Northeast Energy Center, LLC, plans a $100 million LNG plant in Charlton. (Liberty Energy Trust)

As it happens, this is the second LNG liquefaction plant story that landed on our desk today. Northeast Energy Center, backed by Liberty Energy and NorthStar Industries, is proposing to build an LNG liquefaction plant in central Massachusetts. Our other LNG plant story today (see Big News! Marcellus LNG Export Plant Coming to Landlocked NEPA) makes sense to us because that plant is located in the middle of a rich Marcellus gas region in northeast Pennsylvania. But building an LNG plant in the middle of Massachusetts, far from low-cost gas supplies? What gives?
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First “Big” Chinese Energy Investment in WV is…Software?

Wendy’s iconic “Where’s the Beef” commercial

It’s been exactly one year since the announcement and signing of a memorandum of understanding between China and the State of West Virginia, whereby China pledged to spend (over 20 years) an incomprehensible $83.7 billion (with a “b”) on petrochemical and shale projects (see China Agrees to Invest Amazing $83.7 BILLION in WV Shale, Petchem). How much money has China actually invested in WV to date? NOTHING. ZERO. NADA. That is, until now. Maybe. We came across a story about a WV company, TMC Technologies, working closely with China to develop software that will keep LNG exports heading to China, safe.
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4th Circus Court Blocks Some Atlantic Coast Pipe Work in WV

Circus clown

Dominion’s 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) from West Virginia to North Carolina has had its share of setbacks. Lately it seems that regulatory (and lawsuit) issues have been breaking in ACP’s favor. Just two weeks ago the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) granted approval for ACP to begin construction in West Virginia (see FERC Green Lights Atlantic Coast Pipeline Construction in WV). Right on cue, the U.S. Fourth Circuit (i.e. “Circus”) Court of Appeals has arrived to throw cold water on the project yet again. This time the Fourth Circus has put a temporary stop on constructing the pipeline across/under/through streams and rivers in WV.
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CELDF Now an 8-Time Loser re Youngstown Frack Ban Ballot Vote

Virulent anti-drillers in Youngstown, OH have now tried eight times to pass a so-called Community Bill of Rights ballot measure–and have failed all eight times, most recently on Tuesday. The local yokels from Youngstown working on the initiative are pawns, useful idiots, for an ultra-radical group from Pennsylvania called the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). The CELDF is behind dozens of such efforts, none of which has been successful. The Youngstown ballot measure sought to ban fracking and ban any company related to the extraction of fossil fuels from operating in the city. The CELDF is also behind a number of bizarre lawsuits–like the one claiming that an ecosystem is a “person” with rights (see CELDF Loses Case to Represent Ecosystem – Turtles Disappointed). Truly nuts.
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MarkWest/MPLX Floats $2.25B of Unsecured IOUs

From time to time we read about, and bring you news about, companies in our industry floating “notes”–what we call IOUs–a form of debt used to finance new spending or (in this case) refinance and pay off older debt. We’re not high finance experts, but it always looks to us like an elaborate shell game of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Just kick the debt can on down the road. But so many companies do it, there’s obviously some advantage. The latest, and biggest by far we’ve seen, is MPLX (MarkWest Energy). They just announced they are floating a whopping $2.25 billion of “unsecured senior notes.” MPLX will use $750 million of it to pay off older notes, and the rest to repay loans borrowed under the company’s revolving credit facility, and repay loans made to parent company Marathon Petroleum.
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State Attorneys General Now for Rent in NY, Other “Blue” States

We get pretty exercised over the ongoing abuse and total corruption of our justice system at the hands of Democrat Attorneys General who have sold access to their offices to Big Green funders. We previously told you about a pair of new reports shining a light on corrupt AGs in New York and other states, abusing their offices in an attempt to criminalize fossil fuel companies (see Corrupt: Dem Govs, AGs Sell Their Offices & Power to Big Green). AGs can only make so much mischief on their own. They have budgets that control how many staffers they can hire. In order to circumvent those hiring limits, Big Green groups are funding lawyers and assistants to help AGs sue fossil fuel companies–and they work right in the AG’s offices! If it’s not outright illegal, it’s certainly grossly unethical and it should be illegal. And yet the practice continues. The Wall Street Journal recently took aim at this practice, and the Clear Energy Alliance released an awesome new 5-minute video explaining this evil practice.
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Energy Stories of Interest: Thu, Nov 8, 2018

The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading: Judge weighs other courts’ pro-pipeline rulings before PennEast decision; The out-of-control NY Attorney General’s office takes on ExxonMobil; XTO Energy brings ‘Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day’ STEM program to Ohio; Kinder Morgan fires up Sabine Pass pipeline; California dreamin’ about a fracking ban that may never come; Global Climate Action summit silent on natural gas progress.
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