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3rd Circuit Court Grants NJ Request to Pause PennEast Pipe

Last December a federal judge in New Jersey upheld eminent domain power for PennEast Pipeline for ALL of NJ, where there are 136 holdout landowners who have refused to allow PennEast surveyors on their property (see Federal Court in NJ Grants PennEast Pipeline Eminent Domain). However, PennEast still isn’t totally out of the woods. The State of NJ appealed the decision because some of the land PennEast wants to build across belongs to the state (see NJ’s Dem AG Lectures Fed Judge re PennEast Eminent Domain).
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Range Resources Considers Drilling Under Washington, PA Airport

Washington County, PA Airport (click for larger version)

In 2013 CONSOL Energy (now CNX Resources) signed a deal with the Pittsburgh International Airport and Allegheny County to lease 9,000 acres surrounding the airport for natural gas drilling (see $50M Check in the Mail: Pittsburgh Airport Lease a Done Deal). The program was/is a huge success. Range Resources is now sniffing around, investigating doing something similar at the Washington County, PA airport.
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Shameful PA Lawmakers Rally to Shut Down Safely Operating ME Pipes

China’s Chairman Mao – patron saint of antis

Yesterday was a sad day in Harrisburg, PA. A group of virulent anti-fossil fuelers (maybe 200 or so) attended a staged rally where several shameful members of the state legislature, including Andy “Tony Soprano” Dinniman, and Tom “token RINO” Killion advocated shutting down the legal, legitimate, fully functioning and safely operating set of pipelines known as Mariner East 1 & 2–just to pander to their kook voting base. A counter-rally was held by Republican legislators (i.e. adults) who support the Mariner East pipelines.
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FERC Issues Timeline to Decide on Mountain Valley Pipe Expansion

click for larger version

Equitrans’ 300-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) from West Virginia to southern Virginia is now 70% done (see Shocker: Mountain Valley Pipeline Now 70% Built, Online by 4Q19). Last November MVP filed a new project plan with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to expand MVP *another* 70 miles south, into North Carolina (see EQT Makes it Official, Files with FERC to Extend MVP into NC).
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MarkWest Energy’s “Extraordinary Results” in 2018

The company we call MarkWest Energy is technically MPLX, renamed after MarkWest was bought out and merged into Marathon Petroleum in December 2015 (see Golden Parachutes Pop Open for MarkWest Top Management/Board). We still call it MarkWest because most people we know still call it that. It’s been over a month since MPLX/MarkWest issued its 2018 update, but we’d still like to analyze it. The company had a breakout year, earning more in 2018 than at any time in the company’s history.
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New Study: 45% of U.S. Natural Gas Will Come from M-U by 2040

Yesterday IHS Markit released a study commissioned by Shale Crescent USA and JobsOhio that finds natural gas produced in the tri-state region of Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia will be 45% of the nation’s production by 2040, up from 31% this year. This is truly big news with lots of ramifications.
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Big Green Lies: Frackers Cook the Books Using Depreciation

Anti-fossil fuelers really have no shame. We recently spotted an article that purports to lay out the case, chapter and verse, for how “frackers” are engaging in “accounting shenanigans” covering up true reserve estimates and depreciation expenses. In other words, they’re cooking the books, lying to investors. And ultimately America’s fracking boom as been “a bust.” Nonsense.
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Energy Stories of Interest: Wed, Mar 20, 2019

OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Oil majors rush to dominate U.S. shale as independents scale back; No link between Barnett Shale natural gas production and methane in groundwater, studies conclude; Fractionation constraints limit ethane supply as demand rises; SE Texas sitting pretty as nat gas booms; LNG industry eyes natural gas being flared in the Permian Basin; NATIONAL: Florida Congressman champion “Small Scale LNG Access Act”; EPA & Army Corps request voluntary dismissal of their WOTUS-related appeal.
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