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Virginia Landowners Sue to Emasculate FERC in Bid to Block MVP

In a lawsuit filed last week, three couples who own land along the route of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in Virginia, who don’t want the pipeline crossing their land, are trying to overturn federal approval of MVP by emasculating the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. This is not the first time someone has tried to emasculate FERC using MVP.
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PA DEP Proposes New Horizontal Pipeline Drilling Regulations

regulations

On Jan. 15 the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environment Protection’s (DEP) Oil and Gas Technical Advisory Board will meet to hear a presentation on a draft Horizontal Drilling Pipeline Construction Guidance and stakeholder report. The so-called guidance is the first step in adopting new regulations (i.e. laws) to govern underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) for pipeline projects.
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Diversified Gas & Oil Blazes Trail Using Wells as Collateral

Diversified Gas & Oil owns close to 8 million acres of leases with some 60,000 (mostly) conventional oil and gas wells. Their focus has been to acquire quality production and cash flow–regardless of the well or commodity type (gas or oil). They currently have over 400 M-U shale wells in their portfolio. In November Diversified closed on a deal to raise money via securitization–meaning to issue securities (“notes”) based on the value of their gas wells (see Diversified Gas & Oil Securitizes Appalachian Wells to Raise $200M). Turns out Diversified is a trail blazer in using wells as collateral.
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DOE Awards $25M to Improve Natural Gas Ops, $4.5M Going to WV

Last week the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) announced it has selected 16 projects to receive nearly $25 million in federal funding for cost-shared projects to advance natural gas infrastructure technology development. DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy will provide federal funding for these projects. Two of the 16 are located in West Virginia and will receive a cumulative $4.5 million of the $25 million (18% of the total).
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Sierra Club Radicals Oppose Clean NatGas Power in Morgantown, WV

In September Longview Power filed an application with the West Virginia Public Service Commission to build and operate a Marcellus gas-fired electric generating facility in Monongalia County, WV, near Maidsville (see 1200 MW Gas-Fired Power Plant Files to Build in Mon County, WV). The Longview Power Clean Energy Center will include a 1,200 megawatt combined cycle power plant AND a 70 megawatt solar farm–both built next to Longview’s existing state-of-the-art 710 megawatt coal-fired power plant. A real “all of the above” type of facility. The nutters at the Sierra Club want to stop it all.
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Shale Energy Stories of Interest: Tue, Jan 7, 2020

MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: Garth Everett isn’t running after finishing out 7th term; ODNR issues 2 permits for Utica Shale drilling; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Summit Midstream Partners relocating corporate headquarters to downtown Houston, Texas; The 2020 outlook for Permian oil and gas markets; NATIONAL: Energy commodity prices rose more than other goods in 2019; Hard as it is, frackers should ignore Iran; Oil and gas group launches campaign to advertise itself as combating climate change; U.S. LNG exports soar in 2019 but supply glut may await in 2020; Natural gas looks awful now that it’s 2020.
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