FERC Gives PennEast Huge Boost – Pipeline CAN Cross NJ State Land
Yesterday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) handed the PennEast Pipeline project a huge victory in its fight to overturn a poor decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. FERC said the judges of the Third Circuit were wrong in their ruling that PennEast cannot use FERC’s delegated power of eminent domain to cross property owned or managed by the State of New Jersey. The FERC ruling bolsters PennEast’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, making it far more likely the high court will now hear the case.
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With the big news about Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) support of the PennEast Pipeline project, FERC ruling the pipeline CAN cross New Jersey state-controlled lands using eminent domain (see today’s lead story), another important bit of PennEast news from yesterday seems to have gotten lost in the sauce. PennEast filed a request yesterday with FERC to build the pipeline project in two phases. Break the project in two.
CNX Resources reports losing $271 million in the fourth quarter of 2019–but it wasn’t an actual money-out-of-pocket loss. The company wrote down the value of its Marcellus Shale assets (called an impairment). The company took a $327 million impairment charge for its Marcellus assets in PA, and a $119 impairment charge for unproved gas properties in the Marcellus. Below we have details on how many Marcellus wells CNX drilled and completed in 4Q and for the full year, and what company’s top brass says about what’s ahead for CNX in 2020 and beyond.
The work is happening fast and furious at the West Virginia state legislature right now. Legislators only have a 60-day session each year in which to pass new laws. More states should limit the time like WV! Yesterday two different Senate committees voted to pass three different bills, including SB 554, also known as the Lease Cancellation Bill.
Earlier this week our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, published an article chronicling the critical role of electric power generation in the supply and demand of natural gas. Natgas is the #1 source of fuel producing electricity in the U.S. today–and will be for the foreseeable future. We did some research on the PJM Interconnection–the largest grid operator in the U.S. covering 13 states and the District of Columbia. We located a list of the active gas-fired electric plants operating in PJM, and a list of planned gas-fired plants coming to PJM.
MARCELLUS/UTICA REGION: PA DEP to unveil draft regs to participate in RGGI, capping CO2 emissions from power plants, Feb. 13; OTHER U.S. REGIONS: Arizona Senate panel – cities can’t stop developers from using natural gas; NATIONAL: Greenpeace pressures Democrats to reinstate the crude export ban; Reinstating the crude export ban would be a gift to OPEC and Russia; INTERNATIONAL: Japan’s average LNG import price to drop in 2020.