Civil War: Bradford PA Escalates Fight with MSC re Royalty Bill
Yesterday MDN reported that Wilmot Township, located in one of the most-drilled counties in Pennsylvania (Bradford County) has taken the unusual step of demanding that drillers (in particular Chesapeake Energy) stop flowing natural gas from drilled wells unless/until they start paying landowners a minimum 12.5% royalty for the gas produced (see Righteous Royalty Anger: PA Town Votes to Block Gas Production). In August MDN reported that at the county level in Bradford County, the same issue has turned personal and somewhat nasty–with Bradford County Commissioners chairman Doug McLinko (a big pro-gas guy) blaming the Marcellus Shale Coalition and its leader David Spigelmyer for blocking a vote on House Bill (HB) 1391 that would rectify the royalty issue (see PA Landowners, Drillers Fight over HB 1391 Minimum Royalty Bill). McLinko called Spigelmyer a “reverse Robin Hood” last month. The fight continues and now escalates. Today, McLinko and the other commissioners in Bradford are set to vote on hiring a public relations firm to produce several short videos so the county can use those videos in a state and national PR campaign. McLinko says the MSC’s lobbying against royalty reform has cost Bradford County “probably $100 million” and the new campaign aims to get HB 1391, or something like it, passed…
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Yesterday MDN reported the story that Dominion Transmission has decided to lock out union members from working at their jobs in Dominion installations over a contract dispute (see 
In April 2015 Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) subsidiary filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build 8.2 miles of new looping pipeline in Tioga County, PA and beef up two compressor stations in Bradford County, PA. The $142 million project is called the Susquehanna West Project. The project will increase capacity along a section of the TGP, bumping it up by 145 million cubic feet per day (Mmcf/d). All of the extra capacity is spoken for by Statoil and the wells they’ve drilled in NEPA. Good news: On Tuesday FERC issued their approval for the project, which means construction will begin in January 2017…
Over the years, MarkWest Energy, now a part of MPLX, has built a number of natural gas processing plants in Wetzel County, WV, collectively called the Mobley plant. In September 2014 MarkWest signed a contract with paving and construction company J.F. Allen to design and build a retaining wall so MarkWest could then build the Mobley V plant (in Smithfield). MarkWest says, in a lawsuit they’ve filed against J.F. Allen and other subcontractors, that they didn’t do the job right and it resulted in long delays and millions of dollars in extra costs for MarkWest. Which MarkWest is now trying to recover, requesting a jury trial…
Virulent anti-fossil fuel nutters who are opposed to Spectra Energy’s $2 billion, 255-mile NEXUS interstate pipeline that will run from Ohio through Michigan and eventually to the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada, have stayed up late at night reading through all of the comments sent to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The habit of antis is to generate a blizzard of negative comments to FERC on any given project, sometimes using the names of their children (see 
Williams continues to tread water as it is under assault by corporate raiders who want to toss out Williams management, fire a bunch a people and sell the company. We’ve chronicled the chaos endlessly (
For some time now we’ve been tracking progress with an LNG export plant planned for the eastern shore of Nova Scotia, the Bear Head LNG project. Of all the Canadian LNG export projects that will export Marcellus gas, Bear Head seems to have the most momentum. The project has received most (if not all) of the necessary permits it needs to proceed. The most recent regulatory hurdle was a greenhouse gas approval from Nova Scotia, issued in July (see 
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: Former PGT Trucking building sold to Shell in Beaver County; Apache strikes it big in Texas Permian; Freeport LNG wants more export capacity; o&g industry still improving according to the Fed; and more!