TransCanada Working to Restore Partial Service on Leach XPress Pipe
We told you last week that Columbia Gas Transmission’s Leach XPress Pipeline, which only came online in January, experienced an explosion and fire in Marshall County, WV (see Leach XPress Pipeline Explodes in Marshall County, WV). Most of the 1.5 billion cubic feet per day of Marcellus/Utica gas flowing through the pipeline is now stopped, which has caused shippers (drillers) to find alternatives, including Energy Transfer’s Rover, Tallgrass’ Rockies Express (REX), EQT’s Equitrans, and Enbridge’s Texas Eastern Transmission (Tetco) pipelines to flow gas out of the region (see Other Pipelines Pick Up Slack for Exploded Leach XPress). Although a fix for the exploded portion of Leach XPress is likely months away, TransCanada, the owner of Columbia and the Leach pipeline, is working on a plan to quickly restore part of the pipeline to service in southeastern Ohio–which would reconnect Monroe and Belmont counties to the pipeline…
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Rover Pipeline (Energy Transfer Partners) has agreed to pay a $430,030 fine to the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection for water pollution violations related to construction activities for the pipeline. The “consent order” was dated May 15 but not released to the public until Tuesday of this week. The proposed deal is now open for public comment until July 13. Rover received 18 notices of violation and 2 cease-and-desist orders dating back to April 2017. Most of the violations relate to failure to control erosion and for allowing sediment water to leak out of construction areas. WV DEP has not yet signed (officially accepted) the order, but it certainly appears to be a done deal. Here’s the news and a copy of the consent order…
One more item to share with you from last week’s second annual Appalachian Storage Hub Conference convened at the Hilton Garden Inn Pittsburgh/Southpointe. As we previously highlighted, most of the event revolved around the proposed plan to build a $10 billion ethane storage hub (see 
In May MDN reported that a recent New Hampshire Supreme Court decision *may* breathe new life into a New England natural gas pipeline project believed to be dead (see 
In May MDN told you that the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals had invalidated (vacated) a permit issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that allows Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) to accidentally kill a few bats and bumble bees (classified as endangered) as it builds the massive $6.5 billion, 600-mile project from West Virginia to North Carolina (see 
How much American-extracted natural gas should get exported? That question is the focus of a newly published study, titled “Macroeconomic Outcomes of Market Determined Levels of U.S. LNG Exports” (full copy below). The study is the fifth in a series commissioned by the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE). The study/research, performed by NERA Economic Consulting (NERA), looks at the impacts on the U.S. for various export scenarios. Export a lot? A little? Somewhere in between? There are 21 proposed LNG export facilities in the pipeline right now, requesting permission to export to “non-FTA” (non-Free Trade Agreement) countries. DOE wants to make the right decisions about how many of them to approve. This study and its numbers will help guide their decision-making. The study is now available for public review and comment, until July 27…
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading: Lebanon County town supervisors ask PA to permanently shut down Mariner East pipelines; M-U + Permian will supply 55% of all U.S. gas by 2030; Shale Crescent attempting to rebrand region; Duke Energy flips switch on SC gas-fired plant; Permian production surpassing all of OPEC except Saudi Arabia; U.S. shale firms missing out on higher oil prices due to hedging; side effect of more oil drilling – indigestion for gas drillers; FERC chair wants to speed up pipe & LNG approvals; what happened to the IPO market in oil & gas; and more!