Victory! FERC Lifts Stop Work Order for Atlantic Coast Pipeline
Once again, the forces of good have overcome the forces of evil–evil being the Sierra Club and the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) and their mission to stop the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) from getting built. Yesterday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) lifted a previously issued stop-work order that had idled work along the entire 600+ mile ACP. The stop-work order came in early August after a federal court pulled permits for approximately 100 miles of ACP in response to a lawsuit filed by the anti-American Sierra Club and a few other groups, including the SELC (see Federal Court Stops Works on Some (All?) of Atlantic Coast Pipe). The Clubbers and their cohorts convinced the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn permits granted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. National Park Service, granted to ACP to cross the Blue Ridge Parkway. The court, in rolling back ACP’s permits, told FERC they should shut down work on the entire project until this matter is resolved. A few days later, on August 10, FERC did just that (see FERC Shuts Down ALL Work on Atlantic Coast Pipeline). Work has now been stopped for over a month, but yesterday FERC reversed its decision and told ACP they can resume work because last week both the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service revised and reissued the permits previously overturned by the court. Therefore, we’re all good now. Dominion (the builder) said construction will resume “immediately,” weather permitting…
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An article appearing on the Pittsburgh’s PBS station WESA website is, in a phrase, fake news. The article boldly states in its headline (and text) that: “Only 11 Percent Of Pennsylvania’s Natural Gas Pipelines Are Mapped For The Public.” The implication, the slight-of-hand intended to mislead lazy readers, is that 89% of natural gas pipelines in PA are not mapped at all. That simply is not true. The second graf of the story says this: “There are three types of natural gas pipelines: large transmission lines, medium-sized gathering pipelines and small distribution lines that go to homes and businesses. Transmission lines are the only ones mapped and disclosed to the public by the federal government, and they make up about 11 percent of total pipelines. There are 89,296 total natural gas pipeline miles in the commonwealth; the vast majority are small distribution lines, but more than 1,105 miles worth are gathering pipelines.” Does that not overtly imply the “vast majority” of PA’s pipelines are not even mapped? Pennsylvania recently went through a major revision of the state’s 811 system. Not only are gathering pipelines to shale wells mapped and included in the 811 system, so too are gathering lines to conventional wells. The only pipelines not part of the 811 system are those that run to “stripper wells”–wells that produce barely a puff of gas and therefore there’s no danger if you do happen to hit one when digging. The state Public Utility Commission wants to include stripper well pipelines in 811 too (see 
Last Thursday a major accident occurred 25 miles northwest of Boston when delivery pipelines owned by Columbia Gas (NiSource) in three communities exploded and caught fire at more than 80 locations (see 
Each month when we bring you the latest U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) “Drilling Productivity Report” (DPR) we say the same thing: “We shattered another record.” And so it is again this month, with the DPR issued yesterday. The DPR is the EIA’s best guess, based on expert data crunchers, as to how much each of the U.S.’s seven major shale plays will produce for both oil and natural gas in the coming month. The Marcellus/Utica region (called Appalachia in the report) continues to see production go through the roof. For six months in a row Marcellus/Utica production grew at roughly one-third of a billion cubic feet–massive! EIA says in the coming month of October, M-U production will grow another 298 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d). Hey, it’s not a full one-third Bcf, but it’s close enough. The big news is that (a) M-U production will hit another new all-time high–of 29.4 Bcf/d of production; and (b) natural gas production for all seven plays will hit another new all-time high–of 73 Bcf/d. Run the numbers and you’ll see that M-U production is 40% of all shale gas production. Let’s not ignore shale oil production, which will go up another 79,000 barrels per day in the coming month across all shale plays to a record-breaking 7.6 million barrels per day. Month after month after month we keep breaking records…
Last week MDN told you that Southwestern Energy is participating in a program to get their gas “certified” (see 
From 2008 to 2016, liberal foundations forked over $3.7 billion (!) to rabid anti-fossil fuel groups. Much of that money went into suing fossil fuel companies (and the government), attempting to outlaw fracking and the extraction of oil, gas and coal. The money is given to groups like THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Food & Water Watch, the Sierra Club and other odious bottom feeders. The media would have you believe it’s David vs. Goliath–David being these innocent little green groups, Goliath is Big Oil. It’s actually the opposite. We are fighting against a well-organized, well-funded campaign to end the use of fossil fuels. And now, finally, we have a tool to identify who is behind all that money. A new website called 
The “best of the rest”–stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading: UGI announces executive management realignment to enhance execution of business strategy; Penalty is for emissions and other violations at Warren, PA refinery; California’s electricity dreams still need natural gas; EIA introduces interactive dashboard detailing natural gas storage activity; Rain for Rent owners weigh sale worth $1 billion; Honeywell acquires Ortloff Engineers, NGL processing technology; The case for fracking: Delays in decision costing Nova Scotians millions.