Northern Access Pipeline Court Case Further Threatens NY DEC
A new threat against the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation’s authority over pipeline projects is coming from yet another federal court. Last month MDN brought you the huge news that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Millennium Pipeline against the NY DEC for delaying a decision to authorize a 9-mile pipeline Millennium wants to build from their main pipeline to an under-construction natgas-fired electric plant in Orange County, NY, called the Valley Lateral Project. Which may, at first blush, seem like a defeat. It was anything but a defeat. The justices, in their decision, said that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has the right and responsibility to step back in and issue the water crossing permits themselves, overruling the NY DEC, if FERC so chooses (see DC Court Tells Millennium FERC Can Override NY DEC Pipeline Delay). A second court case in a different federal court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, is now progressing. That case was brought by National Fuel Gas Company in April against the NY DEC for a similar reason: delay and denial of federal 401 stream crossing permits for NFG’s Northern Access Pipeline project (see NFG Sues NY DEC in Fed Court re Northern Access Pipe Rejection). That case is now advancing and the lawyers for NFG are quoting the decision from the Millennium case as precedent for a ruling by the 2nd Circuit Court that the DEC cannot arbitrarily stop a federally-permitted pipeline project…
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A somewhat obscure court case in Pennsylvania has potentially big implications for drillers who also own pipeline subsidiaries. In Lycoming County, PA, Seneca Resources (subsidiary of National Fuel Gas Company) drilled a series of wells on a pad called Well Pad E. Another NFG subsidiary, NFG Midstream, connected gathering lines to Well Pad E. NFG Midstream operates a compressor station to push the gas through the pipeline system. Both the well pad and the pipeline/compressor station are subject to air emissions regulations by the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). Each subsidiary on its own–the well pad, and the compressor station–don’t produce enough emissions to trip a costly upgrade in technology. However, if you combine both together into a single “source,” the two together do cross the threshold and would cost NFG big bucks in emissions technology to comply. The DEP lumped both together and told NFG to upgrade their emissions technology. Thing is, if another company owned the pipeline system, say Williams, the DEP would not have tried combining the two into a single source. So NGF appealed the DEP decision to the Environmental Hearing Board (EHB), a quasi-court set up to hear appeals of DEP decisions. The EHB found in favor of the DEP, so NFG appealed it again, this time to PA Commonwealth Court. Last week the court overturned the DEP decision and said just because two subsidiaries have the same parent, you can’t just lump them together as a single source for air emissions regulations… 
National Fuel Gas Company (NFG), headquartered in Western New York State, is making noises (threats) that Gov. Andrew Cuomo should be very concerned about. NFG covers the full span of the oil and gas business–from upstream (with its wholly-owned drilling subsidiary Seneca Resources), to the midstream (with wholly-owned subsidiary Empire Pipeline) to downstream (NFG’s natural gas utility service to 740,000 customers in NY and PA). It’s a big company that generates a lot of jobs and revenue for New York State. Yet NY is metaphorically crapping all over NFG–and the company is signaling its willingness to retaliate by leaving. No, not move the company HQ, or sell off its gigantic utility business. Nothing of that sort (yet, anyway). But NFG CEO Ronald Tanski said on an earnings call last Friday that NFG is “getting lousy regulatory treatment in New York State” and that “Given this type of regulatory treatment in the state, we have to take a serious look at our ability to achieve any reasonable growth in New York.” Translation: We’ll stop launching new projects that invest billions in the Empire State, and instead invest that money and the jobs it creates in PA and other states. The “lousy treatment” NFG is getting is related to NY’s corrupt Dept. of Environmental Conservation decision to deny it permits to build the Northern Access Pipeline (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection has just fined driller Seneca Resources $325,000 for a series of violations that occurred between 2013 and 2015. It seems in moving dirt around when building drill pads, Seneca caused erosion to occur. They also spilled ~100 barrels of crude oil in one location, and ~500 barrels of wastewater at another location. The violations happened in Forest, McKean, and Elk Counties. Here’s the notice issued by the PA DEP…
Good news for Pennsylvania drillers: the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) finally, after years of review, granted permission to two different companies to operate two new wastewater injection wells in the Keystone State. One well is located in Elk County, the other in Indiana County. With these two new injection wells coming online, the state will have a total of eight operating injection wells (vs. hundreds in Ohio). You may have seen news about the newly authorized injection wells from other news sources yesterday. But you read MDN for “the rest of the story.” And here it is, something you won’t find anywhere else (until other news sources read MDN): As soon as the DEP issued the permits for the injection wells, the DEP filed lawsuits against the two townships where the injection wells will be located, because both of those townships–Highland Township in Elk County, and Grant Township in Indiana County–had previously passed so-called Home Rule Charters in an attempt to prevent the injection wells from being located in their towns. The DEP has sued each of them (copy of the Highland lawsuit below) to correct laws that attempt to prevent the DEP from doing its job in authorizing the injection wells. We have the full news of the DEP’s decision to permit the injection wells, along with details about the lawsuits, below…
National Fuel Gas Company (NFG), the Buffalo-based utility giant with both a drilling subsidiary (Seneca Resources) and a midstream/pipeline subsidiary (Empire Pipeline) filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in March 2015 for a pipeline project they call Northern Access 2016 (later renamed to simply Northern Access Project, dropping the “2016” part). The $455 million project includes building 97 miles of new pipeline along a power line corridor from northwestern Pennsylvania up to Erie County, NY. The project also calls for 3 miles of new pipeline further up, in Niagara County, along with a new compressor station in the Town of Pendleton (see 
We can’t say enough good things about Rusty Braziel and 
There is a new development in the case of an illegal ban on injection wells passed by Highland Township in Elk County, PA. In 2013 the radical leftist PA-based group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) convinced ignoramuses in Highland Township to pass a so-called Community Bill of Rights. Seneca Resources, a driller with leases and an active drilling program in Elk, had planned to drill an injection well on their own property to dispose of their own flowback and produced water. The CELDF-inspired ordinance Highland Twp prevented it, and Seneca threatened to sue the town (see 
National Fuel Gas (NFG), the Buffalo-based utility giant with both a drilling subsidiary (Seneca Resources) and a midstream/pipeline subsidiary (Empire Pipeline) filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in March 2015 for a pipeline project they call Northern Access 2016 (later renamed to simply Northern Access Project, dropping the “2016” part). The $455 million project includes building 97 miles of new pipeline along a power line corridor from northwestern Pennsylvania up to Erie County, NY. The project also calls for 3 miles of new pipeline further up, in Niagara County, along with a new compressor station in the Town of Pendleton (see