Dominion Announces $145M Project to Expand Gas Supply to DC & MD
Dominion recently announced a new pipeline project called Eastern Market Access Project. The project will beef up two compressor stations in Virginia, build a new compressor station in Maryland, and add a couple of pipeline taps near Washington, D.C. The purpose of the $145 million project is to deliver more gas to Washington Gas, and to deliver gas to a new gas-fired electric power plant being built in Maryland. We suspect Marcellus/Utica gas will be the added gas flowing to both Washington Gas and the new electric plant in Maryland. [Note: A Dominion spokesman later confirmed to us that the gas will come from either the Marcellus or Utica plays.] You may recall that in May 2015 Washington Gas announced a plan to invest in Marcellus wells in Greene and Clearfield counties in PA (see Washington Gas $126M Deal to Bring Marcellus Gas to DC Suburbs). That plan was later nixed by Virginia regulators (see Virginia Rejects Deal for DC-based Utility to Buy Marcellus Wells). Perhaps Washington Gas will get the last laugh after all with new quantities of Marcellus gas flowing through the Dominion Eastern Market Access project…
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We doubt many MDN readers buy Patagonia outdoor wear (appeals mainly to aging hippies). But just in case, we thought we’d pass along something we noticed. The store chain is making a push to sign up Democrat voters, which doesn’t surprise us. As part of their overt political activism, the Washington, D.C. Patagonia store also elected to bash the Dominion Atlantic Coast Pipeline project. We thing that deserves a call to boycott their stores and their brand…
In October of last year, MDN shared the news that Duke Energy, the largest electric power holding company in the United States and a utility with 7.3 million customers in the southeast and Midwest, announced they are buying Piedmont Natural Gas (see 
In the southeastern U.S. much of the Big Green opposition to pipelines has centered on preventing pipeline companies from entering properties to complete required surveys. If you can stop the process before it begins (so they reason), it saves them from having to hop in the VW Microbus and go to (pot smoking) anti-pipeline rallies all over the place. Peace man! Landowners in West Virginia and Virginia have challenged the rights of various pipeline companies to enter their property. It happened with EQT’s Mountain Valley Pipeline (see 
One week ago Dominion Transmission locked out over 900 union workers, many of them in West Virginia (and others in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Maryland), preventing them from working (see 
Dominion launched a $4 billion, 25-year Pipeline Infrastructure Replacement (PIR) program in mid-2008. The program involves replacing over 5,500 miles of Dominion’s 22,000-mile pipeline system. Most of the pipeline to be replaced was installed in the first half of the 1900s. Some of the pipeline (much?) is being done in Ohio. The pipelines Dominion wants to replace in Ohio are regulated by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO). If Dominion wants to do anything with or for the pipelines in Ohio, they first need PUCO permission. Dominion has sought, and now received, PUCO permission to expand the program in Ohio. Dominion currently spends $160 million per year on the program in Ohio. PUCO gave them permission to up that amount to $170 million next year and $200 in 2018. Why is that important? Because Dominion gets to “recover” the costs (i.e. charge the costs) to utility customers. Dominion customers in Ohio can expect to see a rate increase…
In February MDN told you that Dominion, with a major presence in the Marcellus/Utica region, had floated a takover offer to Questar Corporation, offering to buy the company for $4.4 billion (see 
Higher prices for Rex Energy’s Marcellus/Utica gas are on the way. Why? Because the company will, beginning in November, begin to ship some of its gas out of the northeast–to the Midwest and Gulf Coast, where it can get higher prices. So says Rex in an update issued yesterday. Rex issued an operational update yesterday to discuss recent results and the next round of drilling they plan to do–4 more wells on the Vaughn pad in Carroll County, OH–and the news that a new high pressure gathering system is on the way in Butler County, PA. Included in the update is the good news that Rex will begin to ship 100 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of natgas to the Gulf Coast and 30 MMcf/d to the Midwest, starting in November, via two different pipelines. Which pipelines?…
Two Democrat-run anti-fossil fuel organizations–the Southern Environmental Law Center and Appalachian Mountain Advocates–pooled their donated money together and went out to find a consulting firm with the veneer of respectability that could be bought off to produce a faux “report” slamming two much-needed pipelines. They found an easy mark in Synapse Energy Economics, headquartered in ultra-liberal Massachusetts. The “report” Synapse produced says neither Dominion’s $5 billion, 594-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (a natural gas pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina), nor EQT’s $3.5 billion, 301-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA) are needed. The sham report, titled “Are the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline Necessary?” (full copy below) is getting picked up by lazy (or propagandist) mainstream news organizations and reported as real news. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s a joke…
In March 2015, Dominion–a huge natural gas and electric utility as well as a midstream company–announced plans to build the State of Virginia’s largest natural gas powered electric generating plant, in Greensville County, VA (see 