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PA DEP Picks Pocket of Sunoco Another $497,000 for ME2 Pipe
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) is sticking its sticky fingers into the pocket of Energy Transfer/Sunoco one more time, and this time drawing out nearly half a million dollars to pay for a series of small spills of nontoxic drilling mud in Snitz Creek in Lebanon County. It isn’t the first time the DEP has fined ET for Mariner East 2 (ME2) work. We’ve lost track of how many millions of dollars ET/Sunoco has paid in various fines–some of it legit, some of it (in our opinion), not legit.
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Last August we told you about the politically-motivated prosecution (by the Chester County, PA District Attorney’s office) of men connected to a security firm providing off-duty constables to protect Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline construction sites (see 
Pipeline giant Energy Transfer made quite a splash yesterday during its 4Q and full-year 2020 update by announcing the company has cut a deal to buy Enable Midstream for $7.2 billion. That deal, while important, has nothing to do with the M-U region. We were interested in talk about the company’s Mariner East (ME) pipeline system and Marcus Hook terminal–and there was plenty of talk about those important assets too. Co-CEO Tom Long said he expects the last pieces of ME to finally be done in the second quarter of this year.
Here’s a small victory to celebrate. In July 2018 three radical environmental groups dropped their objections to permits the DEP previously granted for the Mariner East 2 Pipeline. Clean Air Council, Mountain Watershed Association, and THE Delaware Riverkeeper “settled” their appeal of 20 permits issued to Sunoco for the ME2 project (see 
The Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board (EHB), a special court set up to hear appeals of decisions by the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), ruled on Wednesday that Sunoco Pipeline’s Mariner East 2 project does NOT have to reroute around Marsh Creek State Park in Chester County as ordered by the DEP. At least, not yet.
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC), the agency in charge of issuing permits for building the Mariner East pipeline projects, has just poked its head up to weigh in on another Energy Transfer project it issued permits to build: Revolution Pipeline. The PUC is proposing a $1 million penalty for “multiple violations” that led to an explosion of the pipeline as it entered service. The PUC also details a bunch of hoops ET must jump through in order to start service on the pipeline.
Energy Transfer’s (ET) Revolution Pipeline runs through Bulter, Beaver, Allegheny, and Washington counties in southwest PA. The 24-inch gathering pipeline shifted and exploded in September 2018, just as it was entering service (see 
Energy Transfer (ET) has had enough stonewalling from the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) with regard to its Revolution Pipeline project. Last month the DEP told ET it could not restart the now-repaired Revolution until the DEP got good and ready to allow it, with no specific timeline offered (see 
Sunoco Pipeline is beginning construction work this week on some of the final bits of the Mariner East 2 pipeline project in Delaware County. One of the projects is to install the pipeline through the Glen Riddle Station Apartment complex. The owner and tenants are not happy. They should have known this day would come.
Mainstream media is spinning the story of a Cumberland County, PA man who doesn’t feel safe living 1,000 feet away from the Mariner East pipeline into a David and Goliath cliche. The man won a small victory from a left-leaning, Sunoco-hating administrative law judge last December (see 
Monday night the radical Sierra Club hosted a virtual town hall in which people could complain about the Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline project. And complain they did. The aim of the virtual complaint session is to try and close down the already up-and-running ME pipelines (plural), and most particularly prevent the final bit of ME2X from getting completed. By airing sob stories, the Clubbers are hoping to bully the state Dept. of Environmental Protection and/or the Governor into blocking further work on the project–a project just a few months from being done.
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) continues to block Energy Transfer’s Revolution Pipeline gathering system in western PA from restarting. In September the DEP finally, after two years, gave ET permission to fix problems that caused the pipeline to explode. Even though ET has fixed the original site of the explosion, the DEP says there are other areas of concern and forbids certain sections of the pipeline from restarting, until…
Energy Transfer (ET), builder of the Rover pipeline project and the Mariner East pipelines here in the M-U region (as well as many other projects across the country), issued its third-quarter update yesterday. The company lost $782 million in 3Q20 versus making a profit of $857 million in 3Q19. Some (most) of the loss was a paper loss. As part of the update, we learned that the “next phase” of the Mariner East project will be placed into service by the end of this year.