Energy Services | Equitrans/EQT Midstream | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pipelines | Regulation
Fourth Circuit Allows Work on Mountain Valley Pipe to Continue
Earlier this month the Sierra Club filed yet another lawsuit (we’ve lost count of how many they’ve filed) attempting to block construction of the final 8% of Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). The Clubbers asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to “temporarily” block a permit issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (see Sierra Club Files Another Lawsuit to Block MVP’s FWS Permit). Earlier this week the court declined, meaning MVP can continue working over the winter.
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Believe it or not, there are still two environmentalist wackos living up a tree in Montgomery County, Virginia, preventing work crews for Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) from cutting trees to clear a path for the pipeline. This has been going on for years and frankly, everyone is tired of it. A county judge has found the two cowards not willing to reveal their names (known as Tree-sitter 1 and Tree-sitter 2) in contempt of court. Starting today if they don’t come down, they are both on the hook for a $500 per day fine.
We were wrong. In August MDN told you that the tenth and final mini-train had gone online at Kinder Morgan’s Elba Island, Georgia LNG export facility (see 
Eastern Shore Natural Gas Company (ESNG), a subsidiary of Chesapeake Utilities Corporation, filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Sept. 2018 to build 19+ miles of new pipeline, called the Del-Mar Energy Pathway Project, in Delaware and Maryland. Last week the Maryland Dept. of the Environment (MDE) approved the project. Now the project must pass by the Board of Public Works (BPW). We give it a 50/50 chance of getting approved by the three libs on the BPW.
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.
An interesting week for permits. Last week Pennsylvania issued just 2 new shale well drilling permits after having issued 3 the week before (lowest numbers we’ve seen). Ohio, which has not issued many permits in recent months, was on fire last week with 17 new shale permits! West Virginia issued just 1 new shale well permit.
Deep Well Services (DWS), headquartered in Butler County, PA, is living up to the company name. DWS is one of our favorite oilfield services companies, born right here in the Marcellus/Utica. DWS specializes in “snubbing” work–completing those super-long laterals you read about. Earlier this year the company drilled three more record-breaking wells–the longest onshore wells ever drilled in the world! The current record-holding well drilled by DWS, completed just last quarter, is located in…
Once again PTT Global Chemical is changing the timeline for a final investment decision (FID) to build a $10 billion ethane cracker plant in Belmont County, OH–for the umpteenth time. The most recent timeline had a decision coming by the end of this year or in the first quarter of next year. Whoops, they did it again! The new timeline is now “at least the middle of 2021.”
Like a bad Stephen King horror flick, the Sisters of the Corn (our name for a group of leftist nuns in Lancaster County, PA) have returned to file yet another frivolous lawsuit against Williams over a pipeline that crosses their land–a pipeline (Atlantic Sunrise) that has been up and running for years. The Sisters claim an infringement of their “religious liberties” in the lawsuit. They tried this argument once before and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
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…
On Tuesday, Talen Energy Corp., under extreme litigation pressure from the odious Sierra Club, announced it will eliminate the use of coal at all of the company’s wholly-owned facilities. Back in 2017 MDN brought you the news that Talen’s coal-fired Brunner Island Power Plant, located in York County, PA, is investing $100 million to retrofit the plant so it can burn 100% Marcellus Shale gas by 2028 (see 
Eureka Resources, which operates three frack wastewater treatment facilities in the Marcellus Shale, is doing really cool stuff. In October 2019 the company began extracting lithium from Marcellus wastewater at one of its plants in Bradford County, PA (see 
This has been going on for more than a year. Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303-mile pipeline from West Virginia to southern Virginia, has not been able to finish a project that is now 92% in the ground and complete because of repeated lawsuits by the Sierra Club and colluding leftist Democrat judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The delays are costing MVP $20 million per month! Yesterday the clowns did it yet again. They blocked a Nationwide Permit 12 (NWP12) that was reissued by the Army Corps of Engineers after being reworked because of an earlier rejection by the same court. NWP12 would allow the pipeline to cross creeks and rivers and wetlands.
Nuverra Environmental Solutions (formerly Heckmann) is one of the largest companies in the United States that handles transportation and disposal of shale drilling wastewater and leftover rock and dirt from drilling. The company has major operations in the Marcellus/Utica region. In August, the company reported less-than-rosy results for the second quarter, because of the coronavirus and producers slowing down their drilling programs (see