Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Minuteman Environmental Services | Pennsylvania | Statewide PA
Minuteman’s 5-Year Battle for Justice Against Former PA AG
One of the companies in the Marcellus industry targeted for extinction by Pennsylvania’s former Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, was Minuteman Environmental Services (see PA’s Anti-Drilling AG Charges Minuteman with Enviro Crimes). Kane filed charges against the company in 2014, charges that were later dropped, but in the meantime she forced the company into bankruptcy. Since May 2015, the owner of Minuteman has fought back (i.e. sued) to regain his good name and to ensure prosecutorial abuses like what he’s experienced never happen to anyone else. He continues to fight to this day, and the PA AG’s office continues to block his efforts to obtain justice.
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The Battle Run Compressor Station, owned and operated by Williams and located in Valley Grove (Ohio County), West Virginia, exploded and caught fire Saturday night. Fortunately no one was injured and the fire was extinguished within a half hour. Williams has “isolated” the flow of gas to the facility while the incident is investigated.
Columbia Gas of Ohio (NiSource) recently announced a new $135 million pipeline project to bring new supplies of Utica-sourced natural gas to homes and businesses located north and west of Columbus, in central Ohio. The project, called the Northern Loop Project, will file for regulatory approval with the Ohio Power Siting Board and hopes the OPSB will approve the project in 2020, with construction set to happen in 2022.
Eastern Shore Natural Gas Company (ESNG), a subsidiary company of Chesapeake Utilities Corporation, filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Sept. 2018 to build 19+ miles of new pipeline and new meter and delivery stations in Kent and Sussex counties in Delaware, and Wicomico and Somerset counties in Maryland, to carry more PA Marcellus natural gas to locations in Delaware and Maryland. Last Thursday FERC granted final approval for the project.
Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Law Judge Elizabeth Barnes has tried to stop or block or otherwise do damage to the Mariner East pipeline projects for years. Most (all?) of her actions against the project have, in the past, been reversed by a vote of PUC Commissioners (see 
In what has become an ongoing pattern, THE Delaware Riverkeeper (aka Maya van Rossum) has lost yet another lawsuit (in federal court) against a pipeline project–in this case the Millennium Pipeline expansion project called the Eastern System Upgrade.
Delays in building new pipelines, like the PennEast Pipeline, have real, tangible costs for natural gas customers. In the case of PennEast, natgas customers in southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey are paying billions in higher gas costs because PennEast is not yet built. Even worse, there’s a looming shortage coming in New Jersey.
Superior Energy Services, based in Houston, Texas, is an oilfield services company with service lines including: rig services, coiled tubing, wireline, pressure control, flowback, fluid management and accommodations. Once upon a time Superior had a meaningful presence in the Marcellus/Utica. Superior just announced it is shedding its onshore shale business lines, separating them out and merging them with another company, Forbes Energy Services. What’s left of Superior will concentrate on offshore and international oil and gas markets.
Keystone Clearwater Solutions, a company that provides water services for shale drillers in the Marcellus/Utica, is “coming home” in a sense. We told you in November that SC Water, LLC, a Pennsylvania-based natural gas and oil industry investment group, announced it had signed an agreement to buy Keystone Clearwater from American Water for an undisclosed amount (see 
Several weeks ago the founder and CEO of Tallgrass Energy, David G. Dehaemers Jr., 
In May, Weatherford International, the world’s fourth largest oilfield services (OFS) company, finally succumbed and announced it was filing for a “prepackaged” bankruptcy (see 
In August the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ruled that the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) took too long to deny a federal Clean Water Act “Section 401” water crossing permit for the Williams Constitution Pipeline project (see 
