Blackstone Floats $3B Offer to Buy Rest of Tallgrass Energy
Back in January Tallgrass Energy, builder and operator of the mighty Rockies Express (REX) pipeline which is a critical link that flows Marcellus/Utica gas to Midwestern markets, dropped the bombshell announcement that investment firm Blackstone was buying a “controlling” interest in the company (see Blackstone Buys Controlling Interest in Tallgrass Energy). Blackstone now wants to buy the rest of the shares they don’t already own–and take Tallgrass private.
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The Mariner East pipeline projects (plural) are an important part of the shale energy story in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. As is the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex (what we call the Marcus Hook refinery). Currently between Mariner East 1 and 2, somewhere around 170,000 barrels of NGLs (mostly ethane and propane) flow to Marcus Hook and most of that gets exported to other countries. Mariner East 2X is currently under construction and due to come online next year, increasing that number significantly. For many Marcellus/Utica drillers, selling NGLs is the difference between being profitable and not profitable.
In May 2016, U.S.-based oilfield services company FMC Technologies announced they would merge with their much larger quasi-competitor, France-based Technip, in an all-stock deal to create a new company called TechnipFMC (see 
To his credit (we don’t often heap praise on him), Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf toured a Mariner East 2 pipeline construction site in Chester County near Philadelphia last Thursday, along with some Democrat politicians, and told anti-pipeline residents “NO” to their faces when they asked him to shut down the Mariner East pipeline system. He was polite, but firm, telling them he disagrees with their position of the need to permanently shut down the Mariner pipelines. “Do a better job” with construction and impacts from the project? Sure, according to Wolf. Shut it all down permanently? NO.
Last October NEXUS Pipeline, a $2.6 billion, 255-mile interstate pipeline that runs from Ohio to Michigan, received permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to begin partial operation (see 
In May, Columbia Gas Transmission was forced to haul the State of Maryland into court over the state’s refusal to grant an easement to drill a tiny 3.5-mile pipeline under the Potomac River (see 
Two weeks ago MDN told you about an incident near Philadelphia in which the flare stack at a Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline pump station ignited causing a loud noise, which we likened to flatulence (see 
The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just given Equitrans’ Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project a huge thumbs up and assist by approving permit changes made by West Virginia that will allow MVP to restart work in crossing hundreds of streams and rivers in the state.
Kinder Morgan, the largest pipeline company in the U.S., has left a string of broken promises about the date for which the first Elba Island LNG export plant “mini-train” would begin producing and shipping LNG. We’ve chronicled the journey extensively. According to an official update from KM in July, Elba was “in advanced stages of the commissioning and start up process, including LNG production” (see 
If Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO) and Tim Cook (Apple CEO) jump off a cliff, should you, as CEO of an energy company, jump off too? The CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Marathon Petroleum and several other big oil and gas companies have just answered that question in the affirmative. Splat. Perhaps they were caught up in the euphoria of the moment. Perhaps they were shamed. (A new disorder for the DSM V: “CEO shaming.”) For whatever reason, a group of CEOs from some of the largest U.S. companies now say the people who buy their company’s stock and fund them via infusions of investment capital are no longer the #1 priority for their companies. We wonder what investors in those companies think. Have they had a change of heart? “Here, take my money and pee it away with no returns. Please! I don’t need this money any more.” Hey Jeff and Tim, we have a bridge in Brooklyn we’d like to sell ya…
Last Thursday morning at 6:30 am Blue Racer Midstream’s Natrium (Marshall County, WV) natural gas processing plant received a phoned-in bomb threat. Plant personnel immediately contacted law enforcement (local, state and federal) who swept the plant with bomb-sniffing dogs. Nothing was found.
Some 77 miles of PennEast Pipeline’s $1 billion, 120-mile primarily 36-inch underground pipeline is slated to run through Pennsylvania. The rest runs through New Jersey. In February of this year the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) published draft versions of Erosion and Sediment Control Permits for the project. Just one teeny tiny problem: The DEP screwed up the application number in their official posting in the PA Bulletin. So the DEP has just republished their intent to issue the permits–very soon–in the latest PA Bulletin.