Enbridge Wants to Bring TETCO Pipe in KY Back Online Aug 24-26
On August 1, Enbridge’s Texas Eastern Pipeline Company (TETCO) pipeline exploded in Lincoln County, Kentucky–killing one and sending six to the hospital (see TETCO Pipe Explodes in Kentucky Killing 1; Southbound M-U Gas Stops). Actually TETCO operates three pipelines in that area, all located next to each other and collectively called TETCO. Line 15 is where the explosion occurred, but Lines 10 and 25 (located next to Line 15) remain offline until further notice (see 3 TETCO Pipelines in KY Closed Indefinitely, Feds Order Repairs). TETCO is hoping to return one of the three lines to service later this week.
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Equitrans, builder of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline project, has voluntarily stopped construction on certain portions of the 85% completed project. According to an MVP spokesperson, “The voluntary suspension pertains to areas along the route that may potentially have an impact related to the Endangered Species Act; however, MVP expects to continue with construction, where permitted, in other areas along the route.”
Williams’ Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Co. (Transco) filed a request yesterday with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to start up the final pieces of its Rivervale South to Market Project in New Jersey. We first told you about the Rivervale project in 2017 when Williams filed an application with FERC (see 
This one slipped under the radar for a bit. At the end of June, Pittsburgh-area Falcon Drilling, a Marcellus and Utica shale drilling contractor, announced it is buying out and merging in another Pittsburgh-area drilling company, Complete Drilling Solutions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Hoping that lightning strikes twice with the “judges” at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Circus) who read children’s books like The Lorax and use them in their decisions, deep-pocketed Big Green groups have filed a new lawsuit with the quirky judges asking that they overturn federal approvals issued to Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Big Green hopes the clown judges will overturn approvals for MVP the same way they did for Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project.
Two radical left members of the U.S. House of Representatives–Chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Peter DeFazio (D-OR), and Congressman Tom Malinowski (D-NJ)–sent a follow-up letter to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) requesting an update on where the special permit for Energy Transport Solutions, LLC to move liquefied natural gas (LNG) by rail stands now that the public comment period has closed. The letter was not *really* about seeking information, but about threatening PHMSA, signaling that the agency had darned well better block LNG by rail. Or else.
This is one of those “feel good” stories. Going back to 2012, a number of officials in Wyoming County and the borough of Tunkhannock began to dream about connecting the borough to locally extracted Marcellus Shale gas. Among those who helped turn the dream into reality were Williams (the pipeline company) and Cabot Oil & Gas (shale driller). Thanks to the efforts of all involved, Tunkhannock eventually received state-backed funding to build “phase one” of the project (see 
Score a (very) minor victory for THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum, in her holy mission to block a new fully authorized and permitted LNG export loading facility due to get built on the New Jersey bank of her beloved Delaware River (she thinks she owns the river and “speaks” for it). Riverkeeper filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for information about a facility New Fortress Energy is planning for a former DuPont dynamite factory site in NJ.
MPLX, formerly known as MarkWest Energy, recently released their second quarter 2019 update. There seems to be a new emphasis for MPLX on the Texas Permian play, which is detectable in the update. However, much of the company’s revenue continues to come from our region. A slide embedded deep in the Appendix of the latest slide deck tells an interesting story for us: Of the ten processing and fractionation plants MPLX is currently building or planning to build, six of them are in the Marcellus/Utica region. We have the list below.
Once again the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC), a corrupt political tool in the hands of an autocratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, has issued a denial of a federal Clean Water Act Section 401 water crossing permit for the National Fuel Gas Company’s Northern Access Pipeline project. Fortunately, DEC’s rejection doesn’t mean a hill of beans since the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) overruled the DEC last year.
Some interesting comments by Jim Crews, vice president of northeast business development for MPLX (formerly known as MarkWest Energy), during a presentation he gave at the Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginia’s (IOGAWV) Summer Meeting last week. Crews said lack of natural gas liquids storage is a crisis (our words, reflecting his sentiment). And we need storage not only here in the Marcellus/Utica region–but across the country. “We’re out of storage,” he said, and “Cargoes are just being given away.”
Chester County, PA District Attorney Tom Hogan has sunk to a new low. We told you back in January Hogan and his highly-paid staff, motivated by politics, were investigating Energy Transfer, their Sunoco Logistics division and anyone/anything to do with ET’s Mariner East pipeline projects, looking for “crimes.” All he found were minor violations by two off-duty PA constables (see