4th Circus Pulls Forest Service Permit for Atlantic Coast Pipe
The U.S. Fourth Circuit (i.e. Circus) Court of Appeals has bungled another decision regarding the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP). Yesterday the court vacated a permit issued by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) that allows ACP to cross beneath the Appalachian Trail and 21 miles of national forest land in Virginia and West Virginia. You think we’re kidding when we refer to the judges of the Fourth Circuit as clowns? How else do you explain the judge quoting from The Lorax, a fictional children’s book written by Dr. Seuss, as part of the decision issued yesterday. The so-called decision is straight out of Alice in Wonderland. Bizarre. What’s next? Will we be treated to Youtube clips from the Captain Planet cartoon in future decisions? This faulty decision is already being appealed by Dominion Energy. It’s pretty easy to predict the decision will get overturned on appeal–by adult, non-clown judges in the next court up.
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By a vote of 2-1, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) yesterday issued a final approval for Williams’ $85 million project called the Transco “Gateway Expansion Project,” which will flow an extra 65,000 dekatherms per day (65 million cubic feet) of natural gas to a couple of utility companies in New Jersey that have already signed on the dotted line as customers. The upgrades include a new compressor unit at Transco’s existing Compressor Station 303 in Essex County, NJ, a new valve and electric transformer also in Essex County, and equipment upgrades at a metering station in Passaic County, NJ. PSEG Power and UGI Energy Services have signed up to receive the extra gas–to be distributed to their customers in the region. Once again the two Democrat FERC commissioners, Cheryl LaFleur and Dick Glick, expressed overpowering, debilitating concern over how the project will “contribute” to mythical man-made global warming.
The Mariner East 1 pipeline sprung a small leak and spilled 20 barrels (~840 gallons) of ethane and propane in Berks County, near Philadelphia, on April 1 (see 
It’s about we fight back against radical, insane people like those at the Sierra Club and the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC). They are so far outside of the mainstream, and they are such pathological liars, it’s time to take the gloves off and fight back. Dominion Energy is doing exactly that! Dominion released a statement yesterday that directly and strongly (with fighting language) refutes recent false statements (i.e. lies) made by the Sierra Club and SELC about Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP). We’re standing up and cheering!
Every square inch of every new (even every repurposed/existing) pipeline will be opposed in court. You can bet your life on it. Radical environmentalists have made pipelines the new evil incarnate in the modern world. Never mind without pipelines we’d all live in the Stone Age again. The point, on the part of Big Green, is not to actually stop these projects–but make them pay big money. And make them a poster child for fundraising campaigns. Even though some of the 300-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is on hold due to court delays over stream crossing permits (see 
Big Green forces who pinned their hopes of stopping the Mariner East 1 and 2 pipelines on a rogue PA Public Utility Commission (PUC) administrative law judge had those hopes dashed yesterday. In May of this year, Elizabeth Barnes, PUC administration law judge, unilaterally ordered Sunoco Logistics Partners to “cease and desist all current operation, construction, including drilling activities on the Mariner East 1, 2 and Mariner East 2X pipeline” in West Whiteland Township in Chester County, PA (see 
TransCanada, one of Canada’s leading midstream/pipeline companies, cooked up a deal in 2016 to pipe natural gas from Canada’s West Coast to the East Coast in order to fend off cheap supplies of Marcellus/Utica gas that will flow into Canada from the NEXUS and Rover pipelines (see 
It certainly seems as if the deck has been stacked against the PennEast Pipeline project, a $1 billion, 120-mile natgas pipeline that will stretch from northeast PA to the Trenton area of New Jersey. As we pointed out in November, DTE Energy’s NEXUS Pipeline, a 255-mile pipeline from Columbia County in Ohio to Southern Michigan, received its Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval around the same time PennEast did, about a year ago. NEXUS is already built and flowing, PennEast hasn’t turned the first shovelful of dirt yet. It’s been a real battle for PennEast (see 
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, a liberal Democrat, has filed a lawsuit against Mountain Valley Pipeline alleging the project has violated Virginia environmental regulations some 300 times. You know, things like workers throwing candy wrappers and cigarette butts on the ground. The AG filed the lawsuit “on behalf of Department of Environmental Quality Director David Paylor and the State Water Control Board.” Since when does allegedly violating certain low-level regulatory standards become a matter of concern for a state attorney general? Apparently AG Herring doesn’t have enough to do. His action smacks of political persecution, no? Someone trying to curry favor with radical leftists in order to launch his own bid for governor some day? That’s exactly what’s going on. Yet another Democrat abusing his office to feather his own political nest. Disgusting.
