Virginia’s Biggest NatGas-Fired Power Station Goes Online
In March 2015, Dominion announced plans to build the State of Virginia’s largest natural gas powered electric generating plant, in Greensville County, VA (see Virginia’s Largest Electric Plant to be Powered by Marcellus Gas). The $1.3 billion state-of-the-art natural gas-fired electric generating station generates 1,588 megawatts of electricity. Construction began in June 2016 (see Dominion Begins Building Virginia’s Biggest NatGas Power Station). And finally on Saturday, Dec. 8, the plant went online. Dominion’s own 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (when completed) will provide cheap, abundant, clean-burning Marcellus/Utica Shale gas to power it. Until Atlantic Coast is up and running, where will the gas come from to power it? We couldn’t find confirmation on the source of gas that feeds it now–but we’re guessing it’s Marcellus gas, making this a hugely important new market for our gas.
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New York State is the biggest loser. In every sense. NG Advantage, which once tried to set up a virtual pipeline operation in the Town of Fenton (suburb of Binghamton, NY), has shaken the dust of New York off its shoes and has, instead, decided to build the facility (with millions in tax revenues and over 100 jobs) 25 miles across the border in Springville Township, Susquehanna County, PA–in the heart of Marcellus country. Good for NG! Nice people, and they deserved much better treatment than they got here in NY. We personally hoped and lobbied for NG to locate in the Town of Windsor, NY, where MDN is located. But alas, the experience they had with the Town of Fenton was so nasty, they decided to abandon any plans of locating a business in NY. Can’t say that we blame them. NY is about the most business unfriendly state in the Union.
One of the ways anti-fossil fuel groups have tried to stop the Mariner East 2 Pipeline project is by tying it up in court. Various lawsuits have been filed going back years. One litigant, a Big Green group headquartered in Philadelphia, the so-called Clean Air Council, has tried repeatedly to get the courts to deny ME2 the right to use eminent domain in cases where landowners refuse to cooperate (see 
This is the kind of news we love to share! Keystone Clearwater Solutions, which was once majority owned by Rex Energy until they sold it to American Water Works in 2015 (see 
It’s the birth of a brand new pipeline expansion project. Several weeks ago Williams pre-filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to make certain upgrades (all of them in Pennsylvania) to its mighty Transco Pipeline. The upgrades include replacing smaller pipeline with larger pipeline in some areas, adding “looping” in other areas, and upgrading four compressor stations. The changes will flow an extra 582 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of Marcellus gas from northeast and southwest PA to “growing demand centers along the Atlantic Seaboard.” Williams is holding two (of four) open houses next week to discuss the project. Below are details about the project and a copy of Williams’ FERC pre-filing application.
We spotted a notice from Energy Transfer, the company building (via its Sunoco Logistics Partners unit) the Mariner East pipeline projects, that seemed odd to us. It was an open season announcement, a time when companies can “sign on the dotted line” to reserve capacity along any of the three pipelines–Mariner East 1 (ME1), Mariner East 2 (ME2), or Mariner East 2X (ME2X). ME1, a repurposed gasoline pipeline built in the 1930s, has been up and running since 2016. ME2 & 2X are due to go online any day now. ME2 and 2X (built side-by-side) are about two years behind schedule. Normally a pipeline company won’t dig one shovelful of dirt or lay an inch of pipeline until/unless customers have already signed up during an open season. And yes, all three pipelines have had open seasons and have signed-up customers eager to use them. So what’s with this new open season? We think we know.
Yesterday Kinder Morgan, one of (perhaps THE) country’s largest midstream company, issued guidance (their best guess) for how much money the company will make in 2019. Aimed at investors, of course. Usually these types of things are dry as toast, but we happened to notice the third sentence in the update which says Elba Island, Kinder’s LNG export facility on the coast of Georgia, along with the Gulf Coast Express pipeline project, will both enter service in 2019 and will help lead the company to record revenue–about 10% more revenue next year than was generated this year. Which got us to thinking once again about Elba Island, and the Marcellus molecules that will get exported from it. It also reminded us of a recent email exchange we had with a subscriber who swears that LNG shipments are already departing from the facility.
A truck hauling produced water–naturally occurring water from the depths that continues coming out of a drilled well long after it’s been fracked–overturned and spilled approximately 4,200 gallons of that wastewater. The wastewater, often called “brine” due to its minerally or salty composition, came from Pennsylvania General Energy (PGE) shale wells and was being hauled by Stallion Oilfield Services. It spilled on the ground “adjacent” to a “native trout stream” in the Pine Creek area in Lycoming County, PA.
The evidence continues to pour in that the addition of Williams’ Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline, a 200-mile greenfield pipeline from northeastern to southeastern PA where it joins the Transco Pipeline, is having a dramatic and ongoing effect on natural gas prices in northeastern PA. As in, the price drillers get for their gas has doubled. Atlantic Sunrise went online in early October (see