Ohio EPA Continues to Hound 99% Done Rover Pipe re River Drilling
Rover Pipeline–a $3.7 billion, 711-mile natural gas pipeline that runs from PA, WV and eastern OH through OH into Michigan and on to Canada via the Vector Pipeline–is about 99% done and as of last week, most of it is now up and running (see FERC Allows Rover Pipeline Startup in Michigan, Close to 100% Done). There are still a few spots being worked on, but very few. Even though the project is on the home stretch and will be 100% done by the end of June, Ohio EPA’s Craig Butler continues to hunt Rover like Captain Ahab hunted Moby-Dick. He can’t leave it alone. Obsessed. In February Captain Butler filed a letter with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) claiming that testing done by OEPA found the presence of very low levels of the toxic chemical tetrachloroethene (PCE) at Rover’s underground drilling site at the Tuscarawas River in southern Stark County (see Ohio EPA Continues to Target Rover Pipe in New FERC Letter). OEPA admits they can’t prove the very low levels of the compound actually came from Rover’s drilling activity–but hey, what’s proof got to do with it? Energy Transfer Partners, the company building Rover, responded by saying the PCE comes from sediment at the bottom of the long-polluted Tuscarawas River itself. On Tuesday OEPA filed another letter with FERC (full copy below) disagreeing with ET’s assessment, once again requesting FERC impose all sorts of requirements and conditions on the project–putting OEPA in charge of some of it (which is patently unconstitutional)…
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Knowing that the PennEast Pipeline project is about to become reality, a very desperate THE Delaware Riverkeeper (aka Maya van Rossum) has launched a major legal attack against the project–using Big Green money. These are not the first legal filings by Riverkeeper against PennEast. The current strategy appears to be “bury them in legal horse manure.” PennEast Pipeline is a 120-mile pipeline from near Wilkes-Barre, PA to near Trenton, NJ. The planned route passes through Luzerne, Carbon, Northampton, and Bucks counties in PA, and through Mercer and Hunterdon counties in NJ. The pipeline is needed to move PA’s abundant Marcellus gas to markets in NJ. The first “legal maneuver” by Riverkeeper this week was to file a petition for a “Writ of Mandamus” in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, asking the court to force the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to respond to Riverkeeper’s rehearing request on the PennEast project. At the same time, Riverkeeper filed a “Petition for Review” with the D.C. Circuit Court of appeals challenging all of FERC’s orders related to PennEast. It is a full, frontal legal attack by a small organization fronting for other groups like the William Penn Foundation. The question is, will Riverkeeper’s latest attack work?…
As the Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) Valley Energy Center natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Orange County, NY gets ready to begin service, some of the neighbors are not happy with noises coming from the plant. They hope local town officials can meet with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and convince him to lean on the Dept. of Environmental Conservation to revoke permits for the plant that CPV just spent almost a billion dollars to build. We told you a month ago the only sliver of a hope antis have to prevent the plant from starting up is to convince the DEC to block it (see 
Despite all of the media attention on a handful of protesters who sit in the tops of trees or on top of a poll in order to block construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), the pipeline nonetheless continues to receive regular new permissions from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to construct the actual pipeline and (yes), even to cut trees past the March 31 deadline. The good news is that MVP is on track to be completely built and flowing Marcellus/Utica gas by the end of THIS YEAR! Despite the best efforts of radical protesters and multiple lawsuits by Big Green groups. Recent FERC permissions for MVP include: (1) allow MVP to cut trees in Jefferson National Forest past the March 31 deadline; (2) build parts of the pipeline in Roanoke and Franklin Counties, VA; (3) work 24/7 on building a compressor station in Wetzel County, WV; and (4) build pipeline in Jefferson National Forest, on both the VA and WV sides…
Last September a group of 57 gentry landowners in Virginia and West Virginia, backed by an out-of-state Big Green group, sued the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in an attempt to gut the 80-year old Natural Gas Act that gives FERC the right to grant eminent domain for pipeline projects (see 
TransCanada is attempting to do what so far, no one else has been able to accomplish: Increase flows of Marcellus/Utica (and perhaps other basin) gas into New England. The way they’re doing it is via the Portland Natural Gas Transmission System (PNGTS), a 295-mile pipeline that spans New England from the Canadian border to pipeline connections in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts. No, TransCanada is not proposing to build any new pipeline as part of their plan. In fact there is no construction of any kind for phases I and II in what TransCanada is calling its Portland XPress Project (PXP). Phase I, which TransCanada filed on April 20, asked FERC for permission to begin flowing an extra 39.8 million cubic feet (MMcf) of natural gas from Pittsburg, NH, to Westbrook, ME, and to increase the flow from and to Canada. In Phase II, which was filed yesterday, TransCanada asked FERC for permission to flow an extra 11.3 MMcf from Westbrook, ME, to Dracut, MA. When the filing for Phase III comes along, they will ask to build a new compressor station, among other bits and bobs. New England and Atlantic Canada desperately need the gas, so there’s no reason why FERC would deny these reasonable requests. Perhaps TransCanada can succeed where Kinder Morgan’s TGP Northeast Energy Direct and Spectra Energy’s Access Northeast projects failed, and boldly go where no pipeline has gone before…
Last Friday National Fuel Gas Company (NFG), headquartered in Western New York State which operates drilling subsidiary Seneca Resources and pipeline subsidiary Empire Pipeline, issued its second quarter 2018 (everyone else’s first quarter) update. Via Seneca Resources, NFG drills wells in northcentral and northwestern PA. Via Empire Pipeline, they build and maintain hundreds of miles of pipelines. NFG wants to add to their pipeline portfolio by building the Northern Access Pipeline–a $455 million project with 97 miles of new pipeline along a power line corridor from northwestern PA up to Erie County, NY. Northern Access would allow Seneca to drill new wells in an area currently pipeline “constrained.” However, Northern Access construction has been blocked by the corrupt NY Dept. of Environmental Conservation (see 
The vast majority of Rover Pipeline is done, and most of it is now up and running (see 
Theresa “Red” Terry (whom we call Grandma Red) and her daughter Minor Terry finally came down from the trees where they were perched since April 2 in an illegal attempt to block Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) from cutting the trees. They came down on Saturday after a federal judge said if they stayed past midnight Saturday, they would each be fined $1,000 per day. The money would go to MVP. Red said, “Mountain Valley has taken enough from us…There wasn’t a lot more I could do up there besides show my ass and give them money.” As we previously reported, a number of Virginia lawmakers expressed their support of the Terrys and their flagrant disregard of the law (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 
Every three months publicly traded companies, including those with major operations in the Marcellus/Utica, issue a required quarterly update for stockholders. It’s often referred to as “earnings season.” We like to cull through the updates to share items of interest with MDN readers. For drilling companies we dedicate an entire post to each company. We typically don’t cover midstream (i.e. pipeline) companies as much. However, there are a number of important projects cooking with companies like Williams, MarkWest Energy (MPLX), Summit Midstream and Tallgrass (REX Pipeline). We culled through the press releases and analyst phone call transcripts to pick out comments and portions that we think are helpful in understanding where some of these important projects are, and how they impact the bottom line of said companies. Below is our 1Q18 midstream potpourri…
In yet another very good sign that the proposed PTT Global Chemical ethane cracker plant in Belmont County, OH is headed for a positive final investment decision (FID), PTT has just purchased another 300+ acres to go along with the previous acreage they purchased as the site for the future cracker/petrochemical project. Last July MDN reported PTT had spent $13.8 million to buy 168 acres at the proposed site for a second Appalachia ethane cracker, in Belmont County, OH (see 
An order from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued yesterday allows Energy Transfer (ET) to begin full operations along the North Market Segment of the Rover Pipeline–a $3.7 billion, 711-mile natural gas pipeline that runs from PA, WV and eastern OH through OH into Michigan and on to Canada via the Vector Pipeline. On April 13 ET asked FERC for permission to start up service along another major chunk of it’s massive Rover Pipeline (see 
Late last week Dominion Energy issued its first quarter 2018 financial and operational update. Dominion is not only a large utility company (electric and gas), but also a huge pipeline company. Dominion has it’s fingers in a lot of Marcellus/Utica pies, so we like to keep track of the company and what it says about various critical projects for our region. Dominion CEO Tom Farrell had a lot of interesting updates, including updates for: Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a $6.5 billion Dominion pipeline from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina; Cove Point, the $4 billion LNG export facility that began commercial operations in April; Greensville County (VA) Power Station, a $1.3 billion natural gas-fired combined cycle power plant; and the proposed merger with SCANA Corporation, the main electric and gas company for much of South Carolina. Buckle up, there’s lots of news here…