Jefferson County, WV Hopes Hinge on Gas Pipe Under Potomac River
Jefferson County, WV has been working for the last 30 years to get natural gas piped into the community. Jefferson is on the cusp of seeing that long-time dream turn into reality–if anti fossil-fuelers in Maryland don’t screw it all up. In April, MDN brought you the news that Columbia Pipeline (now owned by TransCanada) has filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build a 3.5 mile, 8-inch pipeline that will carry natural gas from Pennsylvania to connect the Mountaineer Gas system in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia with the Columbia Gas Pipeline in Pennsylvania (see New 3.5 Mile Pipeline Project to Drill Under the Potomac River). The purpose of the Eastern Panhandle Expansion project is to deliver natural gas via local distribution channels (local utility Mountaineer Gas) to a new industrial facility in Berkeley County, WV, scheduled to open this fall, and to provide gas to other local businesses and residents in the Tri-State area. Most of the proposed pipeline crosses through a tiny sliver of Washington County, Maryland. The main “issue” with the project is that the pipeline will be drilled underneath the Potomac River, which serves as the border between WV and MD. That has radical anti-fossil fuelers in an uproar (see Mountaineer Pipeline Under Potomac Latest Focus of Anti Movement). Here’s a look at the faces of those whose lives will be changed for the good by a short, 3.5 mile pipeline under the Potomac, IF…
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The New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is tap dancing to explain why they refused to grant a water crossing permit for a 7.8-mile pipeline in Orange County to Millennium Pipeline Valley Lateral Project, yet a few days before that refusal they granted a water crossing permit to Millennium for the Eastern System Upgrade, which includes 7.8 miles of looping pipeline in yes, Orange County! The Millennium Pipeline stretches ~244 miles from Independence in Steuben County, NY to Buena Vista in Rockland County, NY. The Millennium, which is supplied by local production (much of it Marcellus Shale gas) and storage fields and interconnecting upstream pipelines, serves customers along its route in New York’s Southern Tier region and helps meet the energy needs of northeast markets. In August 2016, Millennium filed an application for what it calls its Eastern System Upgrade (see 
On August 30th the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) issued a refusal to grant a water permit to Millennium Pipeline to build a tiny, 7.8 mile pipeline spur from the main Millennium Pipeline to an under-construction natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Orange County (see 
Eureka Midstream, which was once called Eureka Hunter (a subsidiary of Magnum Hunter Resources) has popped back up on the radar screen. Eureka, which operates exclusively in the Marcellus/Utica with ~200 miles of local gathering pipelines, announced yesterday it has expanded its line of credit from $225 million to $400 million, with an “accordion” option to further expand it to $500 million. Last time we wrote about Eureka (in December 2015), parent Magnum Hunter was looking to sell it off (see 
TransCanada’s WP XPress pipeline project has just scored an important permit from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service that allows the project to move forward in the Monongahela National Forest. In Jan. 2016, Columbia Pipeline Group (now owned by TransCanada) filed a full, official application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for approval of the $850 million WB XPress Project (see 
Dominion Energy and Duke Energy hopes lightening will strike twice. In August, DTE Energy and Spectra Energy (now part of Enbridge), sent a letter to the new FERC quorum urging fast action to approve NEXUS Pipeline, a $2 billion, 255-mile interstate pipeline that will run from Ohio through Michigan and eventually to the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada (see 
Phase 1A of the Rover Pipeline has been online for less than a week (see 
Antero Resources is back in the market looking to raise more money for their Antero Midstream subsidiary. It was only April that Antero floated an initial public offering (IPO) for Antero Midstream with hopes of raising $930 million (see 
It looks like Big Green has succeeded in conflating a mole hill into a mountain in Pennsylvania. In early August, Sunoco Logistics struck a deal with with several Big Green groups to provide stricter regulation for Mariner East 2 Pipeline’s underground drilling (see 
Acting like 5-year olds who have been told not to do something, but defiantly do it anyway, several homeowners in a housing development in Delaware County who were specifically instructed not to interfere with clearing work for the Mariner East 2 Pipeline in a Philadelphia suburb. The homeowners intentionally crossed a clearly-marked line into the construction zone, putting themselves at risk. The homeowners, who object to the pipeline, wanted to “push the buttons” of the workers at the construction site. The workers promptly called the cops and of course, work could not commence while the police interviewed everyone to see what’s what. In the end, no arrests were made. The homeowners were on jointly-owned housing development property. Their lawyer told them they could enter the work area as long as they didn’t stop the work being done. One of the 
Here’s a story you won’t read in mainstream news outlets–because it doesn’t fit the media’s anti-fossil fuel narrative that all pipelines are evil, and the people installing them are either misguided, or perhaps evil too. TransCanada’s Leach XPress pipeline project involves construction of approximately 160 miles of new “greenfield” natural gas pipeline and compression facilities in southeastern Ohio and West Virginia’s northern panhandle, flowing 1.5 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of gas all the way to Leach, Kentucky (hence the name). The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved Leach XPress and a companion project, Rayne XPress, in January of this year (see 
As we reported last week, a Broome County, NY judge ruled yesterday that the Town of Fenton (Binghamton area) Planning Board did not take a hard enough look at environmental and traffic issues related to their approval of NG Advantage’s plan to construct a facility in the town to compress and load natural gas onto tractor trailers for delivery to regional customers who desperately need the gas–what is called a “virtual pipeline” (see 
FirstEnergy, based in Akron, OH, is one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric systems, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and New York. FirstEnergy owns a variety of regulated and non-regulated power generation plants. Last November the company announced it wants to sell five power generating plants, four of them natural gas-fired plants in Pennsylvania, plus a hydroelectric plant in Virginia (see 
Patterson-UTI Energy, an oilfield services company with major operations in the northeast, has just cut a deal to buy out a second company in a deal worth roughly $220 million. The company getting bought is MS Energy Services, a leading provider of directional drilling services in most U.S. shale plays, including a big presence in both the Marcellus and Utica Shale. It was only April of this year that Patterson completed a buyout of Seventy Seven Energy (SSE) in an all-stock deal worth $1.76 billion (see 
As we do every month (and have for more than two years), MDN tracks how many rigs oilfield services company Patterson-UTI Energy reports operating–as a proxy for rig count health in general and rig count health in the Marcellus/Utica in particular. Patterson recently bought out and merged in Seventy Seven Energy (see 