Court Halts Work on Broome Co. Virtual Pipeline, Residents Sound Off
MDN editor Jim Willis attended one of the information sessions offered by NG Advantage at the Port Crane fire hall last night. NG Advantage is making a concerted effort to dispel false rumors and misunderstandings on the part of neighbors who live near a proposed “virtual pipeline” site that is a series of compressor stations grabbing gas from the Millennium Pipeline in a Binghamton suburb, compressing it and loading onto tanker trucks. Jim knew it was going to be an interesting night when he arrived at 7:15 pm to find a packed previous session that began at 5 pm was still going strong. Jim wandered to the back of the facility (in the parking lot) to view one of the tanker trucks that NG hopes to have accessing the facility (see our pic). In fact, two of these trucks each and every hour of the day will enter and leave the facility, some 50 trucks per day, on average, according NG officials. As Jim approached the truck, a woman also walking in the same direction said loudly, “My God! Look how BIIIIIIGGGG it is!” Like she’d never seen a tractor trailer before (actually, it’s shorter than a standard trailer). Since no one else was close to her, Jim assumed she said it for his benefit–likely hoping he would join in and agree. Jim said nothing. The same woman grilled the NG rep standing there, asking how many trucks per day, etc. And then she said, “I’m against this–I’m just glad there’s now a stop work order,” which was the first we had heard the news (more on the stop work order below). The woman’s demeanor and her ebullience that the project is now halted was an early signal: Jim knew he was in for a long night of high emotion from local residents who don’t want the facility, largely because of truck traffic. Jim was right…
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The New Jersey Dept. of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) sent PennEast Pipeline a letter yesterday saying they have closed the application for water-crossing permits for the project–without granting those permits. In April the NJDEP temporarily rejected the permits, giving PennEast another 60 days to respond to requests for more detailed information about the project (see 
The Fresh Water Accountability Project, an anti-fracking group based in Michigan, has filed a frivolous lawsuit against the Patriot Water Treatment facility and the City of Warren, OH, claiming they are processing frack chemicals at their plants that don’t get processed enough–and consequently get released into the Mahoning River. This is not Patriot Water’s first time in court. Patriot has had a long-running feud with the Ohio EPA and Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR)–a feud that goes all the way back to 2011 (
Yesterday Energy Transfer Partners, the builder of the Rover Pipeline, once again asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) if they could pretty-please-with-a-cherry-on-top resume horizontal directional drilling (HDD) in a couple of key locations in Ohio, so they can finish phase one of the pipeline somewhere close to on-time. Rover is a $3.7 billion, 711-mile Marcellus/Utica natural gas pipeline that will run from PA, WV and eastern OH through OH into Michigan and eventually into Canada. It is a critical piece of sorely needed infrastructure for the Marcellus/Utica industry. As soon as ET received approval for the project in February, they began building it. But they hit a few snags along the way, including an “inadvertent return” (i.e. leak) of 2 million gallons of drilling mud in a swamp next to the Tuscarawas River (Stark County, OH). Following that leak and other leaks, FERC told Rover to stop any new underground drilling not already under way (see 
In October 2016, Dominion announced a new pipeline project called Eastern Market Access Project (see 
NG Advantage is making a concerted effort to dispel false rumors and misunderstanding on the part of neighbors who live near a proposed “virtual pipeline” site that is a series of compressor stations grabbing gas from the Millennium Pipeline in a Binghamton suburb, compressing it and loading onto tanker trucks. As MDN reported yesterday, two different groups have now filed lawsuits to stop work at the site, one by a local elementary school (more than a half mile away) and one by residents living nearby, including a local Catholic church parish (see 
Is Kinder Morgan’s NED pipeline project getting reincarnated?! You may recall that over a year ago, in April 2016, anti-fossil fuel nuts in Massachusetts and other northeastern states were orgasmic that Kinder Morgan announced the company had suspended (not necessarily canceled) any further spending/time/effort on the Tennessee Gas Pipeline expansion from NY through MA, otherwise known as the Northeast Energy Direct (NED) project (see 
Just when you thought you’ve seen how low some anti-pipeline fanatics will go, they surprise you and go even lower. Antis set up a fake graveyard with a half dozen authentic, 19th century tombstones, right next to a pipeline right of way for the Williams Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline in Lancaster County, PA. Williams is hypersensitive to ensure they don’t violate any “Native American” or other kinds of historic sites. So when they came across the fake graveyard, they thought it was real and proceeded as such, spending time and money to plan a route for construction that would protect the fake site. And antis, with full knowledge, lied to Williams’ people (not telling them is the same as lying in our book). And laughed their considerable derrieres off the entire time, wondering when those poor dunderheads at Williams would figure it out. Now Williams may have the last laugh, because what the antis did is fraud and prosecutable. So-called local Native Americans (i.e. Indians) were in on the “joke.” And now those Indian activists have the gall to say if Williams didn’t recognize something as fake, how will they recognize real Indian artifacts that need protecting? We ask a different question: Who will ever believe these so-called Native American activists again–when they are self-professed liars?…
In March 2016, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s (TGP) Connecticut Expansion project (see 
An Appeals Court decision issued Friday has (in our opinion) HUGE ramifications for New York State and the Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) that has been corrupted by political influence from Gov. Andrew Cuomo. It also has ramifications in other states with overactive environmental agencies too. It is hard for us to overstate how important we think this decision is. The NY DEC has been corrupted and politicized by one of the most corrupt governors New York has ever had: Andrew Cuomo. The Cuomo DEC has unilaterally decided not to issue 401 water crossing permits for several federally-authorized pipeline projects, including Williams’ Constitution Pipeline, NFG’s Northern Access Pipeline, and a teeny tiny 9-mile pipeline Millennium wants to build from their main pipeline to an under-construction natgas-fired electric plant in Orange County, NY, called the Valley Lateral Project. Millennium took the bull by the horns early on, when it was apparent the DEC was following the same pattern of delay and then deny, suing the DEC (see 
A lot of communication (letters, phone calls, meetings) fly back and forth between a midstream (pipeline) company and regulatory agencies when an application is filed for a project. Particularly a project like the Dominion’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline, $5 billion, 594-mile natural gas pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina. Companies like Dominion send letters, make phone calls and meet with federal and state regulators, attempting to anticipate and answer questions and concerns. It’s a natural part of the process. So we found it interesting, indeed strange, that the Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources, Molly Ward, sent a letter to Dominion back in April (just now coming to light) in which she tells Dominion to back off and that people in the agencies that work for her “will not base their decisions on requests or suggestions from an applicant.” The Roanoke Times, “reporting” on the letter, opens their article with this sentence: “Attempts by Dominion Energy to sway regulators in the Atlantic Coast Pipeline permitting process prompted a top official under Gov. Terry McAuliffe to notify the utility that state agencies would not heed those efforts.” So now, when a company attempts to provide information, perhaps anticipating issues and concerns for regulators, and reaches out to contact them proactively, that’s called an attempt at “swaying” and is somehow nefarious and underhanded. Should Dominion contact regulators to ask them to NOT approve the project? Ridiculous! Of course Dominion is going to try and convince regulators that the project is worthy/sound/needed/safe/etc. That’s their job! Why would Ward not want her people to hear directly from Dominion? Her people hear plenty from the other side, anti-fossil fuel nutters opposed to the project…
TransCanada, one of Canada’s leading midstream/pipeline companies, cooked up a deal last year 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 when/if the NEXUS and Rover pipelines get built (see 
Here is a short list of radical environmental groups that are despicable and loathsome in every sense of the word: Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Earthworks, Freshwater Accountability Project, Friends for Environmental Justice, Indigenous Environmental Network, Indigenous Iowa, Keep Wayne WILD, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Ohio River Citizens’ Alliance, and Oil Change International. They have dedicated themselves to stopping work on, and ultimately blocking, Energy Transfer’s (ET) $3.7 billion, 711-mile Marcellus/Utica Rover natural gas pipeline that will run from PA, WV and eastern OH through OH into Michigan and eventually into Canada. The problem, however, is that ET has given these groups an open door to pedal their anti-fossil fuel nonsense. Indeed, ET has given them an open door to block further progress on building Rover. How? By rushing construction that has led to a string of accidents and incidents, alienating the thin-skinned Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) and a number of landowners. One of the accidents, perhaps the most prominent accident that’s been the focus for much of the radical’s efforts, was a 2 million gallon spill of drilling mud into a wetland near the Tuscarawas River back in April (see 
Nearly five years ago, in July 2012, then-PA Gov. Tom Corbett announced that some of the Sunoco Marcus Hook Refinery assets had been purchased by Braskem America (see