NY DEC Grants Permit for Millennium Pipe Eastern System Upgrade
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 Millennium Pipe Asks FERC to Approve Eastern System Upgrade in NY). The ESU would add 7.8 miles of extra looped pipeline in Orange County, upgrade a compressor station in Delaware County, build a new compressor in Sullivan County and make some minor tweaks to metering stations in Rockland County. Just days before the DEC denied a water permit for the Valley Lateral Project (see Corrupt NY DEC Denies Water Permit for 7.8 Mile Power Plant Pipeline), the DEC issued the same permit for the much larger ESU project. The DEC denied Valley Lateral on the premise that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had not done a proper job in evaluating the global warming potential of the new power plant that pipeline will feed. Yet the DEC saw no problem with bumping up capacity by 223 million cubic feet of natural gas flowing per day along the mainline Millennium, which the ESU project will do. Lucy! You have some ‘splainin to do! Aside from the flaming DEC contradiction, Millennium has just asked FERC to please hurry up a final OK of the ESU project, before the DEC changes it mind…
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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 
The president of the company looking to build the Mountaineer NGL Storage facility in Monroe County, Ohio, near Clarington, along the Ohio River says operating the facility close to the Ohio River is safe and “is not rocket science.” Last week West Virginia University researchers released a report that the Marcellus/Utica region needs an ethane storage hub (see today’s companion story, WVU Appalachia Ethane Storage Hub Final Report – We Need it Bad). Most of the talk has been about a massive, $10 billion ethane storage facility to help feed cracker plants and other petrochemical facilities that will locate in our region. At the meeting last week, David Hooker, president of Energy Storage Ventures which wants to build the Mountaineer NGL Storage facility, made the point that his company is already working on what will likely be multiple NGL storage facilities. MDN has been following the Mountaineer NGL project. At least check in June, Mountaineer still needs customers to sign up, and they need more regulatory approvals from Ohio (see