PA Gov Wolf Signals his Support for Mariner East 2 Pipeline
PA Gov. Tom Wolf has been, to be frank, a disaster as a governor. On many issues. But the issue that primarily concerns us is the oil and gas industry. Wolf will soon introduce his third budget and for a third straight year he will call for a Marcellus-killing severance tax. He still owes the teachers unions payback for supporting him and getting him elected. Wolf pretty much screwed up the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) when he installed an anti-driller as its head, John Quigley. He later fired Quigley when it was discovered Quigley was colluding with Big Green groups. Given Wolf’s treatment of the industry, it was with some surprise to read that Wolf, in comments made to a Chamber of Commerce group last week, mouthed his support for the Mariner East 2 NGL (natural gas liquids) pipeline that will traverse the state. The pipeline is opposed by a few anti-fossil fuel zealots and some townships along its route. The DEP is reviewing permits for the project and the hints coming from Wolf and the DEP are that the project will receive its approvals soon. Which is really good news…
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In October 2015, Kinder Morgan’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) filed their official, full application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) seeking approval for their Orion Project (see 
In May, U.S.-based oilfield services company FMC Technologies announced they will merge with their much larger quasi-competitor, France-based Technip, in an all-stock deal that will create a new company called TechnipFMC worth $13 billion (see 
The anti-fossil fuel nutters in New York have finally lost a major battle they’ve waged against the shale industry for the past 5+ years. In June 2014, MDN told you about the Dominion New Market Project–a project that will build two new compressor plants and upgrade one other compressor station in upstate New York–to help flow more abundant, cheap and clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas from Pennsylvania (and beyond) into the northeast (see 
One of the antis’ favorite tactics in opposing the Mariner East 2 pipeline is to claim it’s unsafe. It’s a bomb waiting to go off. Mariner East 2, as a reminder, is a $2.5 billion, 350-mile natural gas liquids (NGL) pipeline that will run from eastern Ohio through the state of Pennsylvania to the Marcus Hook refinery near Philadelphia. It will flow mostly ethane, but also propane and butane. One town near Philadelphia where the pipeline is slated to run is West Goshen Township (Chester County). The leaders of the town wanted an honest, independent assessment of the pipeline and its potential danger to residents–so they hired the independent consulting firm Accufacts to study the safety of the project. The report is in (full copy below) and shows not only does Mariner East 2 meet, but in fact exceeds federal minimum safety requirements. There goes another anti argument, disappearing into the atmosphere like burned carbon dioxide…
We have some progress and movement to report about PTT Global’s proposed $6 billion ethane cracker project coming to Belmont County, OH. The rumor is that PTT will announce a final investment decision (FID) in March–just two short months away. We wait with eager anticipation! However, in the meantime, the project appears to be proceeding full speed ahead. The latest evidence of that comes from a recent permit issued for the project by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The permit allows the cracker plant to discharge wastewater (which is far different from drilling wastewater) into the Ohio River. The EPA notes, in granting the permit, that although the discharge may “result in changes from current water quality conditions” the discharge “cannot violate Ohio’s water quality standards that protect human health and the environment.” Next up is an air permit from the Ohio EPA, which the agency is currently working on. Here’s the deets on the wastewater permit just issued…
Inspired by the criminal actions of eco-terrorists in North Dakota (see 
Rabidly anti-drilling organizations like the Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council (CAC) have been using the deep pockets of their contributors to stir up dissent against Sunoco’s Mariner East 2 NGL pipeline, particularly in towns in the Philly orbit (see 
We always find it distressing when companies begin to tap dance to please corporate raiders. That is apparently what is now happening at Marathon Petroleum, owner of MarkWest Energy. We don’t pretend to fully understand what’s happening (this is all high finance stuff), but our impression is that Marathon is “dropping down” certain assets (i.e. moved from one legal corporate entity to another) more quickly than it otherwise would have, due to pressure on the company from Elliott Management, a so-called activist investor in the company. “Activist investor” is what used to be called “corporate raider” 25 years ago, which are companies or people who invest just enough in a company to control it, forcing the company to shed assets and fire people in order to boost the stock price–just to turn around and sell and make a quick buck. Apparently Elliott wants Marathon to a) move assets around from one company to another PDQ, and b) consider spinning out Speedway into its own company, or selling it. Speedway, you may or may not know, is Marathon’s retail gas filling station business. Speedway bought out and merged in the old Hess filling stations (see 
Energy Transfer Equity (ETE), owner of more than 62,500 miles of natural gas and natural gas liquids pipelines, with many miles in the Marcellus/Utica, has just gone a cash-raising bender. ETE is, by the way, the owner of the planned Rover Pipeline–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. On Monday the company announced they have raised $580 million in cash by selling new 32 million new units (think shares of stock). In addition, yesterday the company said it had floated new notes (IOUs) worth nearly $1.5 billion. Wow! Add it together and the total is over $2 billion–a serious pile of cash. What are they doing with all that cash? Paying off old debt…
Williams issued three press release on Monday that we’re still trying to figure out. Williams, like many other midstream (pipeline) companies has maintained a weird corporate structure whereby Williams the mother ship is a different corporate entity from Williams Partners, the main operating company. Once upon a time Williams had plans to merge the two together–but that all got mothballed when they ended up first fighting against, then trying to merge with Energy Transfer Equity (see 
The Baker Hughes rig count continued to rocket skyward in December–on all levels. The international rig count (worldwide) was 929, up 4 from the 925 counted in November. However, in the U.S., the December rig count was 634, up a whopping 54 rigs from the 580 counted in November. And the Marcellus/Utica had equally good news. The combined rig counts for PA-OH-WV was 58, up by 5 rigs from November’s 53. Cool! The biggest gainer was PA, with a count of 31 (up 4 from 27 in November). OH gained 2 and now stands at 18 active rigs. WV, on the other hand, lost a single rig and the count stood at an average of 9 rigs. Something else to note, December’s M-U rig count of 58 is the highest average monthly rig count in 2016. On the chart below you will see we hit our low point in June/July when the count was 36. Since that time we have gained rigs every single month…
As MDN reported last week, on the last business day of 2016, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a favorable final environmental impact statement (EIS) for one of the major pipeline projects in the Marcellus/Utica: the $3 billion Williams Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project (see 
In October 2014 Dominion announced they had officially broken ground on the Cove Point LNG export plant, a project that will inject between $3.4 and $3.8 billion in Calvert County, Maryland and pump upward of 1.8 billion cubic feet per day of cheap, abundant Marcellus and Utica Shale gas (see 
As MDN reported last week, area residents packed a small meeting hall in Buckingham County, VA for a five-hour marathon session to express their concerns about building a new compressor station in the county for the upcoming Atlantic Coast Pipeline (see