MPLX/MarkWest Working to Send NGLs to Canada, Gulf Coast
MPLX (i.e. Marathon Petroleum) has not just been sitting on its hands after buying MarkWest Energy last year for $15 billion (see MarkWest Energy Investors/Unitholders Approve Merger with Marathon). One of the plans from the beginning of the merger was/is to ship natural gas liquids (NGLs) produced in the Marcellus/Utica out of the region, particularly to the Gulf Coast where there are numerous processing plants that would pay a good price for it (see Marathon Hints MarkWest Merger Plan May Include NGLs to Gulf). Those plans, according to MPLX’s Executive Vice President of Corporate Planning and Strategy Pamela Beall, who spoke last week at the Shale Insight conference in Pittsburgh, are beginning to come together…
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Last July Canadian-based TransCanada, famously known for wanting to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast (a plan that Obama obliterated), didn’t want to be left out of the most important midstream story of the century, so they bought Columbia Pipeline Group this year, closing on the sale in July (see 
Yet another desperate attempt by radical environmentalists to stop the much-needed PennEast Pipeline from getting built. Yesterday the New Jersey Conservation Foundation (NJCF) and Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association (SBMWA) asked (more liked begged) the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to withdraw the PennEast application, something called a “no alternative” action, and just let it die a stillborn death. Their argument to FERC seems to rely on the old tactic of “if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull$#@!.” Because a few sympathetic rads exist within government agencies like the EPA and Fish & Wildlife Service, and because those agencies were co-opted into sending negative comments about the project to FERC, the radicals at NJ Conservation and Stony Brook Watershed tell FERC it’s best just to scrap the whole thing. No sense in continuing. Move along–nothing else to see here. A nice try at bamboozling FERC, but it’s an agency wise to such deceptions…
Williams continues to face challenges with its board of directors–the people hired to oversee the company and the path it will chart into the future. Nearly half of the Williams board (6 of 14 board members) were part of a cabal that tried to force the company to sell itself to Energy Transfer Equity–a deal that went horribly wrong. Following the aborted merger, six of Williams’ board members tried to engineer a palace coup to depose current CEO Alan Armstrong. The coup failed and the board members quit in July (see 
In August, Williams announced a deal to sell its Canadian businesses and assets to Inter Pipeline for $1 billion (see 
Contrary to irrational fossil fuel haters and the lies they spread about pipeline companies, those companies do listen and work with local communities and individual landowners to tweak the route of a proposed pipeline in an effort to minimize impacts. Case in point: PennEast Pipeline is a $1 billion, 118-mile, primarily 36-inch pipeline that will get built from Dallas (Luzerne County), PA to Transco’s pipeline interconnection near Pennington (Mercer County), NJ. It’s being vigorously opposed by anti-drillers including THE Delaware Riverkeeper, the Sierra Clubbers and others. Last Friday PennEast filed 33 changes to the proposed route with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), to accommodate landowners and communities. This is how adults behave, unlike the childish, petulant, spoiled children who run organizations like Riverkeeper and the Sierra Club. PennEast listened, reflected, and changed. The response from the antis? “You can’t build it. CAN’T CAN’T CAN’T CAN’T CAN’T.” There is no reasoning with people who are un-reasonable. Here’s a description of the changes PennEast made to the route through PA and NJ…
Ohio’s Ninth District Court of Appeals has upheld the right of NEXUS Gas Transmission to enter onto private land in order to conduct surveys for a potential pipeline route. Ohio’s Sixth District Court previously made a similar ruing in favor of NEXUS. Top energy law firm Bricker & Eckler argued for NEXUS in both cases and turns in the following report:
A Williams Transco Leidy pipeline ruptured in Lycoming County, PA in June 2015 (see 
In the southeastern U.S. much of the Big Green opposition to pipelines has centered on preventing pipeline companies from entering properties to complete required surveys. If you can stop the process before it begins (so they reason), it saves them from having to hop in the VW Microbus and go to (pot smoking) anti-pipeline rallies all over the place. Peace man! Landowners in West Virginia and Virginia have challenged the rights of various pipeline companies to enter their property. It happened with EQT’s Mountain Valley Pipeline (see 
Running a bulldozer a few feet into a swamp–without written permission–can land you in a lot of hot water. That’s what Spectra Energy is learning following such an incident. Well, we don’t know if it was actually a bulldozer or not, but here is what we do know. On August 28, 2016, Algonquin Gas Transmission (a Sepctra company) experienced a break in the drill stem while attempting the pullback of a 5,000-foot-long HDD (horizontal directional drill) along the Hudson River in New York. The work being done is for Spectra’s Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) Project. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had an on-site Compliance Monitor, and that person WAS informed that Algonquin believed the break was within a wetland (i.e. swamp) adjacent to the drill entry side, and that Algonquin would like to “excavate the wetland” which includes removing a few trees, to access the drill stem. The Compliance Monitor (sort of like the old Soviet political officer) told Algonquin that he needed more information before taking such an action. Then it all gets muddled. Algonquin says it was a misunderstanding, and the FERC Compliance Officer says they ignored him (our interpretation of what’s being said). At any rate, the upshot is if Algonquin had waited for the written permission slip from the political officer, er, a, Compliance Monitor, there wouldn’t be a story. But Algonquin went ahead, encroaching on about 381 square feet of swamp–about the size of an average living room. And because of it, FERC has rained down hell fire on Algonquin…
One of the interesting tidbits to come out of yesterday’s first day of the Shale Insight conference in Pittsburgh was an off-the-cuff remark from Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s special assistant for infrastructure, Yesenia Bane, who said that Gov. Wolf is “willing to talk” with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to ask him to approve the Williams Constitution Pipeline project in the Empire State. Bane said Wolf has met with Williams and other stakeholders in the Constitution project, and apparently Wolf was impressed enough that he’s willing to add his own voice to those calling for an approval of the Constitution. Democrat on Democrat. Mano a mano. Should be interesting, if Wolf ever gets up the nerve to do it…
You may recall that TransCanada, one of Canada’s leading midstream/pipeline companies, cooked up a deal 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 
Fantastic news for overabundant supplies of Marcellus and Utica Shale gas: Spectra Energy has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to open the valves on their Texas Eastern Transmission Gulf Markets Expansion Project. The project will shuttle supplies of natural gas from the northeast, along with supplies from Texas, to “meet the needs of demand growth in the power, industrial and LNG export sectors particularly in the Gulf Coast region of Louisiana and Texas.” Spectra began construction for the Gulf Markets Expansion Project in February. Construction will come in two stages, with the first stage targeted to go online in November. Spectra got done early and has asked for permission to begin operations at several compressor stations. More than half of the eventual 650,000 decatherms per day of new capacity along the Texas Eastern pipeline will come in the northeast, moving Marcellus/Utica gas to the Gulf Coast. Marcellus drillers EQT and Range Resources are signed up to ship gas along the expanded-capacity pipeline. Facilities along the pipeline have been or are being upgraded in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Here’s more about the project…