Rover Pipe Sues FERC Over $20M Fine for Demolishing This Old House
You have GOT to be kidding! In 2015 Energy Transfer’s Rover Pipeline purchased an old house in Ohio that was crumbling and falling down, intending to fix it up and use it for offices. The company later decided to demolish it. The old house was on a list to be considered as a National Historic Place, even though the local fire department considered burning it down as a training exercise it was so dilapidated. Because this particular old house was potentially considered “historic,” Rover went through all sorts of hell and ended up paying a $2.3 million fine. Then Richard “Dick” Glick took over at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and decided to drag that case out yet again, this time fining Rover $20 million for something long ago settled (see FERC’s Dick Glick Shakes Down Rover Pipe for Past Settled Sins)! Rover is now fighting back, taking FERC (and Glick) to court.
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Last week we brought you the bitterly disappointing news that the clown judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (the 4th Circus) have, for a second time, overturned permits for Mountain Valley Pipeline (94% complete!) to build through 3.5 miles of Jefferson National Forest (see 
The Lorax-quoting judge from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (i.e. 4th Circus) has struck again. We shouldn’t be surprised. Yesterday the 4th Circuit overruled permits issued by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management that would have allowed the 94% complete Mountain Valley Pipeline from crossing 3.5 miles of federal land in Jefferson National Forest. This is the second time the same group of clown judges have done this.
Midstream giant Williams’ chief operating officer, Michael Dunn, told an industry conference in Houston, TX yesterday that Joe Biden is “overlooking” the role natural gas can place in reducing emissions and decarbonizing the U.S. And that’s a big mistake. Dunn’s sentiment (in our words) is that the Bidenistas are unwilling to accept half-a-loaf now and instead prefer no loaf at all, which leads to more harmful emissions, not less.
Houston-based Schlumberger (pronounced Shlum-Bur-Zhay) is the world’s largest oilfield services company. They’re the company a majority of exploration and production companies (drillers) call when they want a new well drilled. The #2 company on speed dial for drilling new wells is Halliburton, and they’re not even close in size to #1 Schlumberger. On Friday Schlumberger issued its fourth quarter and full-year 2021 earnings report, holding a conference call to discuss results. Of particular interest to us was information detailing Schlumberger’s work for M-U driller CNX Resources.
In December, Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP), a subsidiary of Kinder Morgan, filed a proposal with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to implement a “responsibly sourced natural gas (RSG) supply aggregation pooling service” at select locations across the TGP system (see 
Last year Big Green lobbyists using the City of Oberlin, Ohio contested the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) decision to approve the Enbridge/DTE Energy NEXUS pipeline, a a $2 billion, 255-mile pipeline from the Ohio Utica Shale into Michigan that’s been flowing for years connecting to a pipeline that exports some of the gas into Canada (see 
New England–Massachusetts and Maine in particular–dodged a major bullet on Thursday when Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) commissioners voted 5-0 to NOT overturn a permit for the already up-and-running compressor station in Weymouth, Mass. The Weymouth compressor station was the final piece of the $452 million Atlantic Bridge expansion project that was years in the making. The compressor went online in January 2021 (see 
NextLVL Energy, a Pittsburgh-based well plugging company, was founded by several former EQT Corporation executives following the change in power when the Rice boys took over at EQT. The company was formed to tackle the thorny issue of plugging old and abandoned oil and gas wells (mostly conventional wells). Pennsylvania alone has over 200,000 abandoned and orphaned O&G wells according to some estimates. NextLVL was a prescient move by the former EQT execs. Nearly $400 million from Biden’s infrastructure bill is heading to PA alone over the next 10 years for the specific purpose of plugging old wells.
Our friends at NGI (Natural Gas Intelligence) are running an excellent series providing expert forecasts for the global natural gas and oil markets in 2022. The latest installment interviews several experts about the prospects for the Marcellus/Utica. With the Shell ethane cracker plant coming online sometime this year, the prospects for NGL sales in the M-U have picked up. Also in the discussion: capping Pennsylvania’s orphaned wells, drilling in the Wayne National Forest, and the Mountain Valley Pipeline coming online.
BCCK Holding Company (BCCK) has been granted a contract to upgrade a cryogenic gas processing plant in the Marcellus/Utica, in southeastern Ohio. The name of the customer was not disclosed but we’re guessing it is MarkWest Energy (now MPLX). BCCK says it has developed a simple and effective modification to improve the existing cryogenic plant design and equipment with the aim of increasing propane recovery.