Bloomberg Says Crazy Bernie is Wrong, Joe Manchin is Right re MVP

Last week roughly one-third of the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives wrote a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi to let her know they do NOT support a proposed bill amending a Continuing Resolution (to keep the government running) that would streamline permitting for pipelines and all-but-guarantee Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) gets completed (see Fellow Democrats Welsh on Manchin Permitting Reform/MVP Deal). The permitting reform bill was the price Senator Joe Manchin extracted from his fellow Democrats in return for his vote on the horrible Inflation Reduction Act. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer assured Manchin the permitting reform bill would get passed. Yet last week, Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont (i.e. Crazy Bernie), delivered a fiery speech on the Senate floor saying hell no, he won’t vote for it. We’re not surprised. But here’s the shocker: An opinion columnist who writes for and is employed by Bloomberg has just published a column that says Crazy Bernie is wrong, and Joe Manchin is right, when it comes to MVP.
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Yesterday both Antero Midstream (the pipeline subsidiary of Antero Resources), and Crestwood Equity Partners announced a deal to sell Crestwood’s remaining Marcellus assets to Antero for $205 million. The assets include 72 miles of dry gas gathering pipelines and nine compressor stations with approximately 700 MMcf/d of compression capacity located in Doddridge County and Harrison County in West Virginia.
Joe Manchin, U.S. Senator from West Virginia (now wildly unpopular in his home state) continues to have a tough time sealing the deal on a permitting reform bill that will help the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) get done. Manchin traded his integrity away by voting to approve the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (a Big Green giveaway) in return for a vote on a bill to streamline the permitting of oil and gas projects like (and including) MVP. The Dems snookered Manchin into voting for the IRA with big promises, but now they don’t want to vote for his permitting bill, breaking those promises. Manchin needs help, and he’s turning to the oil and gas industry, hoping we will pressure Republican House and Senate members into helping him out. Don’t hold your breath, Joe.
Quick…grab the paddles! The patient is still alive and needs to be shocked and revived! The patient we’re talking about is New Fortress Energy’s (NFE) Repauno Port and Rail Terminal on the shoreline of the Delaware River in Gibbstown, N.J. We thought the project to build a new dock for cargo ships to load and export LNG from the facility was pretty much dead after NFE withdrew a request to build an onshore LNG liquefaction plant in Wyalusing, PA, earlier this year–a plant that would have fed the export operation on the Delaware River (see
Another update on the uphill battle Joe Manchin faces in getting his “side deal” legislation passed that will help Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) get done. Manchin agreed to vote for the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in return for a “permitting reform” bill, to be voted on in September, as the price for his vote. We told you it was a bad deal for many reasons–one of which is that Manchin may never get his vote. On Friday, 72 Democrat members of the House of Representatives signed a letter (copy below) to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer opposing the Manchin “side deal” legislation. Yeah, it didn’t but a few weeks for the Dems to welsh on their deal with Manchin. It appears that Manchin got rolled.
One step forward and two steps back. That country tune went through our head as we read about the progress being made by Williams with its Regional Energy Access Expansion Pipeline project in Pennsylvania. The project, aimed at competing with the now-dead PennEast Pipeline project by flowing gas from northeastern Pennsylvania to the Trenton, NJ area, will get a virtual public hearing by the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection on Wednesday, October 5.
We will continue to update MDN readers throughout the month of September as U.S. Senator Joe Manchin’s huge gamble of trading away the future of the country to finish the Mountain Valley Pipeline plays out. We spotted a story that quotes powerful Democrat members of the U.S. House of Representatives saying they have no allegiance to a deal made in the Senate–even though Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised support. A radical organization called Earthjustice (an adjunct of the Democrat Party) will hold a rally in the D.C. swamp today to oppose Manchin’s “save MVP” bill. You can expect a fierce battle against Manchin’s plan. Even if he wins (we hope he does) and MVP gets done, Manchin still traded away our country’s future to get it done. It’s not a good bargain, in our humble opinion.
Located in Lusby, Maryland, Cove Point LNG is the first major LNG export facility to locate on the East Coast. It is recognized as one of the most technically advanced and environmentally sensitive LNG facilities in the world. The Cove Point LNG Terminal has a storage capacity of 14.6 billion cubic feet (Bcf) and a daily send-out capacity of 1.8 Bcf. The owners/managers of Cove Point recently filed a preliminary request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to increase export capacity by an extra 20 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) by installing a small liquefaction unit to capture “boil off gas” the plant currently evaporates during normal operations.
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, from West Virginia, traded away the future of the country by supporting the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (the remnants of the Green New Deal) in return for finishing the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline along with a few other concessions for the oil and gas industry (see
We’ve heard from a few MDN subscribers who think we’re being too hard on Joe Manchin and his sellout of the country in return for finishing the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. We don’t think so. The one thing everyone agrees on, those who support Manchin and the many of us who do not: It’s time to finish MVP…now.
In March, MDN told you that the Deputy Chief Administrative Law Judge of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) issued a ruling against the now completed Mariner East 2 pipeline project, assessing a $51,000 fine on the project for work done near an apartment complex (see 
The 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project from Wetzel County, WV, to Pittsylvania County, VA, announced in 2014, was supposed to be completed in 2018 and cost $3.5 billion. The project builder, Equitrans Midstream, now says MVP, which is 94% complete, should be done by the end of 2023 at a staggering cost of $6.6 billion. What happened between 2014 and today is that Big Green groups, many of which use foreign funding (from countries like Russia), have repeatedly challenged the project. Complicit and colluding judges have placed roadblocks in the way, preventing MVP from finishing. Given the ongoing opposition from the radical left, MVP asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in June to extend the time to complete the project until October 2026, just in case. On Tuesday, FERC granted MVP’s request.