Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Chester County | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Sunoco Logistics
Chester County Commissioner Uses Pipeline Lawsuit as Fundraiser
This is super sleazy. You might want to put on a rain slicker to keep the crap from sticking to you as you read it. Last week Chester County, PA commissioners asked to join a lawsuit against Sunoco’s Mariner East pipeline projects. The commissioners also voted to end easements allowing Sunoco access to the pipeline as it runs through county property, access needed so they could do work on it.
Read More “Chester County Commissioner Uses Pipeline Lawsuit as Fundraiser”
Energy Transfer and their Sunoco Logistics Partners unit are about to restart underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) work for the Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline in West Whiteland Township (Chester County), PA–work that has been on pause since July 2017. Yet ME2 actually went online in December (see 
In November seven anti-pipeline residents of Chester and Delaware counties (Philadelphia suburbs) filed a lawsuit against the Mariner East pipeline projects–1, 2 and 2X–alleging the pipelines are unsafe. It didn’t take long for others to jump on the litigation bandwagon:
Earlier this week Energy Transfer, the company that built the Rover Pipeline in Ohio, the Revolution Pipeline in southwestern Pennsylvania, and the Mariner East pipelines that run from eastern OH clear across PA to Philadelphia, issued its fourth quarter and full year 2018 update. The thing that caught our attention is an admission by ET’s CEO Kelcy Warren that the company has made “mistakes” with its pipeline projects in PA, and has learned from those mistakes.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has just declared full-on war with Energy Transfer and its Sunoco Logistics subsidiary by directing the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to suspend all reviews of clean water permit applications and other pending approvals for all of ET/Sunoco’s pipeline projects in the state, including Mariner East 2 (ME2) and the Revolution pipeline project.
Perhaps two unrelated cases of individual landowners challenging Energy Transfer’s Mariner East 2 (ME2) Pipeline–one in court, the other with regulators–doesn’t make a trend, but it is worth noting. Our antennae are up.
A couple of developments to share with you about the Mariner East 1 NGL pipeline which has been completely shut down since Jan. 21 when a new sinkhole appeared in Chester County exposing a few feet of the bare pipe (see 
MDN previously reported that last Sunday a new sinkhole appeared exposing a tiny section of the Mariner East 1 (ME1) NGL pipeline in Chester County, PA, prompting Sunoco Logistics Partners to close down ME1 in the Greater Philadelphia area (see 
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) yesterday upheld an administrative law judge’s December decision against an “emergency” request by pipeline opponents to shut down both Mariner East 1 and 2 by claiming they are unsafe and need to be stopped. Can we FINALLY put this to rest and move on? ME1 and ME2 are both now online. There’s no going back.
You know you’ve hit a nerve when so-called reporters (propagandists) at a Philadelphia-area newspaper drop all pretense of being objective in their reporting and begin calling a pipeline project made-up names–like calling Mariner East 2 “Frankenpipe.” Talk about petulant and childish!