Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Lancaster County | Litigation | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Transco | Williams
Lancaster Sisters of the Corn Pipe Shakedown Rejected by Fed Court
The Catholic nuns of Lancaster County’s Adorers of the Blood of Christ are still, all these years later, trying to shake down Williams for more money because of a pipeline that runs underneath a cornfield owned by the sisters (hence our nickname for them). Using lawyers from Big Green groups, the nuns argued their “religious beliefs” were offended by the pipeline because it flows a nasty, filthy fossil fuel that causes global warming. We’ve lost track of how many lawsuits the sisters have filed, using OPM (other people’s money). The most recent lawsuit, filed in the Philadelphia-based U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, was just shot down by the court.
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In March 2019, MDN told you about a new Williams plan to beef up the Transco pipeline in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to deliver an extra 829 MMcf/d (originally 1 billion cubic feet per day) of Marcellus gas to PA, NJ, and Maryland (see 
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.
It used to be that freedom and justice and capitalism were baked into our psyche via the U.S. Constitution. All of those things–freedom, justice, and capitalism–are rapidly disappearing. They are replaced with totalitarian statism. The people we “elect” actually think we serve them and that they tell us what we can and can’t do. Example: A pipeline expansion (looping pipe and expanding some compressor stations) by Williams in the Marcellus/Utica is now imperiled by authoritarians in New Jersey.
In March 2019, MDN told you about a new Williams plan to beef up the Transco pipeline in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to deliver an extra 829 MMcf/d (originally 1 billion cubic feet per day) of Marcellus gas to PA, NJ, and Maryland (see 
In March 2019, MDN told you about a new Williams plan to beef up the Transco pipeline in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to deliver an extra 829 MMcf/d (originally 1 billion cubic feet per day) of Marcellus gas to PA, NJ, and Maryland (see 
When a pipeline company considers whether or not to build a new pipeline, the company conducts an “open season”–a time when drillers (producers), traders, buyers, and others who want guaranteed capacity along that pipeline can sign long-term contracts. Such contracts guarantee pipeline companies will be able to make back the considerable amount of money they have to spend to build the pipeline. What happens when those 5-, 10-, and 20-year contracts expire?
Pipeline giant Williams issued its first quarter 2022 update earlier this week. Among the bits of news coming from the update is that Williams has reached an agreement on two new gathering expansions for the “rich” Utica and Marcellus regions. Also newsworthy: the company has signed customers on the dotted line for its Texas to Louisiana Energy Pathway Project, a 364 MMcf/d Transco expansion project to serve the growing LNG export market along the Gulf Coast.
In July 2020 Dominion Energy announced it was canceling the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP)–a 600-mile Marcellus/Utica pipeline project from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina (see 
Anecdotally in reading articles about electric power production in New England, we know that almost all electricity is produced in the region by natural gas (unless they run low, then they use fuel oil). We also know a majority of the electricity produced in the PJM region, including the M-U area, is also produced by natural gas. What we didn’t know (but do now) is that the vast majority of electricity in the southeastern U.S. is produced by natural gas. Most of the molecules feeding southeast gas plants come from the M-U.