Accidents | Energy Services | Ethane | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Washington County | Williams
Lightning Strikes Williams Valve Station in Washington County, PA
A fire broke out at a Williams pipeline valve station located in Buffalo Township in Washington County, PA following a reported lightning strike. The fire was small and contained and Williams’ workers were able to quickly put it out. No one in the surrounding area needed to be evacuated, and no one was injured. Whew.
Read More “Lightning Strikes Williams Valve Station in Washington County, PA”
Sabal Trail is a $3.2 billion, 515-mile interstate natural gas pipeline in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama built to deliver (in part) Marcellus gas to the southeast. Sabal Trail connects to Williams’ Hillabee Expansion Project, which is a pipeline spur built off the huge Transco pipeline system. On June 15 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued orders extending the time for both projects to complete the final bits of their construction by another two years.
We simply don’t get it. Either through fear of regulatory and shareholder reprisals, exhaustion in fighting the good fight, or maybe even falling for the false God of Climate Change, big and important oil and gas companies like pipeline giant Williams are beginning to cave to the climate crazies, planning for an oil-less and gas-less future. We kid you not. Williams is IN the business of flowing hydrocarbon molecules (oil and gas) from point A to point B. Yet now they’ve signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Microsoft, a software company, to lecture and teach Williams how to dump fossil fuels and flow different molecules instead, like hydrogen. It’s the darnedest thing we’ve ever seen.
On March 19 Williams petitioned the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to extend the time to build the FERC-approved Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project in the New York City area by an extra two years (see 
Pipeline giant Williams released its 1Q21 update on Monday, but it wasn’t until a conference call with analysts yesterday that CEO Alan Armstrong shared the big news that Williams has purchased Southern Company’s natural gas energy trading unit Sequent Energy Management for $50 million. The deal vastly expands Williams’ capability to market natural gas (i.e. find new customers).
Last week we brought you the earthshattering news of a resurrection–the resurrection of the Williams Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project in the New York City area (see 
Hey, it’s that time of year when thoughts turn to the events of some 2,000 years ago and a Jewish rabbi named Jesus who was raised from the dead. Although nowhere near as world-changing as that event, we have another rise-from-the-dead situation: Williams’ Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project. We told you in May of last year after the corrupt Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey refused to grant permits to build NESE, that Williams had walked away form the project (see 
Williams, via its wholly-owned subsidiary Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line (Transco), has filed a lawsuit against Mountain Valley Pipeline (a competitor) over MVP’s plan to extend the pipeline an extra 75 miles from southern Virginia into North Carolina. Williams claims some of the land MVP wants to use under eminent domain crosses into Transco’s easements and building MVP so close to Transco may damage Transco’s pipeline and the cathodic anti-corrosion system that protects it.
Talk about closing the barn door after the horse is gone! In March 2020 midstream (pipeline) giant Williams issued a press release to say they had just swallowed a poison pill (see 
Our headline is a bit cryptic, so we’ll explain right up front that G&P stands for gathering and processing. In pipeline giant Williams’ latest update (covering 4th quarter and full-year 2020) company reps said the Northeast G&P unit “continues to come on very strong producing record results and contributing $29 million of additional EBITDA this quarter.” They also said Northeast (namely Marcellus) gathering volumes grew by 7% in 4Q, and processing volumes grew by 9%.
Last Friday National Fuel Gas Company (NFG), the parent company for Seneca Resources and Empire Pipeline, issued its latest quarterly update for the quarter ending Dec. 31 (NFG’s first quarter 2021, everyone else’s fourth quarter 2020). Among the pearls of good news for NFG is that the company is adding a rig back in Tioga County, PA to drill on acreage NFG purchased from Shell.
On Friday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) granted its approval to Williams to begin construction on the Leidy South Project in central Pennsylvania. The purpose of the Leidy South Project, which is part of the mighty Transco pipeline, is to connect robust supplies of natural gas in the Marcellus and Utica producing regions in Pennsylvania with markets along the Atlantic Seaboard by the 2021-2022 winter heating season.
Members of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA) announced yesterday a set of climate change commitments that outline in detail its mission to help address climate change, including working together as an industry towards reaching net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from natural gas transmission and storage by 2050. INGAA members pledging to hit that target include the biggest pipeline companies in the M-U, including Williams, Kinder Morgan, and Enbridge.
On Joe Biden’s very first day of occupying the White House, he signed an executive order revoking a permit for the $9 billion Keystone XL oil pipeline that would cross from Canada into the U.S. According to the leftists at Bloomberg (giddy with excitement), Biden’s move to cancel Keystone “is the clearest sign yet that constructing a major new pipeline in the U.S. has become an impossible task.” The CEO for pipeline giant Williams, Alan Armstrong, agrees.
During the Williams third-quarter 2020 update in early November, CEO Alan Armstrong shared some interesting and relevant (to the Marcellus/Utica) comments (see 
Each year East Daley Capital publishes its Midstream Guidance Outlook which looks at themes and trends affecting the midstream (pipeline) sector in the coming year. The latest version of Daley’s report has just been released and draws some interesting conclusions about the midstream in 2021. Namely, associated gas growth in the Permian and elsewhere will go down and result in rising gas demand from the Marcellus/Utica and Haynesville gas plays. The big winners will be M-U pipeline companies, including Williams, Antero Midstream, and Equitrans (EQT Midstream).