Williams Sues NY Over Constitution Pipe – DEC May Lose Authority
Three cheers for Williams. Hip hip horray! Williams announced yesterday a two-pronged legal challenge against New York State and its decision to deny stream crossing permits for the federally-approved Constitution Pipeline project (see NY Gov. Cuomo Refuses to Grant Permits for Constitution Pipeline). The first prong is a lawsuit filed in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit–challenging the decision itself as “arbitrary and capricious.” The second prong is a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York–seeking recognition by the court that New York doesn’t even have jurisdiction over the project. It is this second case that should have Cuomo, the DEC and the antis VERY worried. If the case goes against them, it means that New York will forever be cut out of decision-making with regard to any FERC-approved projects. Properly so. NY has shown itself to be motivated by politics and not by science and certainly not by common sense. It’s time to remove NY from the equation. Staffers at the state Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) feared this might happen and counseled Cuomo to approve the Constitution project–sage advice he ignored…
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Energy Transfer Equity (ETE) pushed and prodded and poked and cajoled and insisted, and finally with the help of an inside corporate raider, forced Williams to agree to a buyout/merger (see 
Last week midstream giant Williams issued its first quarter 2016 update. The company reported a net loss of $65 million in 1Q16, compared to making $70 million in 1Q15. The company said the difference was because of higher interest expenses and due to a change in internal accounting practices–not because of lost business. Along with the update Williams’ top brass held an analyst/earnings call. Notably on the call they refused to take any questions dealing with the impending merger/takeover by Energy Transfer Equity (ETE). Williams has sued ETE over that plan and apparently Williams’ lawyers put the fear of God into management that they could not talk about the case or the merger during the phone call–which is disappointing given that ETE did talk about it on their call (see 
Last year midstream giant Energy Transfer Equity and its CEO Kelsy Warren pursued Williams, for months, and finally got Williams to agree to a deal to sell itself to Warren for $38 billion (see 
We knew that corporate raider Carl Icahn’s protege, Keith “Mini-Me” Meister, had been meddling in Williams since 2013 (see 
The partners in the Constitution Pipeline, including Williams and Cabot Oil & Gas, have come roaring back against Gov. Cuomo and his pusillanimous Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) after the DEC lied last Friday in announcing they would not grant stream crossing permits for the pipeline project. Yesterday Cabot, along with Williams, issued a STRONGLY worded rebuttal that says, in part that the DEC’s “stated rationale for the denial includes flagrant misstatements and inaccurate allegations, and appears to be driven more by New York State politics than by environmental science.” Flagrant misstatements is another way of saying the DEC lied, which is exactly what we said yesterday (see 
You can’t see we didn’t predict this outcome: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has made the political decision to not grant the Constitution Pipeline stream crossing permits, temporarily stopping the project from advancing. Cuomo’s lackeys at the totally humiliated and discredited Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) made the announcement on Friday, so-called Earth Day. Virulent anti-drillers erupted in spontaneous (and multiple) orgasms at the news. The DEC claims Williams, the builder of the Constitution, did not provide detailed information about pipe burial that the DEC had requested. This is a blatant, 100% lie. Gov. Cuomo is corrupt and is being led, as our friend Tom Shepstone points out, by the nose by Rockefeller money. Prosecutor Preet Bharara–are you paying attention? MDN now calls on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to bypass New York State, as is its right under the U.S. Constitution. FERC has the power to bypass Cuomo and the DEC and authorize the pipeline without NY’s stream crossing permits. Yes, hoops will need to be jumped through with various courts, but now is the time to permanently remove NY from such decision-making. The state has proven it is incapable of making independent, science-based decisions on the topic of oil and gas drilling and pipelines. Time to overrule the state and move on. Below we have the DEC’s pathetic political cover-up, along with various responses to the news…
Talk about media bias. Yesterday over 200 people crowded into a meeting room at the Binghamton Holiday Inn for a rally supporting the Constitution Pipeline–a $683 million, 124-mile pipeline due to run from Susquehanna County, PA to Schoharie County, NY carrying Marcellus gas. The “newspaper of record” for Binghamton, the Press & Sun-Bulletin (P&SB), is so biased they didn’t run a single word covering the event in today’s edition. The P&SB’s so-called reporter who covers the drilling issue (actually an anti-drilling propagandist), Tom Wilber, apparently couldn’t be bothered to cover a major news story under his nose and part of his beat. The P&SB couldn’t even send an intern. Yes, the P&SB is completely in the anti-drilling tank and not in any way an actual news organization–they’re simply Democrat hacks towing the party line. Here’s what happened at yesterday’s meeting, from real news organizations that did show up…
Two shale industry members of last year’s ill-fated Pennsylvania Pipeline Task Force have pulled the curtain back to reveal what went on behind the scenes. The sausage-making. And it’s not pretty. Two important facts emerge for their disclosures: (1) most of the members of the task force didn’t (and still don’t) know their heads from their rear-ends when it comes to how the natural gas industry actually works, and (2) nothing useful will come from the 658-page report and its 184 recommendations. We previously predicted that outcome when we said, “Silly libs–they never learn. This initiative was never about actually getting anything done. It was always about the optics–to show that radical leftist Tom Wolf (and his lackey John Quigley) actually care about the hoi polloi” (see