PA PUC Overrules Lib Judge – Mariner East 1 Returns to Service
As MDN predicted, yesterday the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) voted to overturn a previous action by liberal administrative law judge, Elizabeth Barnes, to shut down the Mariner East 1 (ME1) pipeline (see Antis Get Lib Judge to Shut Down All Mariner East Pipes, Dems Rejoice). ME1 is back up and running. All five PUC members supported returning ME1 back to service. However, three of the five PUC members agreed with Judge Barnes’ decision to temporarily shut down work on the Mariner East 2 pipeline project in West Whiteland Township (Chester County). Two of the five PUC members wanted all of Barnes’ ruling to be overturned. The reporting on this is somewhat confusing. PUC Chairwoman Gladys Brown put forward a motion to (a) turn ME1 back on, and (b) keep ME2 in West Whiteland stopped, for now, pending more information from Sunoco Logistics. The vote was 3-2 in favor of Brown’s motion. The 2 voting against it did so because it didn’t go far enough (they wanted ME2 construction to resume). So although the vote was 3-2, all 5 of the members wanted ME1 back on. That’s the real nub of the news–the subtlety that’s missed in most media reports. The 3-2 “split decision” that’s being reported is the decision to overrule Barnes on ME1, but keep her ruling intact (for now) on ME2. The PUC has ordered Sunoco to provide more information in the next 20 days: inspection and testing protocols, emergency response plans, and copies of safety training curriculum for employees and contractors. The PUC will then reconsider whether or not to allow ME2 work to resume in West Whiteland. But here’s the thing: Work on the rest of the 300+ mile pipeline continues everywhere else in the state–everywhere but West Whiteland. Overall, yesterday’s PUC action was a crushing defeat for PA State Sen. Andy “Tony Soprano” Dinniman (Democrat) and his Big Green cronies who want to assassinate the entire ME1 & ME2 projects by focusing on one small area…
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This past Tuesday, hundreds of Pennsylvanians gathered in Harrisburg to “rally for a new vision for the Commonwealth powered by 100 percent renewable energy.” Among those attending including representatives from businesses, various religious leaders, local mayors, and nurses and doctors to advocate for “bipartisan” legislation to force PA to dump fossil fuels and adopt 100% renewable energy. There is no polite way to say this, but say it we must: This so-called “bipartisan” gathering to push House and Senate bills demanding the state dump the use of fossil fuels (like natural gas) and instead stick solar panels on every rooftop and windmills on every hilltop to power the Keystone state’s electricity (and other) power needs is stark….raving….mad. It’s lunatic. Forcing the state to adopt 100% renewables is not “nice” or a “gentle, blessed future that will arrive someday.” Adopting 100% renewables is a deluded fantasy. To pretend otherwise is unkind. We must call this nuttery out for what it is: irrational hatred of fossil fuels. We have nothing against any form of energy. They all have their pluses and minuses. You like a solar panel on your house–good for you! An ugly windmill with it’s whump whump whump sound nearby? Whatever floats your boat. But ending the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity any time within the next 75-100 years is the end of human life as we know it. What was presented at the rally as some benign gathering of average citizens was nothing of the sort. Big Green (radical) groups, including PennFuture, were behind this flummery…
In May MDN told you that the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals had invalidated (vacated) a permit issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that allows Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) to accidentally kill a few bats and bumble bees (classified as endangered) as it builds the massive $6.5 billion, 600-mile project from West Virginia to North Carolina (see 
Bet you didn’t know that the environment has become racist. That’s the outrageous claim being made about Nicetown, PA (near Philadelphia). Big Green supporters in Nicetown are opposed to SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) plans to build a Marcellus gas-powered electric plant that would provide electricity to SEPTA’s northern Regional Rail lines and a bus garage (see 
Big Green protesters with names like “Ink,” “Sprout,” “Red,” “Nutty,” “Fern” and “Decard” illegally sat in the tops of trees (or on poles) in Virginia as a tactic to prevent Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) from cutting trees along the path of the pipeline. Some of them sat up there for a few days, some for a few weeks, and some for months. Eventually they all came down, as of early June (see 
It’s one thing for a landowner (or Big Green supporter, sometimes one and the same) to oppose a pipeline project by protesting, asking politicians to get involved, writing to regulatory agencies, etc. We have a great American tradition of free speech. Go for it. But it’s quite another thing to “harass, intimidate and interfere” with work crews in an area by screaming at them and shooting your “large caliber gun” near where they’re working. Columbia Gas Transmission is currently building the Mountaineer XPress Pipeline, a $2 billion, 170-mile pipeline that will flow 2.7 billion cubic feet (Bcf) per day of natural gas from existing and future points of receipt along or near the Columbia pipeline system–most of it located in West Virginia (see 
In 2013, Buckeye Brine, a relatively young Ohio-based company, added a second shale wastewater injection well in Coshocton County (see 
This story stretches back four years. In November 2014, MDN told you about anti-drillers in Lebanon County, PA who had succumbed to shiny object syndrome and transferred their irrational hatred of fossil fuels from the Williams Atlantic Sunrise pipeline project to the already-in-the-ground but getting repurposed Sunoco Logistics Mariner East 1 pipeline (see 
A faux religious group calling itself the Interfaith Alliance for Climate Justice (IACJ) is mad that this past Tuesday 27 agencies (many of them police departments) from across the Richmond, VA metro region trained together for a large-scale civil unrest opposing pipelines. Which is totally realistic. The IACJ, a Virginia-based nonprofit 501(c)(3), says it was organized for “supporting resistance to the Mountain Valley Pipeline and Atlantic Coast Pipeline.” Community organizers. Anarchists who refuse to follow the rule of law. That the police in the greater Richmond area are preparing to deal with them is smart. IACJ calls it, “American fascism, state violence, late stage capitalism, state repression.” We call the IACJ not only anti-capitalist, but anti-American. They are the fascists, in the truest sense of the word…
It seems the Canadian province of Quebec has decided to ban pretty much all oil and gas drilling, which is a good news/bad news thing. The good news is that Quebec will have to import their hydrocarbons from other places–namely the Marcellus/Utica. The bad news is for Questerre, a Canadian driller who has patiently waited for years to begin drilling on their extensive Utica acreage in the St. Lawrence Lowlands of Quebec. Questerre thought they would begin drilling this year (see 
Last November we updated you on a lawsuit filed by a group of anti-fossil fuelers in Penn Township (Westmoreland County), PA (see 
Who knew that Quakers, formally known as the “Religious Society of Friends” or “Friends Church,” could be so, well, unfriendly? Turns out the Quakers, who at first blush you might think are conservative, like the Amish, are far-left liberals. At a recent meeting of the Roanoke Friends, the Quakers adopted a statement (below) to “speak out against two natural gas pipelines [Mountain Valley Pipeline and Atlantic Coast Pipeline] proposed in Virginia, and all pipelines transporting gas extracted by hydraulic fracking. Fracking is a process documented to contaminate air and water with toxic chemicals, accelerating climate change and encouraging our dependence on fossil fuels.” Sorry my Quaker friends, but you just out-and-out lied. Fracking is not documented to contaminate air and water with toxic chemicals. Period. If you have real scientific evidence to the contrary, please produce it. If we take them at their word, the “friendly” Quakers want all pipelines that flow natural gas everywhere–including the ones that feed their own homes (!)–to be shut down. All pipelines, including local utility pipelines that feed the homes of millions of Americans, flow “fracked” gas. Most gas these days is “fracked.” The “friendly” Quakers also state their support of illegal, law-breaking protesters who sit in trees against a judge’s order, to stop work on pipelines. The Quaker Friends in Roanoke have shown themselves to be just one more non-thinking, knee-jerk reacting group of liberals who really don’t know what they’re talking about…