Spire Warns of Gas Outage for “Hundreds of Thousands” in St. Louis
Officials from St. Louis, MO utility company Spire continue to sound the alarm that a shutdown of the company’s Spire STL pipeline, which connects to and flows Marcellus/Utica gas from the Rockies Express (REX) pipeline to the St. Louis area, will result in “hundreds of thousands of customers” losing natural gas service during the coming winter. This is not an idle threat. This is the doing of a lawsuit by a Big Green group that will result in real harm to real people.
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So-called environmentalists filed a lawsuit last week to block the construction of an LNG unloading facility in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. National Grid, a huge utility company that supplies natural gas to all of Long Island, including two New York City boroughs (Queens and Brooklyn), needs a way to inject more natural gas into its distribution system…or else. Or else during extreme winter weather events some folks will run out of gas for heating and cooking. Antis don’t care–until they’re the ones who run out.
After deliberating for an hour, a jury in Chester County, PA declared two off-duty constables guilty of not filling out a tax form–a third-degree misdemeanor. The Chester County District Attorney’s case against innocent men hired to protect the Mariner East (ME) Pipeline project from crazy anti-fossil fuel nutters crashed and burned when the judge in the case threw out all charges save one. How much money did the DA’s office spend to convict two low-level constables of not filing the right paperwork? Somebody in that office should LOSE HIS OR HER JOB. Most likely the DA herself–Deb Ryan.
Big Green insanity continues at the so-called Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation (PEDF). The only thing they “defend” is their own twisted philosophy of trying to gouge out the eyes of the oil and gas industry in PA–even at the expense of de-funding their own beloved PA Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR). The PEDF has convinced the liberal Democrats on the PA Supreme Court (again) to block using revenues from oil and gas drilling on state land to fund the DCNR’s own budget! Truly insane.
Because of recent sinkholes developing near the construction of the Mariner East 2X pipeline, Chester County, PA officials have sent a letter to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) asking the agency to immediately shut down flows along the existing Mariner East 1 pipeline. All of the ME pipelines flow NGLs, mainly ethane (sometimes propane and butane). Officials say seven sinkholes have developed near ME construction *just this year* and they are concerned more sinkholes will develop and potentially crack or break an existing pipeline. One recent sinkhole swallowed a small tree (caught on video, below).
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf pulled a fast one. He pressured the PA Environmental Quality Board (EQB), a powerful committee operating under the larger umbrella of the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), to hold a hearing and cast a vote yesterday (in the dead of summer with everyone out of town) on whether or not PA should join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an obscene tax on carbon for power generators including natgas power plants. The EQB, packed with people who depend on Wolf for their jobs (he’s their boss), voted in favor of advancing the $2.6 billion RGGI carbon tax proposal by 15-4. No surprise there. It was an inside job.
This is so tiresome. The Chester County District Attorney’s office continues to persecute two lowly Pennsylvania Constables for doing their job in warning off crazy anti-fossil fuel fanatics who approached a construction site for the Mariner East 2 pipeline project. The DA’s office thought it could fool everyone with a catchy slogan, calling what the constables did a “buy a badge scheme.” What it was, was two guys working for near minimum wage who happen to have a badge, using that badge to keep people from hurting themselves. And for that, they’re being prosecuted by the Chester DA. Shameful. The case is being tried before a jury right now.
In a letter dated May 27, federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Wetlands Branch Chief Jeffrey Lapp pressured the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to deny Equitrans’ Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) a Section 404 Clean Water Act permit that would allow the 303-mile pipeline project (now 92% complete) to finish crossing some 300+ streams and swamps in West Virginia and Virginia. Gee, the Biden EPA trying to close down an almost completed pipeline project. Why are we not surprised?
Antis and leftwing environmentalists in New Jersey continue their mission to block more natural gas from flowing to New York City, threatening the residents of the city, by attacking two compressor stations in the NJ suburbs. The latest conscripts to the holy mission of defeating “fossil fuels” can be found among the weaklings who sit on the Vernon Township (NJ) Council, who voted 4-1 to oppose a proposed expansion of Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company’s compressor station in Wantage (Sussex County).
How can anyone say, with a straight face, that Biden has been “better for fossil fuel companies” than Trump? Some very short-sighted individuals say we should look at the price of oil and gas, and the stock price of oil and gas companies, and pronounce that Biden has actually been better for our industry than four years of Donald Trump. Yet Biden’s own Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, is warning Big Banks to quit funding fossil fuel companies…or else. She is threatening them! This isn’t Stalin’s Soviet Union!! It’s the land of the free and the home of the brave. Or at least it used to be.
A few weeks ago MDN brought you the news that three far-left Democrat judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overturned a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval for a long-completed and flowing natural gas pipeline in the St. Louis, MO area–a pipeline that flows Marcellus/Utica gas to residents, businesses, and electric generating plants throughout the region (see 
Earlier this month MDN told you that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), under the direction of Chairman Richard “Dick” Glick, had hit the pause button on finishing up final approvals so the agency can take the next six months to complete full environmental impact statements (EIS’s), gauging whether or not five pipeline projects will cause too much mythical, man-made global warming (see 
Politicians derive their power from touching *your* money. They love to take money out of one of your pockets, handle it (siphon some of it off for themselves and their favorite cronies), and then put some (not all) of it back into another of your pockets–all while telling you that you should enjoy the violation you’ve just received. This is the elaborate hoax Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and those who want to slap an insane, regressive carbon tax on all Pennsylvanians are attempting with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)–a carbon tax aimed at eliminating coal-fired power plants and vastly reducing the number of Marcellus-fired power plants.
We find it kind of amusing that anti-fossil fuelers dead set against a plan by Kinder Morgan to build a new compressor station in Passaic County, NJ, and dead set against upgrading an existing compressor station in neighboring Sussex County, NJ, were all worked up to attend a Sussex County Board of Commissioners meeting where a Tennessee Gas Pipeline representative was supposed to make a presentation, but the rep didn’t show. He had (ahem) “car trouble” and couldn’t make the meeting in person. Antis were all dressed up with nowhere to go.