With “Backs Against Wall” Rhode Island Approves LNG Facility
Do Rhode Island regulators read MDN? Maybe! On Monday we brought you a post about the coming natural gas outages like that experienced last January in the People’s Republic of Rhode Island, due to eco-socialist pressure to ban new natural gas infrastructure (see Rhode Island Eco-Socialists Threaten State with NatGas Outages). Yesterday the state’s Energy Facility Siting Board waived a licensing requirement for a “temporary” LNG storage facility in Portsmouth to prevent another January episode from happening again. Board members complained they had no choice, that “we have our backs against the wall” and “people’s lives could be in danger” if they don’t approve the LNG facility.
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For some time we have criticized the 100 year-old Jones Act that prevents LNG carriers built and/or crewed by other counties from transporting LNG from one U.S. port to another U.S. port (see 
While on the surface the liquefied natural gas (LNG) marketplace may seem simple and straightforward, when you dig down you’ll find it is complex. There are different kinds of contracts between those who sell the gas, those who liquefy and ship it, and those who buy it. The LNG marketplace is, with the entrance of the U.S., changing rapidly. Our friends at RBN Energy recently posted an explanation for how it all works.
Quick, when we ask you how natural gas gets exported from the U.S. to other countries, what do you think of? LNG, right? That’s true. Yet while LNG grabs all the headlines, more than twice as much natural gas is exported to Canada and Mexico via pipeline every day than is exported to other countries via LNG ships. LNG is expanding and catching up–but it has a ways to go. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, during the first half of 2019 natural gas exports from the U.S. to other countries doubled–largely because of LNG.
Yesterday Dominion Energy announced it has sold a 25% stake in the completed Cove Point, Maryland LNG export facility to Brookfield Asset Management for a cool $2 billion. Dominion completed the $4.1 billion facility in 2018. The share just sold to Brookfield values the facility at $8.22 billion. Holy smokes! Nice play–to double the value of your investment in not much more than a year after completing it. What will Dominion do with all that cash?
In April President Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) directing the Secretary of Transportation to write a new rule allowing specially constructed tanker cars for railroads (DOT-113 tank cars) to ship LNG, i.e., liquefied natural gas (see 
Sam Thigpen, founder and CEO of Thigpen Solutions, revealed something at Gulf Coast Energy Forum in New Orleans that is a revelation for us. Starting last winter, Thigpen and his Texas-based company has been shipping LNG to National Grid and their Long Island, NY operation during the wintertime, so that National Grid doesn’t run out of gas for its existing customers. In fact, Thigpen has a five-year contract to supply National Grid’s Long Island customers with (expensive) LNG.
In June the DRBC (Delaware River Basin Commission) approved a request by New Fortress Energy to build a $96 million 1,600-foot-long pier on the Delaware River, to be used for docking and loading two ships at a time with LNG (see 
Last Wednesday MDN told you that the first “train” or unit of Kinder Morgan’s Elba Island, Georgia LNG export facility is now up and running (see 
LNG and the amount of so-called greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions given off to produce LNG is the same the world over, right? We mean, LNG is LNG, right? Turns out, that’s not right. At least according to a new study just released by researchers at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). In a new report (full copy below), NETL researchers found that LNG produced here in the U.S. gives off lower GHG emissions during its manufacture than does LNG produced in both Russia and Australia. Meaning Europe and Asia should want to buy and use the better-for-the-environment LNG produced by Uncle Sam rather than buy it from one of those other countries.
Consolidated Edison (Con Ed), the electric and natural gas utility that services parts of New York City and to the north of NY, Westchester County, is getting desperate in their bid to locate sites where they can unload CNG (compressed natural gas) trucks into their pipeline network in Westchester County. You may recall Con Ed was the first utility to slap a moratorium on any new natgas customers from hooking up to their supply system in Westchester, back in March (see 
There, now that’s the DRBC (Delaware River Basin Commission) we know and expect–obsequiously bowing before the likes of THE Delaware Riverkeeper and her environmental cousin, the Sierra Club. In June the DRBC approved a request by New Fortress Energy to build a $96 million 1,600-foot-long pier on the Delaware River (see