CT NatGas-Fired Power Plant Approved, Where Will it Get the Gas?
Last week a plan to build a $550 million natural gas-fired electric generating plant in the city of Bridgeport, CT was approved by city zoning officials. PSEG Power Connecticut currently operates a coal-fired plant in the same location and wants to build a 485-megawatt facility at the same address. The only remaining obstacle is an air permit from CT environmental protection officials, which is expected to be issued early next year. Once the air permit is in hand, PSEG plans to begin construction. Our question is, with no extra pipeline capacity serving New England, where will they get the gas to power the plant?…
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In January 2014, MDN brought you the story that due to incessant nagging from the NJ Sierra Club and the NJ League of [Liberal Democrat] Women Voters the Pinelands Commission, which oversees a stand of scrub pines in South Jersey, nixed a plan for a new natural gas pipeline to bring cheap, clean, abundant Marcellus Shale natural gas to South Jersey for use by residents and to feed an electric plant a local utility wants to convert from burning coal to natgas (see 
MDN first told you about IMG Midstream in August 2014 (see 
The energy industry in our country is complicated and takes a while to wrap your brain around just how it works. Especially the utility industry. Companies that produce and then distribute electricity (and natural gas) are in some cases regulated by the government–meaning what they charge is strictly controlled–and in some cases not regulated. Some local utilities produce the electricity, via a nuclear plant, or coal-fired generating plant, or natural gas-fired plant, as well as distribute that electricity to customers. Other utilities just distribute the electricity. And still others just produce the electricity. Sometimes producing electricity is regulated by the government (i.e. price controlled) and other times it is not. Is your head spinning yet? FirstEnergy, based in Akron, OH, is one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric systems, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and New York. FirstEnergy owns a variety of regulated and non-regulated power generation plants. Last Friday the company announced it will sell six power generating plants in PA, four of them natural gas-fired plants. The plants being sold are non-regulated. This is part of FirstEnergy’s strategy to become a 100% “regulated” utility in the next 18 months. Which plants are going on the auction block?…
Last week saw a flurry of activity for the official ribbon-cutting at Panda Power’s very first built-from-scratch Marcellus gas-powered electric plant going online in Bradford County (see 
In May 2014 Panda Power Funds broke ground on building an 829-megawatt Marcellus gas-fired electric generating plant in Asylum Township, Bradford County, PA (see 
MDN has extensively covered the story of what will become the largest natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Pennsylvania, being built by Invenergy in Jessup Township in Lackawanna County (see 
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, like many liberal Democrats, loves to pick winners and losers. Recently Cuomo launched an “ambitious” new Clean Energy Standard in which he puts his bets on nuclear energy. That is, he’s willing to transfer billions of New Yorker’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars out of their pockets and into the pockets of nuclear power companies. Why? In order to prop them up, make them “competitive” with much cheaper natural gas-powered electric plants. That is, Cuomo cheats. He wants to stack the deck. And New York’s natgas power generators are not having it. They’ve sued the state, challenging the Clean Energy Standard that steals money out of our pockets in order to prop up nuclear companies, all using the excuse of “global warming”…
This one somehow slipped by us. Sometime last year EmberClear filed an application to build a new 488-megawatt natural gas-fired electric plant in Birdsboro (Berks County), PA–near Philadelphia. The new plant is called Birdsboro Power and requires various approvals before it can be built. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is involved. PJM Interconnection is involved. And the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection is involved. All three have issued various permits and edicts in connection with the project. What caught our attention is that DTE Midstream has just filed an application with FERC to build a 14-mile pipeline to feed the new plant. As part of that application, DTE says EmberClear plans to begin construction in 2018, with an in-service date of June 2019. Here’s what we’ve been able to scrounge up on the project…
In September MDN wrote about a new natural gas-fired electric plant being planned for Chesapeake, Virginia (see 
Last week we reported on a half joking (half not joking) comment by Pennsylvania State Senator Gene Yaw made at a PA midstream conference, in which he said maybe PA should stop sending its fracked gas to New York State (see 
We hate to say “I told you so,” but we’ll say it anyway. If you live in New England, prepare yourself. You’re about to experience more price shocks for natural gas and electricity (4x more than the rest of the country, or higher). Why? Because you’re blocking new pipeline projects that would bring cheap, abundant, clean-burning natural gas to the region. The Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale sits a few hundred miles away–yet very little Marcellus gas is flowing to New England at this point. New England, more than any other region in the country, relies on natgas to power electric generating plants. Without extra supplies, especially in the winter months when natgas gets used for heating, electric generators are forced to pay obscenely high rates to stay in operation. Those obscenely high rates get passed along to ratepayers–businesses AND residences. Yet anti-fossil fuel wackos continue to try and stop new pipelines, sometimes criminally (see 
The refrain is growing louder. In the past couple of weeks MDN editor Jim Willis has heard that Obama’s EPA regulations haven’t killed the coal industry–it was lowly natural gas that slipped in with a knife and did the dirty deed. We first heard that at the recent Benposium East event (see today’s story for Jim’s notes from that event), and also from Our Dear Leader himself, BHO (see