MA Supreme Court Ruling Endangers New England Gas Pipelines
In September 2015, MDN told you that the Massachusetts Dept. of Public Utilities (DPU) approved long-term contracts for three utilities–Berkshire Gas, National Grid and Columbia Gas–to buy natural gas supplies from Kinder Morgan’s Northeast Energy Direct (NED) pipeline, IF it gets built (see Mass. Approves Plan for Utilities to Buy Gas from New Pipeline). At the time we warned you that the global warming-mongers were not happy and threatening to sue the state. They did. The left-leaning Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) filed an appeal of the DPU’s decision with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in hopes that they can stop the project from being built if they can dry up demand from utility companies–i.e., prevent the utilities from buying NED gas (see Anti Group Sues to Stop Mass. Utilities from Buying Natural Gas). In the meantime, Kinder Morgan abandoned the NED project (see NED is Dead – Kinder Morgan Suspends $3.3B New England Pipeline). However, the lawsuit lives on. There are more pipelines that may be affected by such a decision, including Spectra Energy’s Access Northeast pipeline project–still very much alive. The worst has now happened. The MA Supreme Court has just ruled that utility companies, which are heavily regulated and the prices they can charge controlled, cannot pass along the cost of a pipeline to electric ratepayers…
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In April 2014 MDN brought you the exciting news that a father and son team, Andrew and Matthew Dorn (based in Buffalo, NY) would build a 549-megawatt electric generating plant, powered by Marcellus Shale, in Moundsville (Marshall County), WV (see 
Black & Veatch, a ginormous engineering, consulting and construction company, recently released their “2016 Strategic Directions: Electric Industry Report” (full copy below). The report captures Black & Veatch’s global engineering and thought leadership to examine how distributed electric generation, the low price of natural gas and modern customer information systems represent growth opportunities for the electric industry–even as security concerns are on the rise and legacy power generation sources (i.e. coal powered plants) are fading away, being replaced by new natgas technology. One trend MDN editor Jim Willis did not foresee when he started writing about the Marcellus industry back in January 2009 was the rise of natgas-fired electric generating plants–and the critically important role they would play in the Marcellus/Utica region. This B&V report provides useful insights into how natgas and electric generation are increasing “joined at the hip”…
In July MDN reported that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has approved Eastern Shore Natural Gas’ (ESNG) System Reliability Project (see 
Indisputable fact #1: With the increased use of natural gas to generate electricity, the air is getting cleaner. That has been proven by both private and government studies. Indisputable fact #2: With the increased use of natural gas to generate electricity, less carbon dioxide is emitted (for those who believe in the fairy tale of man-made global warming). If you’re a warmer, you ought to love natgas use in electric plants for those two reasons alone. However, so twisted is the thinking of radical anti-fossil fuelers, they can’t bring themselves to endorse natural gas because it’s an evil, hated, awful fossil fuel. And so otherwise smart people become idiots–like those who belong to Pennsylvanians Against Fracking (PAF). The PAF gang is harassing the state Dept. of Environment Protection because the DEP has approved either the conversion of coal to natgas, or the building of new natgas power plants some 42 times since January 2014. The PAF gang are smart enough to realize more natgas-fired power plants leads to more drilling (and fracking) and their irrational philosophy dictates they must oppose it…
As we’ve been saying for well more than a year now, it’s important to understand the electric generation market because natural gas and electric generation are joined at the hip. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says that natural gas will power more electric generation in this country than another other source, including coal, THIS YEAR (see 
Earlier this month MDN brought you the exciting news that Cabot Oil & Gas, which only drills in the Marcellus in Susquehanna County, PA, will provide the low-cost natural gas that will power Pennsylvania’s largest natgas-fired electric generating plant, to be built in neighboring Lackawanna County by Invenergy (see 
A poll recently conducted for Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA) shows that Massachusetts voters believe that energy issues are important, and that Massachusetts voters STRONGLY support the use of natural gas for electricity generation, AND the expansion of existing natural gas infrastructure. Some 73% of Mass. voters want to use natural gas to generate electricity. That is an astonishing majority in a very liberal state. Some 68% of those voters say energy issues will affect how they vote in November. Here’s the results…
The pieces of a very complicated puzzle continue to fall into place to build what will be Pennsylvania’s largest natural gas-fired electric generating power plant in Lackawanna County, PA–near Scranton. Invenergy plans to build the Lackawanna Energy Center, a 1,480 megawatt plant in Jessup, PA that will cost “well over $1 billion” according to an exclusive MDN source working on the project (not $500 million as we previously estimated). The PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) approved the plant last December (see 