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ET Pleads No Contest to “Crimes” for ME, Revolution Pipelines
Loathsome and disgusting shale energy hater Josh Shapiro, Attorney General for Pennsylvania (running for governor), announced on Friday that he finally bullied Energy Transfer into pleading “no contest” (meaning they don’t admit to a darned thing) in a so-called criminal case against the company for a series of accidents affecting construction for both the Revolution and Mariner East pipelines. Shapiro brought the case–a case that converts accidents into crimes–in order to burnish his credibility with the wacko left in his own party. Now he has a “victory” to run on–and everyone in Pennsylvania is the poorer because of it.
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The radicalized environmental left has opened up a new front in its disgusting (and insane) war against fossil energy. Three hard-left groups–U.S. PIRG Education Fund, Environment America Research & Policy Center, and ClientEarth–announced yesterday they have filed a lawsuit (i.e. fundraiser) against natural gas utility company Washington Gas in the District of Columbia Superior Court. The faux claims in the lawsuit say Washington Gas “misled” customers about the environmental impacts of using natural gas. This is a first-of-its-kind lawsuit in the United States, claiming a gas utility has violated consumer protection laws (i.e. “greenwashing”).
In July 2018, a group of 100+ southwestern Pennsylvania landowners sued EQT for failure to pay them rental fees for storing natural gas under their properties (see 
New Jersey Resources’ Adelphia Gateway project converts an old oil pipeline stretching from Northampton County, PA through Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester counties, terminating in Delaware County at Marcus Hook, into a natural gas pipeline. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued final approval for the project in December 2019 (see 
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to force PA’s coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to begin paying an obscenely high tax on carbon dioxide emissions as part of the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) got blocked on July 1 by PA Commonwealth Court (see 
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who is running for governor of the Keystone State, has once again targeted a shale energy company in his zeal to prove he despises the Marcellus even more than current Gov. Tom Wolf does (burnishing his credentials with the environmental left who makes up his base). Yesterday Shapiro’s office issued a press release announcing that the Big Man has bullied Southeast Directional Drilling, a subcontractor of National Fuel Gas Supply Corporation (i.e. Seneca Resources), into pleading guilty to spilling nontoxic drilling mud into a creek so small it doesn’t have a name. Southeast will have to pay a $15,000 fine.
Bad old ideas become bad new ideas for those on the left. In June 2018, MDN exclusively brought our readers the news that Diversified Gas & Oil (now called Diversified Energy) had purchased EQT Corporation’s Huron Shale assets, with a bunch of conventional wells, in Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia for $575 million (see 
A few weeks ago, the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (the D.C. Circuit) sided with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and NEXUS Pipeline against Big Green and the City of Oberlin, OH, in a case that challenged FERC’s right to approve NEXUS based on the pipeline exporting some of its natgas across the Canadian border (see 
Gulfport Energy has successfully wiggled out of legally-signed and binding long-term contracts with multiple pipeline companies, including deals that move Marcellus/Utica gas through the Rover and Rockies Express (REX) pipelines. In 2020 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) told Gulfport a very loud NO in breaking those contracts (see 
In a March 3rd Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) asked Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chairman Richard “Dick” Glick this question: “Has anyone higher up in the [Biden] administration ever spoken to you in regards to somehow slow-walking or otherwise impeding or otherwise accentuating policy that would have the effect of impeding the development of natural gas pipelines?” Chairman Glick responded with an unambiguous “no.” Yet FERC refuses to release records of communications and meetings with the White House to back up Glick’s statement. FERC has just been sued to force the release of those records.
This is one of those more bizarre court cases we’ve heard about. In April 2021, MDN reported that a group of West Virginia landowners/rights owners filed a claim against EQT, alleging the company had allowed leases to lapse, then at a later date, reentered their property and drilled new wells without permission (see 
We finally have some good news to share with respect to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s foolish plan to force PA’s coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to begin paying an obscenely high tax on carbon dioxide emissions as part of the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). After exhausting various attempts to block it, Wolf published a final RGGI regulation in the Pennsylvania Bulletin in April (see 
Last year Big Green lobbyists using the City of Oberlin, Ohio contested the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) decision to approve the Enbridge/DTE Energy NEXUS pipeline, a $2 billion, 255-mile pipeline from the Ohio Utica Shale into Michigan that’s been flowing for years connecting to a pipeline that exports some of the gas into Canada (see 
Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a 6-3 decision in West Virginia v. EPA that changes everything. It’s hard to overstate just how important the court’s decision is. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and the attorney generals from 18 other states sought to limit the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its misinterpretation of the so-called Clean Air Act in order to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants. The court ruled in favor of WV against EPA, meaning EPA cannot regulate coal- and natural gas-fired power plants out of existence, as it was seeking to do. Let’s all revel in this MAJOR victory!
The clowns who occupy the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Circus) have rejected a request by Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to appoint a new panel of three judges to hear cases involving the 94% completed pipeline (see