Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Energy Services | Equitrans/EQT Midstream | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | Pipelines
MVP Gets Another Permit, Still Waiting on FERC to Resume Constr.
Almost two weeks ago Equitrans Midstream sent a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) requesting they be allowed to restart construction on the Mountain Valley Pipeline, construction which has been suspended since October 2019 (see Equitrans Asks FERC to Allow MVP Construction Restart This Week). So far FERC has not granted the request. However, we have one more (minor but important) permit issued for the project.
Read More “MVP Gets Another Permit, Still Waiting on FERC to Resume Constr.”
Here’s a story we haven’t written about in two years. American Water Management Services (AWMS) owns a wastewater injection well in Trumbull County that supposedly caused a low-level earthquake (that nobody could feel) in 2014. Actually there are two injection wells located at the site, both operated by AWMS. They were both “temporarily” shut down by the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources following the quake nobody could feel (see 
Anti-fossil fuel zealots like the nutty Sierra Club have successfully delayed completion of Equitrans Midstream’s 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline from West Virginia to southern Virginia with lawsuits. The project is now 92% done and in the ground. The zealots successfully convinced Democrat federal judges to overturn key permits issued by several government agencies. One of those overturned permits, issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) for endangered species, has just been reissued. Score a victory for the good guys.
In late 2018 a fringe environmental group called the Coalition to Reroute NEXUS (CORN), along with the City of Oberlin, Ohio, filed yet another lawsuit (with the D.C. Court of Appeals) to nullify the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) original decision to approve the NEXUS Pipeline project that runs through Ohio (see 
Back in 2012 Gulfport Energy drilled a pair of exceptional Utica wells in Belmont County, Ohio–both on the same pad. The first was the Shugert 1-1H which had an initial production (IP) rate of 20 million cubic feet of natural gas per day (Mmcf/d). It also produced an initial 144 barrels of condensate per day, and 2,002 barrels of natural gas liquids per day (see 
In early June an Obamadroid federal judge vacated a permit for the Weymouth compressor station, the last piece of Spectra Energy/Enbridge’s Atlantic Bridge pipeline project–a project which took years to build (see 
In June 2017, the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation (PEDF) won a case at the PA Supreme Court by the skin of their teeth (see 
Evolution Well Services, headquartered in Houston with a regional office in Pittsburgh, specializes in “electric” fracking–using natural gas from the well pad (instead of diesel fuel) to power turbines to create electricity that drives fracking pumps. Evolution fracks for at least one Marcellus/Utica E&P (see 
A group of far-left, so-called environmental groups, including, Earthjustice, Buckeye Environmental Network, Concerned Ohio River Residents, Freshwater Accountability Project, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and the Sierra Club, are suing the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) in an attempt to overturn permits issued by ODNR to build an underground NGL storage hub in Monroe County, Ohio.
While drilling in Chester County in the Marsh Creek State Park two weeks ago, Energy Transfer’s Mariner East 2X pipeline experienced an “inadvertent return”–nontoxic drilling mud coming up out of the ground where it’s not supposed to (see 
Pittsburgh-based IntegrServ, a trucking company partly owned by former Pittsburgh Steeler Jerome Bettis, filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against EQT claiming discrimination against the company as a minority-owned company after it canceled a contract worth some $66 million last year. This is an involved story and of course, there are always two sides to every story (and two sides to every lawsuit).
FirstEnergy Solutions (now called Energy Harbor) allegedly paid $60 million in bribes to (now former) Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four of his associates to gain their assistance in passing the hugely unpopular House Bill 6 (see 
In June the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), in coordination with the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) published final rules to allow LNG (liquefied natural gas) to be safely transported by special rail cars (see