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Columbia Pipeline Shareholders Sue re 2016 Sale to TransCanada
TransCanada Corporation, which renamed itself TC Energy earlier this year, made a play for and bought out/merged in U.S.-based Columbia Pipeline Group in 2016 (see TransCanada and Columbia Pipeline Tie the Knot Today). TransCanada paid $13 billion for Columbia, including assumption of $2.8 billion of debt. Columbia has major pipeline operations throughout the Marcellus/Utica region.
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The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has just upheld a lower court opinion that allows shale drilling to happen *anywhere* in a township, so long as such drilling satisfies standards to protect public health, safety and welfare. This is the end of the road for a lawsuit funded by Big Green that began in 2015 in Westmoreland County, PA.
Guess we should have seen this one coming. Last week MDN told you that U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected an appeal by the rich snobs from Cooperstown that call themselves Otsego 2000, challenging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) approval of Dominion Energy’s New Market Project to build two new compressor stations in Upstate NY (see 
A landowner in Jessup Borough (Lackawanna County, PA, near Scranton) has filed a lawsuit against the Borough Council as a whole (and the individuals who serve on it), claiming they rezoned the landowner’s property, cutting them out of millions of dollars, as retribution because the landowner had the audacity to sell property to the Marcellus gas-fired Lackawanna Energy Center (LEC) power plant.
Antis pinned their hopes that they could get the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to overturn a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval for Dominion to build a couple of compressor stations in upstate New York, thereby forcing FERC to consider mythical man-made global warming in ALL pipeline decisions. The case had the makings of being a “landmark” case. Yesterday antis lost their landmark case when the court ruled the party bringing the lawsuit, Otsego 2000, didn’t have standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place.
A Pennsylvania federal judge has ordered a former EQT employee to turn over his cell phone to EQT so they can have experts examine it for deleted text messages to Toby Rice and others helping him. You may recall EQT accused two fired workers of stealing company secrets and sharing those secrets with Toby and Derek Rice, who are trying to take over EQT (see 
In March a group of Pennsylvania landowners from Lancaster County asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case in which they say they’ve been screwed over by Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline, that the pipeline should not have had the right to use eminent domain to build the pipeline before the matter of compensation was fully adjudicated (see 
Last week the Mountain Valley Pipeline project, being built by Equitrans Midstream, got a boost from the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection (WVDEP). WVDEP has submitted a revised stream/river crossing permit previously rejected by a federal court. The reworked permit means construction will once again resume in some areas where it’s currently stalled, maybe by mid-year.
Big Green groups continue to sue pipeline companies and their projects in an attempt to block any new pipeline anywhere from getting built–period. One of their favored angles of attack is to try and find loopholes in, or even overturn, the Natural Gas Act of 1938.
THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum, along with a couple of radicals from Lancaster County flying under the name Lancaster Against Pipelines (the Clatterbucks), hoped they could convince the U.S. Supreme Court to consider a case that a series of lower courts dismissed–a case that would shut down the now-operating Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline (see 
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) voted 5-0 to deny Sunoco Logistics Partners permission to restart construction of Mariner East 2 pipeline in West Whiteland Township in Chester County. Why? Because construction at that location (Shoen Road), along with three other locations, is currently under review in Commonwealth Court. In other words, for the time being (until the court rules), the PUC’s hands are tied.
Andrew Cuomo, the man-child who governs New York State like it’s a third world, tinpot dictatorship (it’s rapidly becoming as poor as a third world country), says NY is going to sue President Trump over his recently signed Executive Order that will make it harder for states like NY to reject pipelines for purely political reasons (see