Atlantic Coast Pipeline – Where Do Things Stand?
Although Dominion Energy’s 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) is facing serious delays and cost overruns mainly due to lawsuits brought by Big Green groups, the company is still committed to building the pipeline (see Dominion “Still Committed” to Building Atlantic Coast Pipeline). The project is now delayed until late 2020 for a partial startup, with full service sometime in 2021, and the new price tag has ballooned to $7.5 billion. Where, exactly, do things stand? What’s holding it up? Give us a sitrep!
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Ohio’s current Governor, Mike DeWine, is an establishment-type swamp dwelling Republican. DeWine was Attorney General for Ohio in November 2017 when he was manipulated into suing Energy Transfer claiming the Rover Pipeline project was guilty of “polluting state waters while constructing a natural gas pipeline across Ohio” (see 
The folks of Weymouth, Massachusetts have for years tried to block a new compressor station project, part of a Spectra Energy/Enbridge project to beef up capacity along the Algonquin Gas Transmission pipeline. Algonquin filed a lawsuit against Weymouth Town and its conservation commission in District Court of Massachusetts. The court ruled in Algonquin’s favor and the town appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
It is beyond bizarre that the Sierra Club, which claims it defends the environment, works so hard to stop electric generating plants from converting from coal to natural gas. As we pointed out yesterday, gas-fired plants produce a small fraction of nasty pollutants like sulfur dioxide, compared with coal (see 
Three families who live near a former drill site and frack wastewater impoundment at the Yeager Marcellus Shale site in Washington County, PA sued Range Resources in May 2012 claiming the air they breathe and the water they drink had been contaminated by Range’s operations at the site (see 
Perhaps two unrelated cases of individual landowners challenging Energy Transfer’s Mariner East 2 (ME2) Pipeline–one in court, the other with regulators–doesn’t make a trend, but it is worth noting. Our antennae are up.
A lawsuit brought by greedy lawyers (ab)using a group of 21 children against the United States for not doing enough about mythical man-made global warming has once again heated up. The lawsuit aims to force the end of using all fossil fuels in the United States, to address so called man-made global warming.
Landowners in Ohio who didn’t like being force pooled with their neighbors have, since 2015, tried to get the courts to declare that forced pooling is illegal. They’ve struck out in every court where they’ve tried that argument, including (now) the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
The New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC), thoroughly corrupted by, and a political tool of, NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo, continues to have a bad week. Monday we told you about a recent court decision that gives new hope for both the Constitution and Northern Access Pipeline projects (see 
A huge crack of sunshine has just shown through the court system with respect to pipeline projects. A case decided on Jan. 25 in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals which technically has nothing to do with either the Williams Constitution Pipeline project nor the National Fuel Gas Company Northern Access Pipeline project (both being blocked by New York State), may be the one court decision to break open the logjam and allow both projects to begin construction.
In November, Dominion Energy said that their 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) would be delayed, with a partial startup in 2019 and full startup for everything else in mid-2020 (see 
In November the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed to hear a case, Briggs v. Southwestern Energy, that is hands-down the most important court case to ever happen regarding the Marcellus Shale in PA. And no, we’re not exaggerating. A blizzard of briefs by Southwestern and those supporting Southwestern were filed earlier this week.
Here’s an interesting twist on the theme of drillers shorting leaseholders out of royalty money. Usually such cases involve drillers claiming post-production deductions from landowner royalty checks. This time the landowner/rightsholder is Columbia Gas Transmission (pipeline company owned by midstream giant TransCanada), and the claim is that Southwestern Energy (driller) is not paying royalties for gas produced but not actually sold.
Equitrans’ (EQT Midstream) 300-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is now 70% built (see