Sierra Club Files 2nd Lawsuit Against Pipeline Thru NJ Scrub Pines
In September, members of the New Jersey Pinelands Commission voted to approve a $130 million, 28-mile natural gas pipeline proposed by New Jersey Natural Gas (NJNG) to connect NJNG’s distribution system serving customers in Ocean, Burlington and Monmouth counties (in NJ) and the interstate pipeline system adjacent to the New Jersey Turnpike (see Pinelands Commission Approves Pipeline Thru NJ Scrub Pines). Antis at the September meeting, many of them members of the far-left Sierra Club, behaved like spoiled rotten children–using “whistles, cowbells and shouts,” and holding “Pinocchio noses to their faces” to try and bully commissioners into voting “no” on the plan. Unfortunately the spoiled rotten children, via the Sierra Club, have lots of money to litigate. They did it before, forcing a full vote by the Pinelands Commission (see Court Setback for NJ Pipeline Slated to Run Through Scrub Pines). They’re doing it again. On Friday the Sierra Club filed a second challenge against the pipeline plan. This time the lawsuit was filed with the NJ state appeals court, seeking to overturn the vote in September to approve the project…
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Sunoco Logistics has been slapped down in a ruling by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Service (PUC) with respect to a valve station, part of the Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline project. In March, MDN told you about an attempt by liberal anti-pipeliners in West Goshen (Chester County) to block the ME2 project (see 
The U.S. District Court in Akron, OH has just made a major ruling that affects all Utica landowners and drillers. In 2015, the Ohio Supreme Court accepted a case that will sound familiar to readers of MDN. The case, known as Lutz v. Chesapeake Appalachia, is about whether or not drillers (Chesapeake in this case) are allowed to deduct certain post-production costs from landowner royalty checks. The Ohio Supremes were asked to decide whether Ohio follows the “at the well” rule, which permits the deduction of post-production costs, or if the state follows the “marketable product” rule, which limits the deduction of post-production costs under certain circumstances. The Supremes came down off Mount Olympus in November 2016 to render their verdict (see 
It seems like since Donald Trump was elected, the far-left loons of the Democrat Party have become unhinged. Nowhere is that more apparent than New York State, with it’s corrupt governor, Andrew Cuomo. When it comes to oversight of the nation’s electric grid, and interstate pipeline infrastructure, the law is clear: The federal government, specifically the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, is numero uno. Individual states cannot just willy-nilly decide they will horn in on how energy companies are incentivized–and they cannot use regulations to change the nature of power generation within their borders, because of the interconnected nature of electric power. Yet that is precisely what the lawless Cuomo is attempting to do in the Empire State. Via the NY Public Service Commission, Cuomo has set up a program called the Zero Emissions Credits (ZEC) program to subsidize nuclear power at the expense of fossil fuels, like natural gas. He’s trying to make it uncompetitive and expensive for natural gas to generate electricity in the state. An industry group sued to overturn ZEC, but a liberal judge for the US District Court for southern New York stuck up for Cuomo’s cockamamie plan (no surprise there). The case has been appealed and the Natural Gas Supply Association and American Petroleum Institute filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the appeal against ZEC. It’s a loooong brief–40 pages. We have it below…
In August Energy Transfer’s Sunoco Logisitics unit struck a deal with the devil–the devil being the Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council, THE Delaware Riverkeeper and Mountain Watershed Association–in a move to lift a ban on underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) for the Mariner East 2 NGL pipeline project (see 
As we have said for years, ever since the Pennsylvania legislature modernized and updated drilling regulations to account for shale drilling in 2012, known as Act 13, anti-fossil fuel nutters have attempted first to destroy Act 13, and later subvert it. Act 13 originally provided for uniform zoning across the state with respect to siting wells. But seven selfish townships sued and eventually won (at the PA Supreme Court) the right to retain their own zoning regulations with respect to oil and gas wells (see 
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (in liberal New York) has refused to re-hear the case against New York’s corrupt Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) for its arbitrary and capricious refusal to grant a water crossing permit to Williams’ Constitution Pipeline. In August MDN brought you the sad news that the Second Circuit ruled against the Constitution Pipeline and their lawsuit against the Cuomo-corrupted DEC (see 
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said last week it will accept a case about strippers–stripper wells, that is. In brief, in 2012 Pennsylvania passed the Act 13 drilling law that includes a fee on wells targeting shale layers, including the Marcellus. Snyder Brothers, headquartered in Kittanning, PA, drills mostly conventional (vertical only) wells in southwestern PA. In 2011-2012 they drilled 45 vertical-only wells, but targeting the Marcellus, all of the wells fracked. Initially those wells produced more than 90 Mcf/day, but by December of the year they were drilled, they produced less than 90 Mcf/day. The way the 2012 Act 13 law is written, if a well produces less than 90 Mcf/day during “any” month it is considered a stripper well and exempt from paying the impact fee. The state’s Public Utility Commission (PUC) assessed the fee anyway because for 11 months the wells produced more than 90 Mcf/day. Snyder Bros. sued and after an appeal of the case, Snyder Bros. won their case in March, exempting those wells from paying impact fees (see 
In March, the West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) issued a federal water crossing permit for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP)–a $3.5 billion, 301-mile pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA (see 
Last year a group of radical environmental groups including Riverkeeper Inc., Sierra Club and Food & Water Watch (Big Green groups) joined a federal appeal (i.e. sued) to stop Spectra Energy from building their Alogonquin Incremental Market (AIM) Project, a project to expand the capacity of the Algonquin Gas Transmission system to flow more Marcellus/Utica gas to markets in the northeast, including New England (see 
Huntley & Huntley has plans to drill shale wells in Upper Burrell Township (Westmoreland County), PA. As MDN reported in June, a landowner in Upper Burrell filed an appeal against Upper Burrell’s zoning ordinance that allows drilling in rural, agricultural districts (see 
In July MDN told you that puppets of the PA-based Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) have once again gotten enough signatures to put a so-called Community Bill of Rights (i.e. frack ban) ballot measure on the ballot this November in Youngstown, Ohio for a 7th time (see 
Antis certainly learn from one another. If an anti-fossil fuel tactic works (in court) in one place, antis in other locations jump on it like white on rice. Ninny nanny antis in the Chenango Valley School District (suburb of Binghamton, NY) got their knickers in a twist when NG Advantage proposed building a “virtual pipeline” project about a mile from one of their schools. A virtual pipe is a compressor station that compresses gas from a pipeline (the Millennium in this case) and loads it onto specially fitted tanker trucks to haul the gas to industrial users. The school paid $40,000+ for an outside-the-area law firm, which sued and in a county-level court (called “Supreme Court” in quirky NY). The Big Money law firm won the case, convincing the judge to proclaim that the local planning board didn’t do a good enough job in considering NG’s application (see