KM Board Approves Scaled-Back New England Pipeline for $3.3B
Yesterday the board of directors for Kinder Morgan approved a $3.3 billion investment in the company’s proposed Northeast Energy Direct pipeline project–a huge project that includes a new supply pipeline from Susquehanna County, PA to Schoharie County, NY, and a new market delivery pipeline from Schoharie County, NY to Dracut, MA. It is the market delivery pipeline as it passes through both Massachusetts, into New Hampshire and then back into Massachusetts that seems to be stirring up the most controversy that the board approved yesterday with a price tag of $3.3B. But beneath the headline news that the board has given the OK to spend big money is the “real” story–which is that KM has chosen to build a smaller 30-inch pipeline rather than the pre-filed 36-inch pipeline they had hoped to build. Why? Because they haven’t gotten any major new customers to sign on for capacity in the pipeline since the initial open season (see Kinder Morgan Fails to Sign Up New NED Customers in Last 8 Mos). The smaller pipeline means smaller compressor stations. It also means a little less disruption when it’s built as KM will need less space to store pipes. But the more modest environmental impacts don’t assuage anti-fossil fuelers who want to eliminate all fossil fuels and, we suppose, go back to the stone ages with camp fires and animal skins for clothes…
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A new research study appearing in an online “journal” with very low standards, PLOS ONE, claims that hydraulic fracturing leads to an increase in hospitalization rates in the Marcellus Shale region. The research study, titled “Unconventional Gas and Oil Drilling Is Associated with Increased Hospital Utilization Rates” (full copy embedded below) on the surface appears to contain damning evidence. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University looked at hospitalization records for three northeastern Pennsylvania counties from 2007-2011–Bradford, Susquehanna and Wayne. Both Bradford and Susquehanna counties have seen a huge amount of shale drilling over that period. Wayne County, on the other hand, has seen no shale drilling because of the intransigence of the Delaware River Basin Commission and their ongoing frack ban. The researchers say that people in Bradford and Susquehanna counties go to the hospital for serious heart conditions at a rate 27% higher than those in Wayne County. Ergo, there is a connection between fracking and health issues. We are fully in favor of rigorous academic research into issues like this one. But a few things bother us about this latest “fracking kills” study…
Data from a two-year geological study conducted by the Appalachian Oil and Natural Gas Research Consortium, a group of state and federal officials along with university researchers representing West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and New York, was presented yesterday in Canonsburg, PA. The study, titled “A Geologic Play Book for Utica Shale Appalachian Basin Exploration” (full copy below), finds the Utica Shale play has 20 times more recoverable natural gas than thought just three years ago–an astonishing 782 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Utica. Here’s the shocker news coming from the release of this new study: The size and potential recoverable resources in the Utica are “comparable” to the Marcellus play, the largest shale oil and gas play in the U.S. and the second largest in the world. You read that right. The Utica is potentially as big as the Marcellus! The Utica is located pretty much underneath the Marcellus. The depths vary, but the Marcellus is around a mile down and the Utica around two miles down. Researchers at the top-notch West Virginia University took the lead in publishing the report. Here’s how they’re reporting it…