Air Products Wins Contract for TX LNG Plant, Marcellus Connection?
This is the kind of story MDN enjoys telling–connecting dots that others haven’t noticed. In broad brush strokes, Air Products announced on Tuesday that they have won the contract to provide two massive liquefied natural gas heat exchangers for Freeport LNG in Freeport, Texas. The heat exchangers will take two years to build and both will be built at their Wilkes-Barre, PA plant. At first blush you may not think there is a connection to the Marcellus/Utica, but there is. Here’s how the Air Products announcement all ties together for the Marcellus Shale (and what you won’t find anywhere else)…
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This is a very important story that MDN has been following for more than two years. In June 2012, MDN reported the launch “out of nowhere” of a study by U.S. Dept. of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) to test whether or not faults, or large cracks that sometimes exist through multiple rock layers, can create a pathway for hydraulic fracturing fluids to migrate to aquifers (see 
Another new “study” and already the headlines are blaring. A research team led by Ohio State University and composed of researchers at Duke, Stanford, Dartmouth, and the University of Rochester have just published their findings that methane migrates from some shale wells into local water wells. It certainly doesn’t sound like earth-shattering news, but the headlines across the country range from “Bad fracking wells taint water, scientists find” (Sacramento Bee) to “Weak wells not fracking caused US gas leaks into water” (BBC). The media has picked up on this latest study and, depending on the view of the reporter, has spun it to either say fracking is the culprit, or fracking isn’t the culprit–and just about everything in between. Once again MDN will break it down for you and tell you what the study really says. And, we have a copy of the published findings (embedded below) so you can read it for yourself and make up your own mind…
Who knew the U.S. Constitution had a clause in it that grants the Deerfield, Massachusetts town health board “unlimited power” to do what they want to do. That’s what Cristobal Bonifaz, a lawyer from Conway, MA, is claiming. Even though the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, according to federal law, is the sole agency charged with granting or withholding permission on interstate pipelines, Bonifaz says the Deerfield health board has “unlimited power” to do what they want, and he’s volunteering to be their attorney in attempting to stop the expansion of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline through the township. How?…