Industrywide Issues

Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | New York | Pipelines | Schoharie County | Williams

Iroquois Announces Interconnect for Constitution Pipeline in NY
January 22, 2013January 22, 2013

In news related to the soon-to-be built Marcellus Shale Constitution Pipeline (being built by Williams), Iroquois, a major interstate natural gas transmission pipeline, announced today they plan to move forward with development of a new interconnect project that will expand their existing compressor station and metering facilities in Wright, New York in anticipation of the new Constitution pipeline connecting to the Iroquois at Wright. Plans call for Iroquois’ new construction to be completed by March 2015 when the Constitution plans to go in service.

From the Iroquois/Constitution joint press announcement:

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Antero Resources | Energy Companies | Guernsey County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Lease & Royalty Payments | Noble County | Ohio

OH Muskingum Watershed District to Sign Drilling Lease in Feb.
January 21, 2013January 21, 2013

Last November, MDN told you that the Ohio Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD), the largest watershed district in the state covering about 20% of Ohio’s landmass, had entered negotiations with Antero Resources to allow drilling and fracking under MWCD land around Seneca Lake (see OH Muskingum Watershed District Seeks Lease with Antero). Everything but the final price is now done, and the proposed lease (copy embedded below) will be voted on at the next board meeting of the MWCD on Feb. 15.

The lease, as written, will allow drilling under but not on 6,700 acres of property in Guernsey and Noble counties. Antero will have to drill from adjacent properties to reach the land—no disturbance of the surface will be permitted. How much will the MWCD get for a signing bonus and royalties?

Read More “OH Muskingum Watershed District to Sign Drilling Lease in Feb.”
Broome County | Chenango County | Delaware County | Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | New York | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Schoharie County | Susquehanna County | Williams

New Marcellus Constitution Pipeline Announces “Final” Route
January 21, 2013January 27, 2013

After more than a year of work, Williams has finalized the route for the new Marcellus Shale Constitution Pipeline that will run from the heavily-producing Marcellus Shale gas fields of Susquehanna County, PA all the way up to Schoharie County, NY, where the pipeline will connect with two large interstate pipelines: the Iroquois and the Tennessee. A copy of the map showing the “final” route is embedded below.

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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Regulation | Statewide PA

PA Auditor General Targets State’s Marcellus Drilling Industry
January 21, 2013January 21, 2013

Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP): Prepare for a painful anal exam, coming courtesy the newly elected PA Auditor General Eugene DePasquale. That was the gist of a letter sent by DePasquale to Michael Krancer, Secretary of the DEP, on DePasquale’s first day on the job (a copy of the full letter is embedded below).

The DEP’s response to DePasquale? Bring it on…

Read More “PA Auditor General Targets State’s Marcellus Drilling Industry”
Energy Companies | Energy Services | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Pennsylvania General Energy | Statewide PA | Universal Well

PA Frack Pumps Converting to Use LNG for Fuel
January 21, 2013January 21, 2013

EQT was the first driller in the Marcellus Shale to convert a drilling rig to run on electricity produced by engines using an LNG/diesel mix (see this MDN story). CONSOL was next to experiment with converting some of their rigs to use LNG/diesel (see this MDN story). Then Seneca Resources, the gas drilling arm of National Fuel Gas Company, announced two of their drilling rigs will use 100% LNG as fuel (see this MDN story).

What started as a trickle is turning into a flood in Pennsylvania and throughout the Marcellus/Utica region and beyond. More companies are in the process of converting fleets to run on LNG or a mix of LNG/diesel. These new conversions will not only power initial drilling, but will also power the massive pump engines and heavy equipment used in the fracking process itself…

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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Susquehanna County

Looney Toons Anti-Fracking Celebrities Visit Montrose, PA
January 18, 2013January 18, 2013

Yesterday John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono and son Sean Lennon, along with reliably left movie star Susan Sarandon, boarded a Mercedes tour bus in New York City (burning gobs of diesel, a hated fossil fuel) and headed to the Montrose area of northeastern PA to “tour” drilling and compressor plant sites, visit with the commoners, and make pretentious pronouncements about how gas drilling is killing everyone and everything.

Ono and Lennon, in a bid to boost their non-existent public profiles, started a group last year called “Artists Against Fracking,” which is really kind of funny. Neither Ono nor Lennon can hold a tune in a bucket (see this hysterically funny video of them singing a song about fracking). But perhaps the “art” in “artists” comes from the pornography the 79 year-old Ono creates (see this story about her 2012 “fashion line for men”).

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Energy Services | IGS Energy | Industrywide Issues | NG Vehicles | Statewide WV | West Virginia

CNG Fueling Corridor for Motorists Comes to WV – Fill ’er Up!
January 18, 2013January 18, 2013

IGS Energy, America’s largest independent supplier of retail natural gas, believes natural gas is no longer the “fuel of tomorrow” when it comes to vehicles, but instead is “the fuel of today.” One of the biggest issues for the adoption and use of natural gas-powered vehicles is lack of fueling stations. IGS announced yesterday they are building a string of CNG (compressed natural gas) fueling stations along Interstate 79 from Charleston, WV to Mount Morris, PA—an area they have dubbed the “CNG Fueling Corridor.”

IGS says this is just the beginning…

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Bradford County | Industrywide Issues | NG Vehicles | Pennsylvania

Northeast PA Convenience Store Chain Installs CNG Pumps
January 18, 2013January 18, 2013

In what seems to be a flood of news about CNG (compressed natural gas) filling stations popping up for vehicles, a convenience store chain in the Marcellus-rich area of northeastern PA is in the process of installing CNG filling pumps at three (so far) of it’s 70 stores in PA and NY.

One of the three locations—Towanda (Bradford County), PA—is having its “grand opening” today, but the new pump has already been operating for about month. Towanda is the very first public CNG filling location in northern PA:

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Industrywide Issues | Lycoming County | Pennsylvania | Violence

PA Marcellus Drilling Site Vandal Gets Probation, Told “Grow Up”
January 18, 2013January 18, 2013

In what can only be called an act of utter stupidity, a 21-year-old man from Trout Run, PA, vandalized and damaged a bunch of expensive equipment and the environment last August at a drill site in Lycoming County, PA. Was he drunk? An anti-drilling crusader? Showing off for his girlfriend? We don’t know the details or his motivation—but at a sentencing hearing yesterday (where he got probation), the judge told him to “grow up.”

The punch line? “He recently got work with another natural gas company, court records state.” Let’s name names:

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Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Regulation

NJ Fracking Moratorium Expires (Yawn) – Junior Still Wants Ban
January 18, 2013January 18, 2013

Yesterday a one-year temporary moratorium on fracking in New Jersey expired—hardly anyone noticed. Nobody wants to drill in New Jersey. The Marcellus Shale that clips one small corner of the state most likely has no gas in it (being on the outer fringe of the Marcellus). But that doesn’t stop anti-drillers from continuing their insistence that the state adopt a full-out ban on fracking.

RINO NJ Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon, Jr. (“Junior”) is still pushing his “ban it until the EPA says it’s OK” bill in the legislature (see NJ Bill Would Ban Fracking Until EPA Report is Done). Of course the real aim for Junior and other anti-drillers, as expressed by Environment NJ’s Doug O’Malley, is a permanent ban that will “send a strong message.” The now expired one-year moratorium? That was just a “fig leaf” according to O’Malley…

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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Broome County | Chemung County | Chenango County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | New York | Regulation | Steuben County | Tioga County (NY)

Anti-Fracking Group Mails Propaganda Brochure to 190K NYers
January 18, 2013January 18, 2013

Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy is mailing an anti-fracking brochure (killing precious trees from the Catskills to provide the paper, no doubt) to 190,000 residents throughout the Southern Tier area of New York—a region that desperately wants and needs drilling, and the area that will see drilling when/if the current moratorium is lifted. The brochure is pure propaganda and full of outright lies, but hey, this is still Ameritopia where the First Amendment is alive and well, for people on the left anyway.

An electronic copy of the brochure is embedded below so MDN’s fellow NYers know what they can use to line the bird cage with when it arrives.

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Broome County | Industrywide Issues | Litigation | New York | Property Value | Statewide NY | Tioga County (NY)

Important Decision in Court Case Affects all NY Landowners
January 17, 2013January 17, 2013

A very important legal decision in New York potentially affects all New York landowners with and without drilling leases who have seen a sharp jump in their property assessments. A Broome County, NY Supreme Court judge has just ruled in favor of four Tioga County, NY landowners who sued to have their property assessments reduced, believing their assessments were unfairly raised because of the perceived increase in land value from the possibility (i.e. “speculation”) that the land may one day see Marcellus Shale drilling.

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Accidents | Chesapeake Energy | Energy Companies | Harrison County | Industrywide Issues | Ohio

Chesapeake Well Pad Likely Source of Water “Contamination” in OH
January 17, 2013January 17, 2013

One of the charges leveled against shale drilling by anti-drillers is that chemicals used during drilling—in greatly diluted quantities—will somehow rise up from a mile or more below the surface and contaminate groundwater sources like water wells and springs. However, in over 50,000 horizontally drilled and fracked shale oil and gas wells across the country, and in over two million vertically fracked wells, groundwater contamination from deep drilling has never happened. Nada. Not once.

That’s not to say activities related to drilling have not affected (i.e., “contaminated”) groundwater supplies. Groundwater is affected from time to time, but it’s rare and when it happens, it’s fixable. Case in point: Harrison County, Ohio. Limestone used in a drill pad constructed by Chesapeake Energy at their Dodson well site is likely the cause of discolored (“contaminated”) storm water discharging into a local stream and lake, the source of water for some area residents…

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Economic Impact | Industrywide Issues | Jobs | Pipelines | Processing Plants

Part 3 Chamber’s Shale Study: “Mind Blowing” for Jobs, Economy
January 17, 2013January 17, 2013

In an interview with the Charleston Daily Mail, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s vice president for policy, Christopher Guith, called the soon-to-be-released third part of a study looking at the impact of the Marcellus and other shales “mind blowing” when it comes to the economic impact from midstream (pipelines) and downstream (petrochemicals) as they heat up in the coming years. In other words, you ain’t seen nothing yet…

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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Maryland | Regulation | Research | Statewide MD

Maryland Gov Finally Allocates Money for Fracking Study in Budget
January 17, 2013January 17, 2013

The stumbling, bumbling governor of Maryland, Socialist/Democrat Martin O’Malley, finally figured out that if the fracking study he himself ordered back in 2011 is ever going to get done by 2014, he’ll need to find money in the budget to do it. So in a blinding acknowledgement of the obvious, he included $1.5 million in the proposed budget he delivered to the legislature yesterday.

Of course, $1.5 million in Maryland is a rounding error in the state budget, but until now anti-drillers in the state have used lack of funding for the study as a convenient excuse to continue a moratorium on drilling. Look for the state’s Dems to neuter out the $1.5 million and then throw up their hands and say “no funding, no study, no drilling.” Typical.

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Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel | Garrett County | Hydraulic Fracturing | Industrywide Issues | Maryland | Regulation | Statewide MD

Maryland Shale Drilling Moratorium to be Debated in Legislature
January 17, 2013January 17, 2013

Want to kill something? Just keep studying it. So says a very perceptive Maryland State Delegate, Wendell Beitzel, who represents Garrett County, MD. Beitzel wants to move forward with Marcellus drilling in Maryland. He faces an uphill battle. There’s a movement on right now to delay drilling by studying it to death (apparently Maryland is taking their cue from New York in that regard)…

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