DEP Issues Permit to Expand Scranton Landfill, More Drill Cuttings
For the past seven years a privately-owned dump near Scranton, the Keystone Sanitary Landfill, has sought to expand in order to accept more garbage. The dump is also authorized to accept Marcellus Shale drill cuttings–rock and soil leftover after drilling. Yesterday the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced after seven years of study, hearings, meetings, and whatever else the DEP does to fiddle away the time, they have finally approved Keystone’s request to expand.
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In June 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied hearing an appeal for a case from Sunoco Logistics Partners about a permit for a pump station in Lebanon County, PA used to help flow natural gas liquids through the Mariner East pipeline system (see 
How does this work in the real world? Gas and electric customers on Aquidneck Island (part of Rhode Island) ran out of natural gas leaving thousands without heat on the island for days during a frigid cold snap in 2019. Customers without heat subsequently launched a class action lawsuit. On Wednesday a judge ruled the lawsuit may continue. Yet RI legislators will not allow the utility, Narragansett Electric (formerly part of National Grid) to implement any permanent fixes (like a new pipeline) to prevent another outage from happening! And it will happen at some point. This is what passes for “justice” in Rhode Island.
Calling it “an extraordinary year for the global gas industry,” the International Gas Union (IGU) yesterday released its 12th annual World LNG Report–the world’s most comprehensive public source of information on key developments and trends in the LNG sector (full copy below). From huge drops in demand levels at the height of the pandemic lockdowns, through exceptional spikes when the winter deep freeze sent the world’s energy systems into crisis, the IGU says LNG, quite literally, delivered.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), now firmly under the jackboots of Chairman Richard “Dick” Glick, has just struck a major blow to five natural gas pipeline projects, four of them either located in the Marcellus/Utica or located elsewhere but will flow significant amounts of our gas. Just coming to light now is the fact that last Thursday functionaries inside the bowels of FERC issued notices to five pipeline projects that FERC has hit the pause button on finishing up final approvals so the agency can take the next six months to complete full environmental impact statements (EIS’s), gauging whether or not these projects will cause too much mythical, man-made global warming. We’d be really angry about this except our anger quotient is already exhausted with this bunch of leftist nuts.
Enjoy the Republican majority on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) while you have it. That majority will end soon. Three FERC Republican commissioners have approved Enable Midstream Partners’ Gulf Run natural gas pipeline which will, in part, connect Marcellus/Utica gas supplies to the Gulf Coast for exporting (see 
We have some further clarification on the status of Equitrans Midstream’s 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project. One month ago Equitrans announced due to ongoing delays in permits (because of lawsuits filed by Big Green groups) MVP will not finish construction until next year (see 
When was the last time you heard about a state legislature with the guts to reject a governor’s nominee to head a regulatory agency because the nominee proved to be, well, dumb? Yeah, like never. Until now! The ranks of dullard bureaucrats are legion across the country, but you can count on one less dullard in North Carolina where the Republican legislature, after quizzing Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper’s nominee to head the state’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), determined she flunked because she didn’t know a darned thing about Mountain Valley Pipeline’s proposed Southgate project.
Crestwood Equity Partners and Consolidated Edison, Inc. (Con Edison) yesterday announced they are selling their 50/50 joint venture in Stagecoach Gas Services to pipeline giant Kinder Morgan for $1.225 billion in cash. Stagecoach consists of four natural gas storage facilities and 185 miles of natural gas pipelines located in the Marcellus/Utica with multiple interconnects to major interstate natural gas pipelines, including Tennessee Gas Pipeline, a Kinder Morgan subsidiary.
Last December MDN brought you the exclusive news that barging of shale wastewater (produced water) had finally been approved by the U.S. Coast Guard and that it would begin during the first quarter of this year (see 
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has done a little more fundraising to underwrite the salaries of overpaid management. The DEP fined Olympus Energy (formerly Huntley & Huntley) for $175,000 in a “civil penalty.” What did Olympus do that was so egregious? After a hard rain some of the rainwater got muddy on an Olympus well pad and washed down an unnamed creek in Allegheny County. Oh, and the language on a sign posted at the pad site didn’t contain some of the exact “Simon Says” language on it, including permit numbers. The shame! The horror!
It’s interesting to observe how antis twist and turn *any* situation, no matter how obscure and inconsequential, into propaganda that supports their aim to end the use of all fossil fuels. For example, there was a minor, we’d call it routine, incident at a Mariner East 2 pipeline pumping station in Chester County on Monday night. A small leak of methane (natural gas) was detected in the pumping station. The leak was tiny and the gas didn’t even escape the pumping station. Yet antis are attempting to turn this molehill into Mount Everest.
Can we get an amen! We have an evangelist in the house. Toby Rice, CEO of EQT (the largest natural gas producing company in the U.S.) is preaching the gospel of natural gas. No surprise there. But what may surprise you (it did us) is just how much Rice is pushing natgas as the alternative to coal in power generation. In an interview with Barron’s, Rice declared we need “every tool” to end energy poverty around the world, and “natural gas is the most evolved tool” to do it. Amen!
Last week we shared the bombshell news that Cabot Oil & Gas, one of the premier drillers in the Marcellus, is merging with (being acquired by) Permian driller Cimarex Energy (see 
New Jersey Resources’ Adelphia Gateway project is a plan to convert an old oil pipeline stretching from Northampton County, PA through Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester counties, terminating in Delaware County at Marcus Hook, into a natural gas pipeline. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued final approval for the project in December 2019 (see