DTE Energy Restarts Construction at Michigan Gas-Fired Plant May 4
In August 2018 DTE Energy broke ground on a new state-of-the-art natural gas-fired power plant in St. Clair County, Michigan (see DTE Energy’s Michigan Gas-Fired Plant Breaks Ground Today). The gas-fired Blue Water Energy Center will produce 1,150 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 850,000 homes, helping to offset three coal-fired plants set to retire by 2023. Construction on the project, due to go online in spring 2022, was halted due to the coronavirus pandemic. Construction is set to resume on May 4.
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The shutdown of the world’s economy is not only affecting oil usage (and prices), it’s also affecting the usage and prices of LNG–liquefied natural gas. LNG and natgas usage are down around the world–particularly in Europe and Asia. Less demand means lower prices, and (in this case) the cancelation of a number of tankers that were supposed to deliver our LNG to other countries. Reuters is reporting 23 or more U.S. LNG cargoes for June loading have now been canceled.
In contrast to today’s story about LNG being on the ropes (see US LNG Export Cargoes Canceled as Coronavirus Destroys Demand), the International Gas Union (IGU) published its annual LNG report yesterday. The report highlights the material changes in the global LNG industry happening in 2019. The worldwide LNG trade increased by 13% to a total of 354.7 MT (million tons). The Marcellus/Utica gets a prominent shoutout in the report.
A Standford University professor who sued another scientist who dared to criticize his wacky views on renewable energy in a journal article sued the scientist and the journal for defamation. It took a while for the lawsuit to play out (two years), but a judge in the case recently ruled the Standford prof was wrong in filing the lawsuit and must now pay the attorney’s fees for those whom he sued. Sweet justice.
Last Friday PTT Global Chemical, the huge Thailand-based petrochemical company looking to build a world-class ethane cracker plant in Belmont County, OH, issued an update for the project. In February PTT’s CEO signaled that a final investment decision (FID) on whether (or not) to build the project would happen by “mid-year 2020” (see 
In the end, physics and not government intervention is forcing the end of large amounts of shale oil production across the U.S. With a forced shutdown of the world’s economy (including the U.S. economy) due to the coronavirus pandemic, some 30 million barrels per day of oil the world would have used (out of a previous 100 million bpd) has disappeared. Demand has dried up. Yes, the oil apocalypse is here. Welcome to Hades. Some of our favorite oil superheroes will not make it out alive.
Great news! The Mariner East 2 pipeline project along with Shell’s mighty ethane cracker project will once again be able to restart their stopped construction. At least according to our reading of the law. As you may know the Pennsylvania Dept. of Community and Economic Development (DCED) has been “reviewing” waiver requests to allow all work to resume for both ME2 and the cracker project (see 
The first phase (of three) for Sabal Trail, a $3.2 billion, 515-mile interstate natural gas pipeline in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama to deliver Marcellus gas to the southeast, came online in June 2017 (see 
The U.S. rig count continues in a freefall, losing massive numbers of rigs each week. Over the past month rigs have gone down 47, then 45, then (gulp) 80, and then 74 (see 
Eighteen Pennsylvania State Senators sent a letter to Gov. Tom Wolf on April 21 asking Wolf to direct the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to stop trying to ram through a new tax on carbon that will kill the state’s flourishing natural gas-fired electric generating plants.
Reuters recently published a story called “Bankruptcy looms over U.S. energy industry, from oil fields to pipelines.” Until now the main focus and chatter has been about shale oil drillers and how they will, or will not, survive the low oil price apocalypse. What we haven’t heard much about (until now) are pipeline companies. As the article points out, midstream companies are not immune to the price crash nor (for some) to bankruptcy.
Disgusting anti-fossil fuel lunatics have hassled the Keystone XL oil pipeline in the Midwest with frivolous lawsuits for years. Last week an Obama-appointed liberal judge serving in Montana, U.S. District Judge Brian Morris, vacated a permit for the Keystone project, once again stopping construction. The permit vacated was issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is called a Nationwide Permit 12–the equivalent of a Section 401 permit under the Clean Water Act–allowing projects like pipelines to be built across or under streams, rivers and “wetlands” (swamps). The problem with the judge’s action is that it potentially affects all pipeline projects across the country using an NP12 permit–including the delayed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a 303-mile Marcellus/Utica gas pipeline from West Virginia to southern Virginia.
Virginia Natural Gas (VNG), a company that serves customers in northeastern Virginia, wants to build new natural gas infrastructure in Prince William and Fauquier counties. VNG is seeking state approval to build 24 miles of new pipeline and two new compressor stations (expanding a third compressor), connecting to the mighty Transco pipeline system to flow Marcellus/Utica gas to the region. The Header Improvement Project, as it’s called, will help service VNG’s 300,000 natural gas customers and is needed to deliver natural gas to two proposed new gas-fired power plants.
The Narragansett Indian Tribe in Rhode Island won’t be smoking the peace pipe any time soon. The Tribe tried to block construction of Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s (TGP) Connecticut Expansion pipeline project as a violation the National Historic Preservation Act by not protecting “ceremonial stone landscapes” supposedly found along the path of the pipeline (see