Legal Sharks Circle in Class Action Against EQT/Rice 2017 Merger
In June MDN told you that the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Retirement System is not happy with their investment in EQT shares of stock, so they’re suing the company (see Mass. Retirement Fund Sues EQT for Plummeting Stock Price). They hope to turn the lawsuit into a class action on behalf of other shareholders. Now a group of seven law firms (six in addition to the lawyers for Cambridge) are all petitioning the court to make their firm the lead counsel on a class action lawsuit against EQT.
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Back in January Tallgrass Energy, builder and operator of the mighty Rockies Express (REX) pipeline which is a critical link that flows Marcellus/Utica gas to Midwestern markets, dropped the bombshell announcement that investment firm Blackstone was buying a “controlling” interest in the company (see 
The Mariner East pipeline projects (plural) are an important part of the shale energy story in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. As is the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex (what we call the Marcus Hook refinery). Currently between Mariner East 1 and 2, somewhere around 170,000 barrels of NGLs (mostly ethane and propane) flow to Marcus Hook and most of that gets exported to other countries. Mariner East 2X is currently under construction and due to come online next year, increasing that number significantly. For many Marcellus/Utica drillers, selling NGLs is the difference between being profitable and not profitable.
The Independent Oil & Gas Association of West Virginia (IOGAWV) is already hard at work on legislative priorities for next/upcoming session of the WV legislature–which actually does not begin until Jan. 8, 2020. In WV the full legislature only meets for 60 days each year (other states can learn a lesson). IOGAWV is planning both a defensive (protect what we have) and offensive (new initiatives) strategy for next year. What’s on the list?
To his credit (we don’t often heap praise on him), Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf toured a Mariner East 2 pipeline construction site in Chester County near Philadelphia last Thursday, along with some Democrat politicians, and told anti-pipeline residents “NO” to their faces when they asked him to shut down the Mariner East pipeline system. He was polite, but firm, telling them he disagrees with their position of the need to permanently shut down the Mariner pipelines. “Do a better job” with construction and impacts from the project? Sure, according to Wolf. Shut it all down permanently? NO.
Last October NEXUS Pipeline, a $2.6 billion, 255-mile interstate pipeline that runs from Ohio to Michigan, received permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to begin partial operation (see 
Last Wednesday MDN brought you the news that CNX Resources had laid off some 50 employees, with rumors circulating that more layoffs were coming (see 
Can it be possible that the shale industry and anti-shale environmentalists (those who irrationally espouse the end of using all fossil fuels) can actually agree on something? Turns out, we can! The something we agree on is opposition to PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to tax a single industry, shale drilling, $4.5 billion in order to use that money for Big Government programs.
How dumb must you be to not understand that if there’s not enough gas supply, you can’t hook up new customers to the distribution grid? Yet some New York City legislators, 17 of them, are vilifying National Grid, one of NYC’s two main natural gas utilities, because National Grid continues to deny new customers who want gas service to be hooked up. It’s clearly Andrew Cuomo’s fault–he denied permission to build a pipeline to bring new supplies of gas to the region. Yet the legislators close ranks for this putz and blame the company that can’t get those new supplies. Some of these same legislators OPPOSE the pipeline! Yet they want more natgas. What kind of mental gymnastics does that require?
In May, Columbia Gas Transmission was forced to haul the State of Maryland into court over the state’s refusal to grant an easement to drill a tiny 3.5-mile pipeline under the Potomac River (see 
Last September MDN brought you news that six men had been charged with conspiring to illegally alter emission systems on 30+ trucks with heavy-duty diesel engines used to haul water and wastewater to and from Marcellus Shale wells (see