WV Gov Justice Creates Downstream Jobs Task Force to Leverage Shale
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice wants to ensure his state is in the poll position to grab as many new businesses and jobs as possible from the embryonic but rapidly developing petrochemical industry in the Marcellus/Utica region. Justice announced yesterday he has signed an Executive Order to form the Governor’s Downstream Jobs Task Force, a group of WV officials who will work on developing sites for use by petchem manufacturers and work to attract potential investors.
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Pennsylvania antis from the Philadelphia area who don’t want pipelines running through their neighborhoods (NIMBY types) beat the drums of war so loud and for so long, they finally began to intimidate the non-partisan, shouldn’t-be-intimated PA Public Utility Commission (PUC). In June the PUC launched a “major review of its safety regulations for hazardous liquids pipelines” in response to pressure from Mariner East 2 pipeline foes (see 
We’ve mentioned this in passing in a few articles in the past, but thought it might be good dedicate an entire post to it. What happens, currently, with the prodigious amounts of ethane produced in the Marcellus/Utica? Ethane, as you may know, is one of the natural gas liquids (NGL) hydrocarbons that comes out of the ground along with methane. Methane is CH4, ethane is C2H6. Next to methane, ethane is the most produced hydrocarbon in the M-U. How much gets produced, and what happens to all that ethane?
MDN is not a blog/news site about the myth of man-made global warming, but we do address the topic from time to time because the false belief of man-caused warming is at the root of opposition to fossil fuels and shale energy. We’re accused of being Luddites. Not with the times. Out of touch. Climate deniers. We say we’re simply seeing the issue clearly. A recent article brings into focus for everyone how the masses have been lied to by media and leftist scientists. There is no global warming happening–at least not because of mankind–since 2005. We have incontrovertible proof…
Researchers from Pennsylvania State University, using a new testing protocol that uses existing, affordable water chemistry tests, have tested 20,751 water well samples from wells located near high levels of both conventional and shale oil and gas drilling in PA. The tests show whether or not existing/naturally occurring methane is in the water well, or whether methane from nearby drilling is present in the water. Know what they found? Out of 20,751 samples, they found 17 wells (0.08%, less than one-tenth of a single percent) showed “possible signs of methane contamination.” Statistically speaking, it’s zero.
New Fortress Energy is in the process of building the first (of two or more) LNG liquefying plants in Wyalusing, PA–nowhere near a shoreline. The company will truck (eventually rail) the LNG to a port located on the Delaware River along the New Jersey shoreline for export to Puerto Rico and other destinations. As we reported in July, work is now underway to clear the site before actual construction of buildings begins (see 
In what we would say is an unusual, very public rebuke of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the former chairperson of the Massachusetts Dept. of Public Utilities says that Cuomo is to blame for a near-emergency situation in New England during the winter of 2017/2018 when the region was within two days of a massive blackout due to lack of electricity. The lack of electricity is because New England doesn’t have enough natural gas to feed power plants during critical load periods.
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 
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.