Here Come the “Bomb Trains” – Trump to Allow LNG by Rail
An overlooked aspect of yesterday’s Executive Order signed by President Trump will have an impact on natural gas by altering the way it’s transported. In addition to directing the federal EPA to rework rules that impact pipelines, Trump’s EO issued yesterday also directs the Secretary of Transportation to write a new rule allowing specially constructed tanker cars for railroads to ship LNG (liquefied natural gas). Which has antis fit to be tied, screaming “bomb train!”.
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The sleazy elected commissioners of Chester County have just sued Sunoco Logistics Partners to try and stop construction of the Mariner East 2 Pipeline on two county-owned properties where the pipeline has a legitimate, legal right to build. One of the commissioners actually uses these lawsuits as fundraisers (see 
Coastal Chemical, the North American subsidiary of German company Brenntag, sells chemicals (used in fracking) to the oil and gas industry. Coastal Chemical wants to build a chemical storage facility in Montgomery (Lycoming County), PA, near Williamsport. The facility would house ten tanks, each holding 12,000 gallons of chemicals. The local volunteer fire chief and the local emergency management coordinator are both “strongly opposed” to the project.
Pennsylvania State Senators Camera Bartolotta (Washington County) and Pat Stefano (Fayette County) have just beaten PA Gov. Tom Wolf at his own game. Wolf has been gallivanting around the state like Santa Claus promoting a plan called Restore PA, a plan that will get rid of lead paint in schools, fix flooding, repair old roads, give rural residents internet access, and just about any other goody you can think of. Wolf wants to pay for it by slapping a severance tax on the Marcellus industry. Bartolotta and Stefano are introducing two bills that would fund Wolf’s folly–but do so by allowing new shale drilling on state land. Game, set, and match!
There is an ongoing question of whether or not the Ohio Marketable Titles Act (MTA), which impacts Utica shale rights, can be used to return previously severed mineral rights back to a surface landowner, or whether the MTA is superseded by Ohio Dormant Minerals Act (DMA). In February, Ohio’s Seventh District Court of Appeals said the MTA *does* still apply to mineral rights (see 
A group of radical leftist groups filed briefs in federal court last Friday asking the court to overturn the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s decision from 2017 that approves and allows the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP). The court case, before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, is the next phase of the battle over ACP. We name names below for which non-profit agencies should have their tax exemption ripped away because of their overt political activities in opposing ACP.
You may recall MDN covering the story of the compressor station in Michigan that caught fire and exploded in January (see 
Natural gas was front and center at the ninth annual Marcellus and Manufacturing Development Conference, an event of the West Virginia Manufacturers Association, held yesterday in Morgantown, WV. Among the speakers was Steve Winberg, U.S. Department of Energy assistant secretary for fossil energy. He mouthed strong support for the Appalachian Basin ethane “hub” saying the region can easily support up to five ethane crackers, and that could lead to $35 billion of investment and 100,000 jobs in the region.
Last week Enbridge, owners of the Texas Eastern Transmission Company (Tetco) pipeline, filed documents with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission showing that Phase II of its Texas Eastern Appalachian Lease (TEAL) Project began service on April 1st. The TEAL project connects to and feeds Utica Shale gas to the NEXUS pipeline.
A joint announcement between Kendra II LLC and De Nora says a new wastewater recycling facility aimed at the shale industry will go online in late May providing drillers in the “heart of the Marcellus Shale” (in Susquehanna County, PA) a new option to recycle and reuse produced water…up to 18,000 barrels a day.
What will Pennsylvania’s future with respect to energy look like 25 years from now? What role will shale gas play? And how will that role affect the state? A group of 35 people began to study that question in the summer of 2017 and the end result, a new study, has just been released (full copy below). According to the study’s results, there are two distinct paths PA can take, resulting in two very different outcomes.