St. Louis Marcellus/Utica Pipeline Now 97% Done, Up & Running 4Q
In February 2017, Spire, a natural gas utility company based in St. Louis, Missouri, filed an official application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build the Spire STL Pipeline, a 65-mile, 24-inch diameter pipe that will flow 400 million cubic feet (MMcf) per day of yummy Marcellus/Utica gas from the Rockies Express (REX) pipeline to St. Louis (see Spire Files Plan with FERC to Flow Marcellus/Utica Gas to St. Louis). Construction on the project began this past December (see St. Louis Marcellus/Utica Pipeline Begins Construction). The project is already 97% complete!
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Equitrans, formerly known as EQT Midstream (formerly a division of EQT), released its second quarter update yesterday. Among the things we learned: The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project is now 85% complete and will be done and online in mid-2020. EQT (the driller) remains committed to the MVP project and contrary to false rumors, EQT is not pulling out (it would cost them north of $3 billion to do so!). The project cost for MVP will be around $5 billion–a new high.
America’s natural gas and oil industry announced “a landmark partnership” in late 2017 called the Environmental Partnership, to “accelerate improvements to environmental performance in operations across the country” (see 
Lee Wasserman is director of the Rockefeller Family Fund, a New York-based charity started in 1967 by heirs of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller. Wasserman is a man-causes-global-warming Kool Aid drinker, and he uses the considerable money available to him to “fight climate change.” For a smart guy he’s really, really dumb. In a New York Times editorial last week, Wasserman paraded his ignorance for all to see by declaring the petroleum industry’s continued search for oil and gas is “rampant corporate irrationality.”
The actions of one man seeking access to confidential risk assessments and plans for the Mariner East pipelines in the Philadelphia area will, if successful, put information into the public domain that terrorists can potentially use. Note we don’t believe it is the intent of this man to grant access to sensitive information to terrorists. But that is the consequence, the outcome, the result of his actions–if a court now reviewing the case grants his request.
Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) has approved TC Energy’s agreements with natural gas retailers in Eastern Canada, to flow Western Canadian gas to Canada’s East Coast and New England. TC Energy (formerly called TransCanada) cooked up a plan to expand an existing pipeline in New England and connect it to a point in Quebec to flow gas from the opposite side of the continent, Western Canadian natural gas (over 1,000 miles away), into New England and from there back up into Canada (see 
Columbia Gas of Massachusetts (NiSource) continues to recover (physically and reputationally) from a series of explosions last September in its local delivery pipelines north of Boston (see 
The same U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals judges who quoted from Dr. Seuss’ book “The Lorax” in a previous decision against Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) have, once again, delivered another blow to ACP. In a very poor decision issued on Friday, the clown judges overturned reissued permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) for the project, claiming the permits don’t do enough to protect bumble bees and bats.
In March we told you about National Fuel Gas Company’s (NFG) FM100 Project in northwestern Pennsylvania that will beef up and extend an existing pipeline network to flow an extra 330 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of Marcellus gas to Williams’ mighty Transco Pipeline (see 
Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), headquartered in Newark, NJ, says it will shutter all but its three of its natural gas-fired electric plants by 2046, in a misguided effort to reduce “climate-warming emissions to net zero by 2050.” But they’ll do it *only* if the government adopts an economy-crushing, totally regressive “carbon tax” (to punish the use of natural gas). PSEG’s ultimate goal is to force their customers to use less electricity. That’s their big solution. Use less, and they’ll charge you more for what you still use. The end result of dumping gas-fired plants is predictable–grid unreliability and rolling blackouts.
We caught wind of something on the Tallgrass quarterly conference call yesterday that had previously eluded our otherwise reliable radar. Tallgrass, via its subsidiary BNN Water, bought out and merged in Central Environmental Services back in May. That’s important because Central is a “water services” provider in the Marcellus/Utica. Namely, Central (now BNN) operates three injection wells in Ohio. On yesterday’s Tallgrass conference call, company officials said they are working on a plan to build pipelines to those injection wells, saving a whole bunch of truck trips.
Steven Winberg, the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s assistant secretary for fossil energy, spoke to West Virginia lawmakers on Tuesday. His message? The Trump Administration is prioritizing building out a petrochemical industry in Appalachia. Among Winberg’s comments, on the matter of establishing an NGL storage hub in Appalachia, he said: “At DOE we have a full court press on this.” For those who don’t follow basketball, the term full court press means aggressive pressure against the opponent in the back court. Winberg’s meaning: DOE is doing everything it can to make the NGL storage hub project happen.