Chester County | Energy Services | Energy Transfer Partners | Industrywide Issues | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Sunoco Logistics
ME2 Pipe Restarts Drilling in Chester Co. – Stalled Since July 2017
Energy Transfer and their Sunoco Logistics Partners unit are about to restart underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) work for the Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline in West Whiteland Township (Chester County), PA–work that has been on pause since July 2017. Yet ME2 actually went online in December (see Sunoco LP’s Mariner East 2 NGL Pipeline Now Online!). Question: How can ME2 be online when not all of the work is yet done?!
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Anti fossil fuel freaks have scored a victory in reducing the amount of electricity available to New Jersey’s southern shore area (rolling blackouts anyone?). There was a plan to convert a now-closed coal-fired electric generating plant to use natural gas, fed to it by a new (very short) pipeline.
The West Virginia Surface Owners Rights Organization (SORO) says WV has a serious problem. Drillers are not plugging old/non-producing wells (most of them conventional). In fact, SORO says there are some 4,500 wells that have been unplugged for so long, they are considered “orphaned”–the original driller is long gone, out of business, and there’s nobody around to do the plugging. Something’s got to change.
The light at the end of the tunnel for Constitution Pipeline just got brighter. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to pass the ball back to them so they can reconsider whether or not to overrule New York State’s blockage of a permit for the Constitution. FERC’s action signals they may be ready to rule against NY and allow Constitution to begin construction.
Dominion Energy has about had it up to *here* with the clown judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circus. Dominion asked for all of the judges sitting on the Fourth Circuit to rehear a case that blocks the pipeline from drilling *under* the Appalachian Trail because of a lawsuit brought by colluding Big Green groups trying to kill the entire project. The clowns refused.
PennEast Pipeline, a $1 billion, (previously) 120-mile natgas pipeline that will stretch from northeast PA to the Trenton area of New Jersey, has made a few minor route adjustments, the most recent of which will make it another mile shorter, and anti-fossil fuelers like THE Delaware Riverkeeper is up in arms.
Last week an Ohio man was arrested for allegedly calling in a bomb threat last November against Myers Well Service, located in Eighty Four (Washington County), PA. A cell phone belonging to Ryan Dougherty of Belmont, OH was used to make the threat. Dougherty claims he called the business, but didn’t make any threats. The investigation took three months. Last Tuesday authorities arrested and charged Dougherty. 
In January the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gave permission to TransCanada’s Columbia Pipeline group to start up a portion of the Mountaineer XPress Pipeline in West Virginia (see 
We’ve written extensively over the years about the Ohio Dormant Minerals Act (DMA) and even about the Ohio Marketable Titles Act (MTA), both of which impact Utica shale rights. There has been an ongoing question of whether or not the MTA can be used to return previously severed mineral rights back to a surface landowner. The answer to that question appears to have been rendered in a court decision made earlier this month.
Big Green insanity continues at the so-called Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation (PEDF). The only thing they “defend” is their own twisted philosophy of trying to gouge out the eyes of the oil and gas industry in PA–even at the expense of de-funding their own beloved PA Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR).
More than a month ago MDN editor Jim Willis was contacted by PublicSource, an independent non-profit news organization based in Pittsburgh. A reporter wanted to know if Jim would grant an interview as part of a story he was doing on the Shell cracker, pipelines and the petchem industry in southwest Pennsylvania. Jim said yes.
There had been an ongoing legal squabble in Trumbull County, OH over a proposed Utica gas-fired electric plant in Lordstown, located next door to another gas-fired plant (see 
In November seven anti-pipeline residents of Chester and Delaware counties (Philadelphia suburbs) filed a lawsuit against the Mariner East pipeline projects–1, 2 and 2X–alleging the pipelines are unsafe. It didn’t take long for others to jump on the litigation bandwagon: