Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Lancaster County | Pennsylvania | Pipelines | Statewide PA | Williams
New Details on Williams and Unpaid Pipe Contractors in Lancaster
It seems we owe an apology to Williams for the story we ran earlier this week (see PA Businesses Still Not Paid for Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline Work). We took Williams to task for the fact many of the subcontractors that did work for their contractor Welded Construction have still not been paid for work done on the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline project. There’s far more to the story, including details on how those subcontractors can get their money.
Read More “New Details on Williams and Unpaid Pipe Contractors in Lancaster”
TransCanada has 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 we can’t get a single new pipeline project approved to flow Marcellus gas a few hundred miles away into New England. Something is seriously wrong with this picture.
Blocking pipelines into New York State and New England has real-world consequences. Lack of natural gas supplies is causing multiple local utility companies in New England and New York State to put moratoriums on new customers from hooking up to natural gas. Another local utility yesterday announced a moratorium–this latest one in Massachusetts.
Although there are still a few regulatory hurdles to jump, Equitrans Midstream (nee EQT Midstream) announced yesterday during their quarterly/annual update that the company’s 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project is still on track to be done and online by the end of this year.
Last month 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 
Here’s something we didn’t know: In West Virginia there’s a regulation on the books, put there decades ago (pre-shale), that stipulates wells targeting “deep” formations including the Utica Shale must be at least 3,000 feet apart.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s foolish policies have finally come home to roost. You can only overtax and overregulate for so long before a state’s economy comes tumbling down–and that’s just what’s happening to poor Andy, who went hat-in-hand to the White House on Tuesday to beg and plead with The Donald to tweak the newly implemented tax federal tax cut.
Last week ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum announced a final investment decision (FID) to build Golden Pass LNG terminal, on the Texas side of the Sabine-Neches Waterway. That’s a stone’s throw from Cheneire Energy’s Sabine Pass LNG terminal on the Louisiana side of the waterway. Marcellus/Utica gas flows to the Cheniere facility. Will it also flow to Exxon’s when it’s built?
It’s no secret that getting a gas pipeline project of any kind approved in New York State is an uphill battle because our governor, Andrew Cuomo, blocks all new pipelines in a bid to keep his left wing supporters happy. An important project from Williams, the Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) which would beef up capacity along the Transco pipeline system going into New York City, is about to get two hearings with the state Dept. of Environmental Conservation.
Yesterday MDN began our lead story about a big fine for Antero Resources by saying, “This has to be a record-high amount for a fine plus remediation work, at least in the Marcellus/Utica.” We humbly admit we were wrong. In checking our records, we found that in a similar case from 2014, Trans Energy paid even more, quite a bit more. We researched what this whole business is about, why Antero and others were fined, interviewing a top Antero official, and we now have a far better understanding of what happened and why.
In 2013 some 10,000 West Virginia landowners/rights owners filed a class action lawsuit against EQT over their practice of post-production deductions from royalty checks. The lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial last November, but at the last minute, it didn’t. Word leaked that EQT had settled out of court (see 
It’s that time of year for energy companies to issue updates on just how much oil and gas they own in the ground, recoverable at current prices. Both CNX Resources and Range Resources, two major Marcellus/Utica producers, recently issued statements outlining their “proved reserves.” CNX has 7.9 trillion cubic feet equivalent (Tcfe) in proved reserves as of Dec. 31, 2018. Range Resources has 18.1 Tcfe in proved reserves.
A partisan left-wing group calling itself the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy along with another partisan left-wing group called the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) released a report last week that claims WV’s shale industry has “fallen short” in delivering on economic promises, and the way to fix it is to boost the severance tax from 5% to 10%! Yeah, they’re out of their collectivist minds.
Although Dominion Energy’s 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) is facing serious delays and cost overruns mainly due to lawsuits brought by Big Green groups, the company is still committed to building the pipeline (see 
This has to be a record-high amount for a fine plus remediation work, at least in the Marcellus/Utica. Antero Resources has cut a deal with three government entities–the U.S. Dept. of Justice, federal Environmental Protection Agency, and West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection–to pay a $3.15 million fine and spend another $8 million to mitigate and restore 32 sites in West Virginia.