A pipeline compressor station for Consumers Energy (Michigan utility company) experienced an explosion and fire yesterday morning. The facility is located in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan in Macomb County.
Read More “Michigan NatGas Compressor Station Catches Fire, Explodes”
The folks who keep track of these things expect today’s record-cold polar vortex in the Midwest and northeast (coldest temps in more than a generation, hey, what was that about global warming?) will create the highest demand/usage of natural gas for a single day–ever. Prognosticators also predict a “freeze-off” in the Marcellus/Utica, causing a temporary 1 Bcf/d decrease in production.
Read More “All-Time Record NatGas Demand Expected Today; M-U “Freeze-Off”?”
Canadian pipeline giant TransCanada, which owns the Columbia Pipeline system here in the U.S., blames the Marcellus/Utica for a huge drop in volumes flowing through its Canadian Mainline from Western Canada to Ontario and Quebec.
Read More “Lowball Western Canadian Gas Can’t Compete with Marcellus/Utica”
Virginia House of Delegates member Lee Ware, a Republican, has “quietly” introduced a bill in the General Assembly that would block Dominion Energy, builder of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), from passing along costs related to the pipeline to the electric generating plants and their ratepayers that will use the cheap natural gas made available by the pipeline.
Read More “Va. Bill Would Block Atlantic Coast Pipe from Passing Along Costs”
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) office of enforcement is close to launching a new audit policy “that will offer significant new penalty reductions for the oil and gas industry.” That’s how the news is being spun–that oil and gas are about to get a big, fat, wet, sloppy kiss from the EPA. The truth is far different from the media spin.
Read More “EPA Plan Allows E&Ps to Self-Report Clean Air Act Violations”
As we have noted recently in a number of posts, it appears we’re heading into a dip of drilling activity–not only in the oil plays but also here at home in the Marcellus/Utica (see Trend: Marcellus/Utica Drillers Will Drill Less in 2019). However, a recent analysis piece by S&P Global Platts says while oil-focused drilling is objectively in decline (lower rig counts), overall gas-focused drilling, so far anyway, remains strong.
Read More “Oil Drilling in U.S. in Decline, but Gas Drilling Remains Strong”
Bats are a big deal in the Pennsylvania Marcellus. Why? Drillers and midstreamers can’t cut down trees from April 1st through October 31st of each year for fear of killing a northern long-eared bat that may be roosting in one of those trees. The PA Board of Game Commissioners have just added two more bat species to the list, further complicating the issue.
Read More “PA Drillers/Pipelines Must Now Deal with 3 Protected Bat Species”
MDN recently received a tip from a reader that Highland Field Services (subsidiary of Seneca Resources, which itself is a subsidiary of National Fuel Gas Company) began drilling a new wastewater injection well in Brookfield (Trumbull County), Ohio. This is the third (of five) injection wells Highland has received permits to drill in Highland.
Read More “Highland Begins Drilling New Injection Well in Trumbull Co., OH”
Equitrans’ (EQT Midstream) 300-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is now 70% built (see Shocker: Mountain Valley Pipeline Now 70% Built, Online by 4Q19). Even so, radicalized environmental groups are still trying to overturn and block it from beginning service via numerous lawsuits. One lawsuit in particular seeks to emasculate the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in the process.
Read More “Antis Try to Convince Fed Court to Block Mountain Valley Pipeline”
We recently brought you the news of four supposedly grown men (in their 30s to 50s) engaging in criminal activity in order to block delivery of large gas turbines to the Cricket Valley Energy Center project in Dover (Dutchess County), NY (see 4 Protesters Arrested in CT for Blocking Gas-Fired Turbine Shipment). In what appears to be a Big Green organized protest, some of the same people who have protested other gas plant projects showed up to mouth off about the Cricket Valley project.
Read More “Radicals Protest NatGas-Fired Electric Plant in Dutchess Co., NY”
MDN previously reported on efforts in both Ohio and Pennsylvania to plug orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells (all of them conventional/vertical wells), which present a health and safety issue. It’s all too easy to hit one of these old wells when drilling a new horizontal shale well. In WV, a new effort to plug old wells is causing concern for some–that the effort to plug old wells may inflict economic damage on WV counties. Huh?!
Read More “Plugging Orphan O&G Wells May Economically Hurt WV Counties”
It seems the rather thick-headed governors from New England have finally woken up and understand their resistance to new natural gas pipelines has placed them in a pickle. The region, when it gets really cold (like over the next few days), gets really short on natural gas. Prices soar, supplies diminish, and people not only pay high natgas prices, but high prices for electricity, which gets generated by natgas. The govs have a plan to slap a Band Aid on the problem.
Read More “New England States Finally Waking Up re Domestic Natural Gas”
It turns out Pennsylvania’s current Attorney General, Josh Shapiro, is not much different than his predecessor, Kathleen Kane (who is sitting in jail for committing perjury). Kane, and now Shapiro, have targeted the Marcellus Shale industry, accusing drillers of committing crimes against the environment. It’s cheap and it’s sleazy and a total abuse of the office, all for political grandstanding.
Read More “PA AG Investigates Shale Drillers for “Enviro Crimes””
How is it not child abuse to brainwash young kids with your particular brand of sick environmental radicalism? That’s apparently what THE Delaware Riverkeeper herself has done–brainwashed little kids.
Read More “PA Enviro Radicals Brainwash/Use Children to Pressure Gov. Wolf”
This post is about a pipeline project we’ve written quite a bit about over the past few years–Dominion Energy’s New Market project that ever-so-modestly expands an existing pipeline in Upstate New York. But at its heart, the issue is much deeper. Anti-fossil fuel radicals are challenging this project, in court, as a way to force the government to consider man-made global warming when approving such projects.
Read More “FERC Responds to NY Radicals re Pipeline Impacts on Global Warming”
This is fun to watch. The monied interests in Westchester County, NY (suburb of New York City) are outraged that beginning in March Consolidated Edison will no longer accept new natural gas customers (see Westchester NatGas Moratorium Begins to Bite NYC/Cuomo on the Butt).
Read More “NY PSC to Hold Hearings on ConEd’s New Gas Customer Moratorium”