PA DEP Fines EQT $330K for Minor Erosion Violations in SWPA
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has just fined EQT $330,775 for erosion and sedimentation violations at two well sites in Forward Township, Allegheny County, PA. Water with sediment in it leaked from the well sites in early 2018, which sometimes happens. The reason for the stiff fine is that EQT failed to notify the DEP when it happened. If the DEP finds out via its own inspections first, the cost goes way up.
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In October 2017, MDN told you a second Marcellus gas-fired electric generating plant is planned for Greene County, PA (see 
We have news of a new, small pipeline project with the potential to carry more PA Marcellus natural gas to several locations in Delaware and Maryland. Eastern Shore Natural Gas Company (ESNG), a subsidiary company of Chesapeake Utilities Corporation, filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Sept. 2018 to build 19+ miles of new pipeline and new meter and delivery stations in Kent and Sussex counties in Delaware, and Wicomico and Somerset counties in Maryland. FERC has just issued a positive environmental assessment (EA) for the project.
The battle to buy Anadarko Petroleum by Chevron and Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) has taken an interesting turn. Over the weekend Oxy revised its offer. It will still pay Anadarko shareholders $57 billion (as before), but the offer was revised to dial up the amount of cash and dial down the amount of stock swaps. Never hurts to use cash as a sweetener. The new offer did the trick. Although Anadarko previously signed an agreement to sell itself to Chevron, Anadarko announced yesterday they are leaving Chevron at the altar and riding off into the sunset to elope with Oxy.
Last Friday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a final approval for Williams’ Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline project by a vote of 3-1 (full copy below). The only remaining regulatory hurdles are for both New York State and New Jersey to issue federal Clean Water Act 401 certificates to allow the project to cross bodies of water in their respective territorial waters. All eyes are now on NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo and what he will do. Will he approve the project, benefiting New York City and Long Island with much-needed gas? Or will he veto the project, harming millions of NY residents, simply to placate a small group of very vocal radical leftists who pretend to care about the environment? He has until May 16 to decide.
Dominion Energy, a huge (one of the biggest) gas and electric utilities (and power generator) in the U.S., as well as a major pipeline company, issued its first quarter 2019 update last week. Our main concern and focus with the update is what Dominion said about the 600-mile, $7-$7.5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project. Given the ongoing lawsuits by radical green groups that have delayed the project and skyrocketed costs, Dominion CEO Tom Farrell said “it’s been a very frustrating process,” but “we are winding our way through it…and we’re making progress.” Farrell still plans to restart construction of ACP (currently stopped thanks to lawsuits) in the third quarter of this year.
This is a glittering example of how people who fancy themselves as “smart” are actually quite stupid. The so-called political leaders of Philadelphia are commissioning a study (paid for by Mike Bloomberg) on how the city can convert Philadelphia Gas Works, the nation’s largest municipal-owned utility company, into dumping natgas. Because, ya know, global warming. It’s bizarre (and breath-taking) to watch just how stupid people can get.
We’re sometimes criticized by MDN readers for too much “green bashing.” Yet how should we handle news like this: The Sierra Club is launching yet another attack on the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), which runs from Wetzel County, WV to Pittsylvania County, VA, by bastardizing the endangered species act in an attempt to bully the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service into blocking construction. Should we pretend to remain aloof and report that a respectable “environmental organization” is launching “new opposition” to a gas pipeline? Or tell you what we really think: That this evil, disgusting left-of-Attila-the-Hun group of thugs is once again organizing, using money from lefty billionaires like George Soros and Tom Steyer, to try and destroy a company and the people whose jobs depend on that company?
In March a group of Pennsylvania landowners from Lancaster County asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case in which they say they’ve been screwed over by Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline, that the pipeline should not have had the right to use eminent domain to build the pipeline before the matter of compensation was fully adjudicated (see 
Last week we brought you the news that President Trump is considering a waiver to the 1920 Jones Act for LNG to be shipped from port to port in the U.S., even if the ships used are foreign flagged (see 
Two weeks ago MDN told you the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee approved a series of five bills that restore some sanity in how environmental regulations are made and paid for in the Keystone State (see