WV Class Action Against EQT re Royalty Deductions Heads to Court
It’s been five years in the making, but finally a class action lawsuit that began in 2013, on behalf of 10,000 West Virginia landowners and royalty rights owners against EQT’s practice of deducting post-production expenses from royalty payments, will finally get its day in court in two weeks. That’s what we learn from an extended article published by ProPublica and the Charleston Gazette-Mail on the topic of WV drillers and their practice of “whittling away payments” from rights owners. Just over a month ago MDN told you about an elderly WV couple who won their private lawsuit against EQT on the same matter (see EQT Loses Post-Production Deduction Lawsuit to WV Couple). Based on the outcome of that lawsuit, EQT should be a tad nervous about this class action proceeding to trial.
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We’ve covered, it seems endlessly, news about two important new pipeline projects coming in the Marcellus. One is EQT Midstream’s (now Equitrans Midstream) Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), a 303-mile pipe from West Virginia to southern Virginia. The other is Dominion Energy’s 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina. MVP will, when it’s done, carry 2 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas to southern markets, and ACP will carry 1.5 Bcf/d. Both pipelines chart a similar path south. And both pipelines are now stalled, dogged by frivolous lawsuits filed by so-called environmental groups. Both have announced delays for their final completion dates. Our friends at RBN Energy look in detail at both projects, and what a delay may mean for drillers in the Marcellus/Utica. Are more pipeline constraints on the way in our region?
We’re not much of a fan of the federal Environmental Protection Agency–especially the agency under the jackboots of the Obamadroids. The Obama years saw egregious abuses and wild new regulations that tried to stamp out the fossil fuel industry. In March 2016, we told you about a new “voluntary” program set up by the Obama EPA called the Natural Gas STAR Methane Challenge Program (see 
Each year the International Energy Agency (IEA) issues a special 
The last time we checked in (June) on a brewing frack ban in Penn Township (Westmoreland County), PA, a challenge to a local ordinance which allows Apex Energy and Huntley & Huntley to drill and operate wells rested with a county judge. Things have since rapidly progressed. We’re guessing the local judge ruled in favor of allowing the wells to be drilled because the case was appealed to PA Commonwealth Court. Late last week the judges in Commonwealth Court issued a ruling in favor of Penn Township’s “special exception” permits awarded to Apex Energy, allowing them to drill shale wells.
Utility giant Eversource (formerly Northeast Utilities), one of the companies backing the Access Northeast pipeline project, is calling it quits on the project. At least for the foreseeable future. Access Northeast, a proposed ~$3 billion project, would connect four different pipeline systems: Texas Eastern, Algonquin Gas Transmission, Iroquois and Maritimes & Northeast. Eversource desperately needs the gas that would flow through the connected system, but after the Columbia Gas tragedy near Boston in September (see 
Last week MDN brought you the exciting news that New Fortress Energy is planning to build an LNG (liquefied natural gas) liquefaction plant in Wyalusing (Bradford County), PA (see 
Last week MDN picked up on news shared by top management for Energy Transfer that their long-delayed Mariner East 2 pipeline system will be up and running by the end of the year (see 
The battle continues to rage in the lib Dem socialist utopia of Ithaca (Tompkins County), NY over a plan to convert a local coal-fired electric generating plant to use much better-for-the-environment and far-less-polluting natural gas. Yet local antis, who irrationally (and we mean clinically insane) hate fossil fuels, continue to object and preen themselves at county board meetings to object to converting the plant. They object to the conversion because natural gas is a “fossil fuel”–the modern form of eeeeevil in their eyes. And so (once again, demonstrating clinical insanity), they prefer to keep the plant burning coal. The plant will have to burn something. We don’t see any of these same antis volunteering to unhook themselves from the electric grid. The electricity flowing to their homes needs to get generated somehow, and it sure ain’t renewables doing it.
Trout Unlimited (TU), previously outed as an anti-fracking organization (see 
Yesterday the muckety-mucks from Energy Transfer (ET) held a conference call with Wall Street analysts to discuss the company’s third quarter 2018 update. Inevitably on such calls there’s talk about what’s coming up in addition to what happened in the previous quarter. ET is a big midstream (pipeline) company. Among their projects are the mighty Rover Pipeline, which reaches from Pennsylvania, West Virgina, and eastern Ohio all the way into Michigan, and the Mariner East 2 Pipeline, which runs from eastern Ohio all the way through Pennsylvania to the Philadelphia area. Rover flows natural gas, ME2 (and ME2X) will flow NGLs, mainly ethane and propane. According to Tom Long, ET’s Chief Financial Officer, ME2 will be up and running sometime this quarter. Since the end of this quarter is around Christmastime, we prefer to think of ME2 as a Christmas present for Marcellus/Utica drillers.
It must really grate on Big Green supporters that their hero, lib Dem Tom Wolf (who just won reelection as governor of PA), continues to support fossil fuel projects. It must doubly grate on them that Wolf’s Dept. of Environmental Protection, when funding such projects, calls them “clean energy.” We love it! The PA DEP announced yesterday, two days after the big election, that they’ve just awarded $2.6 million in grants to 16 different “clean energy vehicle” projects. When you look at the list, all but $32,077 of that amount is going to fund either CNG or propane-powered vehicles. That is, fossil fuel-powered vehicles (mostly buses and trucks). And the DEP has the *audacity* (in the opinion of Big Green nuts) to call all of these projects “clean energy”! We’re laughing our considerable rear-end off.
It would be great when you are drilling a well, or building a pipeline, that when a state government inspector swings by to check up on the project, they don’t spot any problems. Especially for big projects like pipelines that run hundreds of miles. It would be nice, but not reality. Something always happens here and there. Unforeseen. Like weather with torrential rain, resulting in runoff from a ditch you just dug. The inspector swings by the next day and notices water and dirt where it’s not supposed to be, and voila, a “notice of violation” (NOV) is issued. It happens. That’s the way the world works. For Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) and Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), both with segments in West Virginia, NOVs have been and no doubt will continue to be issued. How many NOVs would you imagine have already been issued for each project in WV? How many is “too many” and indicates the project builders are being sloppy?
Last Friday the supremely disappointing U.S. Supreme Court refused to stop a lawsuit brought by lawyers (ab)using a group of 21 children against the United States for not doing enough about mythical man-made global warming (see