Liens Against ME2 Pipeline Landowners Near Philly Dismissed
That was fast. Last week we reported that lawyers for a Mariner East 2 (ME2) subcontractor, United Piping Inc., had filed liens against the property of three landowners near Philadelphia because the ME2 contractor they worked for, Welded Construction, had declared bankruptcy and couldn’t pay them. And since ME2 builder Sunoco Logistics (along with Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline builder Williams) withheld payments from Welded, forcing it into bankruptcy, United figured they would extract their pound of flesh from landowners. Which, as we said, is outrageous and wrong (see Bankrupt Pipeline Contractor Leads to Liens Against PA Landowners). A day after that story broke, the companies involved (namely Energy Transfer, on behalf of Sunoco Logistics) got it resolved.
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New York State is the biggest loser. In every sense. NG Advantage, which once tried to set up a virtual pipeline operation in the Town of Fenton (suburb of Binghamton, NY), has shaken the dust of New York off its shoes and has, instead, decided to build the facility (with millions in tax revenues and over 100 jobs) 25 miles across the border in Springville Township, Susquehanna County, PA–in the heart of Marcellus country. Good for NG! Nice people, and they deserved much better treatment than they got here in NY. We personally hoped and lobbied for NG to locate in the Town of Windsor, NY, where MDN is located. But alas, the experience they had with the Town of Fenton was so nasty, they decided to abandon any plans of locating a business in NY. Can’t say that we blame them. NY is about the most business unfriendly state in the Union.
We once again have a majority, three Republicans, as voting members at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Yesterday along a party line vote, the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Bernard McNamee as the fifth Commissioner at FERC. McNamee is the former head of the Department of Energy’s Office of Policy–the guy who helped roll out a plan favored by Trump and DOE Secretary Rick Perry to artificially favor and boost nuclear and coal energy sources, at the expense of other sources like natural gas. Stupid idea, but there you go. By all accounts McNamee will be a friend to natural gas, regardless of his recent past in promoting coal and nukes.
One of the ways anti-fossil fuel groups have tried to stop the Mariner East 2 Pipeline project is by tying it up in court. Various lawsuits have been filed going back years. One litigant, a Big Green group headquartered in Philadelphia, the so-called Clean Air Council, has tried repeatedly to get the courts to deny ME2 the right to use eminent domain in cases where landowners refuse to cooperate (see 
On Monday, CNX Midstream sued West Virginia contractor Ronald Lane Inc. claiming the contractor “without warning or justification ceased work on the Project and abandoned the Project,” the Project being a package of water and gas pipelines in Greene and Washington counties in PA. And that, “Lane informed [CNX] that Lane intended to redirect all of its forces and efforts to other projects that Lane considered to be more profitable than the Project. Lane made it clear to [CNX] that Lane had no intention to perform any more work on the Project.” Lane was the winning bidder for the Project in late 2017 at a total cost of $7.1 million. According to the lawsuit, CNX claims Lane began construction in March and abandoned the Project in June.
MDN has run a number of stories on the recent wild fluctuations in the price of natural gas. As we always explain, there is no one “price” of natgas for everyone–but there is the Henry Hub price, which is used for trading futures contracts (NYMEX). That price is watched like a hawk by everyone who trades natural gas. A casual observer of the market might think, based on media coverage, that the swings in the NYMEX price mean something bad. Negative. “The price I’ll pay this winter will go high, and it will stay high, and the shale “revolution” was always just a mirage and this proves it!” Whew. Take a chill pill. The chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute recently penned what we call a natgas price explainer, looking at the recent spikes in the price, providing context for understanding that the price we pay for gas is still, on average, at historic lows. And no, the sky is not falling.
Although the Democrats will seize control of the House of Representatives come January, putting Nancy Pelosi in charge, fortunately the Senate will remain under Republican control. However, as happens each two years, a number of committee assignments and chairmanships and ranking member assignments will change. One of those changes is in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (Democrat) may become the ranking (longest serving) Democrat on the committee, and because of tradition, he would then assume the role of Ranking Member of the committee. That prospect doesn’t sit well with the radical children of the Big Green movement–because Manchin is from WV and he loves and supports the coal industry and he loves and supports natural gas. Worse yet, Manchin sometimes (not often, but sometimes) votes with Donald Trump (gag). The petulant children of Big Green groups like “Friends of the Earth” are stomping their feet, demanding that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer deny Manchin the Ranking Member position.
What if the shale revolution had never happened? We’d be another $250 billion in the hole with our trade deficit. That’s the finding of a new report released by IHS Markit titled “Trading Places: How the Shale Revolution Has Helped Keep the U.S. Trade Deficit in Check.” The report finds the total U.S. merchandise trade deficit in 2017 was $250 billion lower than it otherwise would have been if the petroleum (crude oil, refined products and natural gas liquids – petroleum liquids separated out from natural gas and also known as NGLs) trade deficit had remained at its 2007 level. Thank God for shale! The report also examines the impact of rising U.S. oil, natural gas and chemicals production on the domestic trade merchandise balance and how the U.S. position in energy and chemicals may evolve in coming years. Interesting stuff.
Last week MDN friend and ace reporter Rick Stouffer from Kallanish Energy hosted a one-day event in Pittsburgh called “Kallanish New Horizons: Appalachin Basin.” One of the speakers was Denise Brinley, senior energy advisor for the Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development. She addressed the topic of an NGL (ethane) storage hub. We’ve written a number of posts on what was originally billed as a $10 billion project, to be located somewhere in the Marcellus/Utica region–most likely West Virginia (see 
Continuing on the topic of the NGL storage hub that is today’s lead story (see Appalachian NGL Storage Hub Enters Phase 2 – Built in 2-3 Years?), a number of politicians previously lobbied the U.S. Department of Energy to study the issue of if, and where, a natural gas liquids (NGL) storage hub should be located. Namely, West Virginia’s two U.S. Senators, Shelly Moore Capito and Joe Manchin, were behind the request for a DOE study (see