4th Circuit Again Blocks NPS Permit for Atlantic Coast Pipeline
Last week we told you that the forces of good had overcome the forces of evil–evil being the Sierra Club and the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) and their mission to stop the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) from getting built (see Victory! FERC Lifts Stop Work Order for Atlantic Coast Pipeline). The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission stop-work order for ACP in early August came after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals pulled permits for approximately 100 miles of ACP, in response to a lawsuit filed by the Clubbers and SELC (see Federal Court Stops Works on Some (All?) of Atlantic Coast Pipe). The Fourth Circuit overturned permits granted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the U.S. National Park Service (NPS), granted to ACP to cross the Blue Ridge Parkway. FWS and NPS reworked and reissued their permits, which is why FERC lifted the stop-work order. Predictably, SELC, on behalf of the Clubbers and a few other far-out leftist groups, filed an appeal with the Fourth Circuit to overturn the newly-reworked permits. The Fourth Circuit has just issued an order temporarily blocking the NPS permit (not the FWS permit), while they consider the new lawsuit. The NPS permit stops 21 miles of pipeline work. The radicals are demanding a new stop-work order from FERC for the entire project (we despise these loathsome people). Dominion isn’t budging–they will keep working everywhere else on the 600+ mile project. Hopefully FERC will not issue a new stop-work order for the entire project…
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The price tag to build the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline is going up. When first announced, the project, which will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA, was originally estimated to cost $3.5 billion. That number was tweaked this summer to $3.7 billion. Now MVP (i.e. EQT Midstream) says it will cost a whopping $4.6 billion–more than a billion dollars higher than the original estimate. Why the big hike? Two things, says MVP: (1) A work stoppage imposed by the courts and by FERC (thank you Sierra Club), and (2) heavy rain. The rise in cost is due more the former rather than the later. It was only yesterday we ran a story about how much it costs, per mile, to build a major pipeline in the northeast (see 
The Pennsylvania Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee yesterday heard testimony from several witnesses on the topic of foreign meddling meant to suppress or stop Marcellus Shale production in the Keystone State (and beyond). There were three witnesses, all of them stars (and all MDN friends). One of the three was MDN buddy Tom Shepstone, writer of the always-excellent 
Perhaps this is an overstatement and a tad too generalistic, but once again Republican lawmakers have shown they are the party of law and order, while Democrats have shown they are the party of lawlessness and disorder–at least in Pennsylvania. Yesterday the PA House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee tweaked and then passed (on a party line vote) Senate Bill (SB) 652 which makes trespassing on rights-of-way of “critical infrastructure” (pipelines, power lines, refineries, etc.) a felony instead of a misdemeanor. Democrats don’t like it, because their party’s members are typically the ones who engage in illegal trespass in order to slow down and block work on things like don’t like–like pipelines. Dems maintain they have a right to “free speech” to illegally block pipeline work, just because they don’t like it and can’t stop it using lawful means. The difference between the two sides could not be more clear…
Sometimes you can’t convey it all in a headline that should be 65 characters or less (in order to make the Google gods happy). In this case, the longer headline we would have used is this: “Lobbyists tell Pennsylvania lawmakers that nuclear powered electric plants are safer from cyber and physical attack than natural gas-fired plants (and therefore should be preferred to gas-fired plants).” That was the upshot of a hearing held yesterday by the PA House-Senate Nuclear Caucus, a hearing in which nuclear energy lobbyists claimed “no mandatory physical or cyber security standards exist for natural gas systems” in contrast to the nuclear energy industry that has to meet “demanding security requirements.” We should hope so! We hope that nuke facilities are more strictly regulated than natural gas facilities. If a nuke goes offline/has an accident/is overtaken in a physical attack, thousands of people die and it’s an environmental disaster. If a natgas-fired plant goes offline, the lights go out for a while. Big difference, we would say…
Dominion Energy has found a buyer for two of its natural gas-fired electric generating plants, one located in Pennsylvania, the other in Rhode Island. In July MDN told you that Dominion was shopping the two plants, hoping to raise $1+ billion (see 
The short answer to the question posed in our headline is, “Too much.” The reason it’s costing too much is because of a blizzard of frivolous lawsuits launched by anti-fossil fuel groups, funded with money from big foundations (see 
Diversified Gas & Oil has been on a mission to buy as many non-shale (conventional) oil and gas wells as it can in the Appalachian Basin. In June, MDN brought you the exclusive news that Diversified had purchased EQT’s Huron Shale assets in Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia for $575 million (see 
Why can’t liberal Democrats, for once, just be honest about their intentions and motivations? A liberal Democrat who sits on the Allegheny County (PA) Council, Anita Prizio, is floating a plan that requires drillers to provide information on their oil and gas leases (shale AND conventional) in digital format to the county recorder of deeds. The supposed aim is to create an easy-to-access database/registry showing which land has been leased and which has not. We won’t lie (unlike lib Dems)–such a registry would be worth its weight in gold to many people, including landowners, other drillers/competitors, but most of all to antis who want to make trouble. Why do we say Ms. Prizio has ill-intent, even though she claims she has no ulterior, anti-drilling motive? Because she’s floating this plan for a lease registry at the prompting of radical leftist and anti-driller Doug Shields, from the odious group Food & Water Watch. Before joining FWW, Shields was himself a Pittsburgh Councilman for 20 years–lobbying for a total frack ban on more than one occasion (see 
We have a lot of lawyer friends, and lot of loyal MDN readers are lawyers. With all due respect to our lawyer friends and readers, we are outraged at the amount of money awarded to the attorneys in a recent oil and gas case in PA. Let’s back up. This post is primarily a warning to drillers and their contractors to play it straight when it comes to classifying who is exempt from overtime and who is not. You know who’s really “hourly” and who isn’t, and if you screw that up, it will come back to bite you–in a major way. A group of oilfield service workers in western PA were, according to the workers, misclassified as exempt from overtime when working over 40 hours per week. They sued. The details are below, but the short version is that the eight employees who stuck it out until the bitter end won their case. Collectively they got just over $1 million in back wages and “damages.” However (and here’s our outrage), the lawyers got a “reasonable fee” of $2.3 million! Really? It’s “reasonable” that the lawyers got more than twice what the employees got?…
More coverage in our ongoing coverage of the aftermath resulting from a chain-reaction of explosions in local natural gas delivery pipelines about 25 miles north of Boston (see 
Sometime this week we expect to blow the trumpets and wave the flags that finally (finally!) the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline in Pennsylvania has begun flowing Marcellus gas south. Typically pipelines like Williams’ Atlantic Sunrise do a good job of working with landowners and municipalities to address concerns and tweak the route. We’ve heard some legitimate complaints over the past few years when a pipeline company seemed to turn a deaf ear to concerns by landowners. But usually those complaints were from other builders, not Williams. This time we have a story to share that (for us) is atypical. When building Atlantic Sunrise in Lancaster County, Williams said it was necessary to “temporarily” remove a stormwater basin (small pond to catch runoff) near two dozen mobile homes in Rapho Township. Over the objections of the local town, Williams went ahead (with state Dept. of Environmental Protection blessing) and completely removed the stormwater basin. Then a series of unfortunate events happened. Some 10 inches of rain fell–quite unheard of, supposedly a 1,000-year event. And the mobile home park got flooded. Would the nearby stormwater basin have helped prevent the flood if it were still there? Maybe, but (according to town officials), probably not. Not with 10 inches of rain. Still, it does raise a question. Was the flooding of the park made worse because the basin was gone? And if so, how much worse?…
A bit of encouraging news to share with respect to a lawsuit against the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) and their attempt to ban fracking and shale drilling in the basin. In May 2016, a landowner in Wayne County, PA filed a lawsuit against the DRBC asking a judge to declare that the DRBC does not have jurisdiction to prevent construction of a natural gas well (see 
NG Advantage, a pioneer in “virtual pipeline” trucked CNG service, tried to build a compressor station/trucking hub in a Binghamton, NY suburb, but that effort failed earlier this year due to local opposition (see 
In July MDN said it’s time to reveal who is blocking new gas-fired electric plants in West Virginia (see