PA DEP Stops Revolution Pipe Repair Following New Problems
On Sept. 10, Energy Transfer’s 24-inch gathering pipeline in Beaver County, PA, called the Revolution Pipeline, caught fire and exploded during testing (see Revolution Pipeline Near Pittsburgh Explodes – Home & Barn Destroyed). Fortunately, nobody was hurt, although a nearby home, barn and two garages were leveled by fire from the blast. That area, like much of the northeast, has been pounded by rain week after week and month after month. All that rain resulted in a landslide, which caused the explosion. Since that time ET has been working, pushing dirt around the entire 100-mile length of the pipeline to ensure there are no other problems. Yesterday the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) put a stop to that work, at least for now.
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A panel discussion at last week’s Shale Insight event focused on a pair of Pennsylvania lawsuits that has the potential (indeed already is) changing the drilling landscape in PA. The first lawsuit discussed was the decision from June 2017–“Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation (PEDF) v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” PEDF is an anti-fossil fuel group. They convinced the PA Supreme Court to issue a decision that tosses out a decades-old “balancing test” in decisions about drilling and instead said land-use and permitting decisions must now meet standards established by the state’s so-called Environmental Rights Amendment (ERA). The PEDF decision is creating big question marks for drillers and has spawned a flurry of lawsuits to define which standards to use. The second case discussed at Shale Insight was the “Briggs” case that tossed out the rule of capture in PA for shale drilling. Both cases have the potential to greatly limit Marcellus drilling in PA.
In September, MDN told you that Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW), the country’s largest municipal-owned utility company, floated a plan to partner with a private company to build a new LNG export facility at its Passyunk Plant located in south Philly (see 
When shale drilling activity ramps up, the people who are needed to do all those jobs show up. In droves. Some come from out-of-state. Some are local, and some from in-state but not local. Regardless, they all need a place to sleep. A home away from home (if they aren’t local). Increasingly those places are campgrounds. Problem is, there aren’t enough campgrounds for workers to park their RVs. So enterprising farmers in West Virginia are turning some of their acreage into campgrounds, to profit by hosting shale workers. Some establish small campgrounds, with just a handful of (2-4) sites. But beware–there’s a pile of permits required to operate a campground of any size. Some farmers are skipping the permit process, which is NOT recommended.
A group of 13 landowners in Virginia whose property was force taken by Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) using eminent domain is appealing a case they already lost in federal court to the U.S. Supreme Court. The landowners claim MVP has taken private land–their land–to use for private/corporate gain and not (as the law requires) taken for a “public” benefit. Eminent domain allows the taking of private land for public benefit, but not taking private land for private benefit. The issue really revolves around the question of, What is a public benefit? Can a private company use government powers because what they provide benefits the public? The big question is, will the Supreme Court, which gets some 8,000 such appeals each year, make this appeal one of the 80 or so they consider?
Columbia Gas of Massachusetts (NiSource) continues to try and recover (physically and reputationally) from a series of explosions in its local delivery pipelines north of Boston in mid-September (see 
For some time we’ve covered the story of MLPs–master limited partnerships–and how they are being phased out. An MLP is an alternative form of organizing a company (or subsidiary company), different from a corporation. The primary purpose of an MLP is for investors, who buy “units” in the MLP instead of shares of stock, so the investor can pay less in taxes. Trump’s tax cut, while benefiting the little guy (yeah!), disadvantages MLPs (boo!). Which has caused many pipeline companies organized as an MLP to give up that form of structure. Meanwhile, new companies are being formed to buy royalty rights–using the MLP structure! So while pipeline companies are dumping the MLP structure, royalty companies are embracing it.
Penn Virginia is an oil and gas driller headquartered in Radnor, PA (near Philadelphia). Although it’s based in the Keystone State, Penn Virginia has only a small presence in the Marcellus Shale–21,700 net acres with no drilled wells (at last check). They concentrate on oil drilling the Texas Eagle Ford Shale play. In July we told you the company is once again trying to sell itself (see 
An important court case was decided on Friday in Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court that potentially impacts all shale drilling in the state. You will recall that seven selfish towns sued the state over the 2012 Act 13 law and it’s provision that would substitute a statewide, uniform and fair set of zoning ordinances for drilling in place of a patchwork, crazy quilt system of local ordinances for oil and gas drilling. Seven selfish towns (including Robinson Township) wanted their own ordinances and sued, ultimately winning at the Supreme Court (see 
In August 2016, energy giant Tenaska (headquartered in Omaha, NE) broke ground to build a 925-megawatt natural gas-fueled power plant in South Huntingdon (Westmoreland County), PA (see 
Although EQT Midstream’s 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) project has experienced a number of legal and regulatory setbacks and is currently blocked from constructing pipeline across/under/near any river, stream, or wetland in all of West Virginia and all of Virginia (some 1,100 different locations), believe it or not there are still many places where MVP can and is still installing pipeline (see 
Two weeks ago Enbridge, owner of the Texas Eastern Transmission Company (Tetco) Pipeline, announced it had put part of its Texas Eastern Appalachian Lease (TEAL) natural gas pipeline project in Ohio into service (see 
A near-capacity crowd (over 300 people) filled the Storer Ballroom at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, WV on Wednesday to hear and talk about the Mountaineer Gas Eastern Panhandle Expansion Project–a project to deliver natural gas to a new industrial facility in Berkeley County, WV, and provide gas to other local businesses and residents in the Tri-State area. The meeting (a public hearing) was hosted by the West Virginia Public Service Commission. It was moved to Shepherdstown from Charleston at the request of fussing Sierra Clubbers.