Jessup Town Board Grills Invenergy re Tiny Emissions Releases
Antis on the Jessup (near Scranton, PA) Town Council delight in grilling officials from the Lackawanna Energy Center (LEC) at each monthly board meeting. LEC is a 1,480 megawatt, $1 billion Marcellus gas-fired electric plant still under construction, now 97% complete. When the plant is done it will be Pennsylvania’s largest natural gas-fired electric generating plant. The plant is being built in three trains or units. The first train/unit was done and online producing electricity since June–despite the efforts of a local group of antis who seized power of the local town board last November (see Jessup Town Board Continues Effort to Stop Gas-Fired Elec Plant). The second train went online in late July/early August. The third train will go online this month–in September. Cabot Oil & Gas is supplying all of the gas for the plant from neighboring Susquehanna County. At the monthly Jessup Council meeting last night, anti board members needled and smeared an LEC rep, implying LEC is hiding problems at the plant. Since May, when the plant began testing, there have been six releases of nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions that exceeded state standards. On July 31, the plant exceeded the NOx standard of 2.0 parts-per-million (ppm) by a razor thin 0.1 ppm–for a whole 10 minutes. Which is a nothingburger. And yet the anti board members jumped all over LEC for not phoning up the neighbors the minute it happened…
Read More “Jessup Town Board Grills Invenergy re Tiny Emissions Releases”
Today was the day that the $3 billion expansion of the Transco Pipeline in 10 northeastern Pennsylvania counties known as Atlantic Sunrise was supposed to up and running, following a slight delay from an August start (see 
Bet you didn’t know that natural gas can be certified as “premium” and “responsible,” did you? No, we didn’t either. It was quite a surprise when we read that Southwestern Energy has, for the first time anywhere, sold natural gas to a customer (utility company New Jersey Resources) that has been certified as “responsible gas.” The certification comes from Independent Energy Standards Corporation (IES) and they call it their TrustWell™ Responsible Gas Program certification. And what does such a prestigious label certify? It certifies the gas was “responsibly developed.” As opposed to irresponsibly developed gas, which is what everybody sells. “Responsible” gas, according to IES, is gas that doesn’t leak as much methane during the extraction and transportation process, doesn’t spill as much water and chemicals on the ground, sources water from places that are, well, responsible (we suppose), and engages the community–to make them feel good about all this responsible-ness going around. Yes, you may detect a little bit of snark in our comments on this news–because we happen to think the industry at large is already doing a great job of being responsible–without having a label put on it. This is just marketing. Hey, if it floats your boat to have a “responsible” label on your gas (paying to do so), go for it. Such a designation will never impress the eco-nuts. IES says they think “in time” that some 25-50% of all gas sold in the U.S. will have such a certification/label as green-friendly. We think that’s an ambitious number, given the fact there are still only five Marcellus/Utica drillers who have gone through the rigors of receiving a certification from the 
Liberal Democrat State Rep. Glenn Holmes (from Girard, Trumbull County, OH) is attempting to use a hammer to kill a fly. That is, he’s floating House Bill 723 to cap the number of injection wells at 23 per county, in an attempt to block a new injection well from getting built in Hubbard Township. Currently Trumbull County has 17 live and functioning wastewater injection wells. Five more are currently under construction. If the bill passes, it would prevent a newly-proposed well in Hubbard from getting built. Come here fly, see this hammer? Instead of debating the merits (or lack thereof) of the single well in Hubbard, how many wells are too many in Trumbull County, Holmes wants to limit injection wells everywhere in the state as his preferred solution. Right now Trumbull and Ashtabula counties are tied for the top spot with 17 active injection wells each. Nearby Portgage and Stark counties both have 16 injection wells. Meigs County, in southeast Ohio, has 14 active injection wells. Here’s the latest Democrat shenanigan aimed at stifling the Utica (and Marcellus) industry in Ohio…
RINO (Republican In Name Only) Pennsylvania House of Representatives member Chris Quinn, from the Philadelphia area, introduced House Resolution 1034 last Wednesday. The resolution instructs the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the PA Public Utility Commission (PUC) to prepare a “comprehensive risk assessment of the Mariner East 2 [ME2] Pipeline.” Even though ME2 is 99% built and will soon go online. The resolution, which if passed doesn’t have any practical effect since it’s not a law, is actually an exercise in political derrière covering. What if the DEP and PUC performed such a risk assessment, and what if the report they issued found there are some risks associated with ME2 (as there are will any/all pipeline projects, roads, electric lines, stepping outside your door, etc.)? What then? The pipeline isn’t going away. It’s still going to be used, now that it’s built. Such is how the game is played by political swamp dwellers. Quinn also says he’s about to introduce House Bill (HB) 2609 requiring the state Attorney General to draft a landowner “bill of rights”–issued to landowners who may be subject to eminent domain for pipelines. Can’t wait to see what that bill says…
The Pareto Principle is alive and well in the Buckeye State. You may know it as the 80/20 rule, or in this case, the 75/25 rule. The rule that states roughly 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort. Last week MDN brought you the latest update from the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources–their second quarter 2018 report showing all production coming from the Ohio Utica Shale (see 
It doesn’t typically happen this way, which makes us feel like we’re Alice that’s just fallen through the looking glass. Normally (not always) Republicans support fracking and pipelines and fossil fuels in general, and Democrats (increasingly) do not. But in North Carolina, the roles are reversed. Republicans in the NC legislature have launched an investigation into Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper over his support of Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline project. The lawmakers claim a $57.8 million discretionary fund set up by Cooper was, in fact, a “pay to play” slush fund, funded by ACP partners (including Dominion) to help them obtain a permit from the NC Department of Environmental Quality. The allegation is that Cooper got the companies to commit to giving the state $57.8 million, and a day later voila, they had their permit. Quid pro quo. Cooper says the money will be used to repair so-called environmental damage from constructing the pipeline. Republicans say it stinks to high heaven and he needs to “let go” of the money. Seems to us like this is just the latest skirmish in a long-running war between the two sides, and the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project is collateral damage, caught in the middle…
Civil & Environmental Consultants (CEC) is a large engineering firm with offices scattered across the country. We’re not sure which office is “headquarters,” but we know they have a sizable office in Pittsburgh. While CEC provides services to a number of industries, they have been a big part of the Marcellus/Utica since its birth in the 2000s. As the Farmer’s Insurance commercials say, “They know a thing or two because they’ve seen a thing or two.” Which is, of course, an understatement. They know a lot because they’ve seen (and done) a lot–when it comes to the Marcellus. Another large company, law firm Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney (headquartered in Pittsburgh), recently interviewed CEC Founding Principal and Strategic Development Officer Greg Quatchak for their “Energy Insider” series of interviews. Quatchak talks about CEC and it’s important role (as he should), but woven into the responses to BIR’s questions we learn some important information, like this: It still takes 6-9 months on average for Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection to issue Marcellus Shale drilling permits. In Texas it takes their counterpart (the Texas Railroad Commission) about a week to issue the same type of permit. Yes, there are important differences between Texas and PA–geography, wetlands, threatened/endangered species, archaeology. And yes, the time to get a permit in PA has improved over the past year or two. But come on, 6-9 months! Here’s an interesting interview of one of the principals in an employee-owned company…
We may not always agree with certain rules and regulations, but skirting or ignoring them is not an option. Especially not in the Marcellus industry. A small group of men (six so far) in Williamsport (Lycoming County), PA are accused of conspiring to illegally alter emission systems on 30+ trucks with heavy-duty diesel engines. The trucks belong to Rockwater Northeast of Canonsburg, a subsidiary of Rockwater Energy Solutions Inc. of Houston, Texas, used to haul fresh water and wastewater to/from Marcellus Shale wells being drilled. The men “tampered with and removed emission monitoring devices on trucks to reduce repair costs and maintenance down time.” Five of the six have already plead guilty, and a sixth was recently charged in the scheme. They all face jail time and stiff fines. Folks, this is not acceptable behavior for our industry…
Although the push is on to get Marcellus molecules to new markets where they can fetch higher prices, there is one group who has benefited in a major way from an overabundance of cheap, clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas. That would be the residents and businesses located in the great state of Pennsylvania. Industry group Consumer Energy Alliance has just published a new report that reveals PA residents and businesses have saved a cumulative $30.5 billion from 2006-2016 as a result of the decreasing price of natural gas in the state. Can you imagine the economic impact! What president or governor or state legislator wouldn’t salivate over a cash infusion of $30 billion over ten years! It’s mind-blowing. And it’s all thanks to the Marcellus Shale. And that $30B is just the savings that went into folks’ pockets (and got spent on other things). That number doesn’t even take into consider the billions upon billions of dollars paid out in signing bonuses, royalties, and drilling work done. The Marcellus industry has single-handedly lifted many PA residents out of poverty. Hey, how much revenue and how many jobs and how much energy savings have groups like Delaware Riverkeeper, Sierra Club, Clean Air Council, Food & Water Watch, PennEnvironment, PennFuture and other radical Big Green groups generated for PA? What’s that? They’ve actually COST the state money? Think about that the next time you read about these so-called environmental groups and how much they “care” about the Keystone State…
We don’t know about you, but hardly a day goes by we don’t notice the word “blockchain” in the headlines. Increasingly that word is used in oil and gas news. We had some vague idea that blockchain has something to do with digital currency–using Bitcoin instead of dollars. Whatever Bitcoin is! So what could blockchain possibly have to do with oil and gas? As it turns out, blockchain the technology is much more than just a technology that makes digital currency possible. We spotted an article on the World Oil website about blockchain and took the opportunity to dig into this new tech sweeping the world by storm. Put simply, blockchain is an ironclad “way of tracking things.” Those things can be money (the earliest adopter of the technology), but also other things, like legal documents. The technology can also be used to guard against hackers breaking into a company’s network. Cybersecurity is often mentioned as a huge benefit of using blockchain in the oil and gas industry. Blockchain tech can protect against hackers breaking into a remotely controlled drilling rig, for example. Or breaking into a computer that controls shipments of goods and materials. Drilling companies have some of the most complex logistics operations in the world. They plan out drilling new shale wells up to a year in advance, coordinating it so that trucks hauling equipment (even the rig itself) arrive on the exact day they need to be there. And they coordinate deliveries of water and sand used in fracking–down to the day those deliveries need to arrive, figuring out how to get them shipped via train and truck. A year in advance! Can you imagine a hacker breaking into a network and screwing with that information? It could be economically catastrophic for the driller. Blockchain guards against it. Here’s more about blockchain and how it’s coming (fast) to the shale industry…
In an interesting coincidence, we spotted two different stories on the same day about the price of gas in the Marcellus Shale–detailing how prices this year are much higher than they were last year at this same time, and speculating that the perhaps we have finally turned a corner and our prices (compared with the benchmark Henry Hub price) will stay higher. Which is good news for both drillers and landowners who get royalty checks from those drillers. Why are northeast gas prices higher today and staying higher? In a word, pipelines. With Rover Pipeline now online and the final laterals that feed it going online soon, with NEXUS coming online by the end of this year (both of those projects carting gas to the Midwest and Canada), and with Atlantic Sunrise and other pipelines coming online to cart gas to the south, even as far as the Gulf Coast, Marcellus/Utica molecules are finding new homes in higher-paying markets. As Martha Stewart says, “That’s a good thing!”…