Industrywide Issues

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    The Different Ways Range and CNX Dealt with ME1 Pipeline Outage

    Now that the Mariner East 1 (ME1) NGL (natural gas liquid) pipeline is back up and running, Marcellus/Utica producers are breathing a sigh of relief–at least, Range Resources, the primary customer for the pipeline, is. Following sinkholes that developed while Sunoco Logistics Partners was drilling for the Mariner East 2 (ME2) project, a portion of ME1 was exposed to open air in Chester County, PA, which prompted the state Public Utility Commission to shut down ME1 in early March (see PA PUC Shuts Down Mariner 1 Pipeline Due to Mariner 2 Sinkhole). Range sends 20,000 barrels a day of ethane and propane through ME1. The closure sent them scrambling for alternatives (see Range, CNX Look for Alternatives to ME1 Pipe Following Shutdown). CNX Resources is also a customer using ME1, but much less so than Range. It took two months, but the PUC finally allowed ME1 to restart last week (see Sunoco’s ME1 Pipe Restarts, ME2 Pipe Pays Another $355K in Fines). Range and CNX coped with the ME1 closure in very different ways…
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    Anti Group Stirs Up Pittsburghers Against Fracking, (Ab)Uses Kids

    We always find it deeply disturbing when a group of anti-fossil fueulers, like the innocent-sounding (but very radical) Moms Clean Air Force, pushes little kids in front of the cameras, getting them to hold protest signs in a sleazy attempt to play on people’s sympathy. That’s what happened yesterday in the Pittsburgh suburb of Indiana Township (Allegheny County). Hey, knock yourself out if you want to show up and protest and make some noise. But don’t bring the kids along. Don’t put your guilt trip on the kids, making them protest something they frankly don’t even understand. Don’t implant them with your irrational fears. We find it disgusting…
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    Unease Over PA Rule of Capture Case Spreads Nationwide

    This much is clear: The “Briggs” court decision in Pennsylvania cannot stand as it is without threatening to end the shale miracle, certainly in Pennsylvania, and perhaps across the country. Some believe we’re making too much of the Briggs decision recently handed down by two judges sitting on PA’s Superior Court (see PA Superior Court Overturns “Rule of Capture” for Marcellus Well and PA “Rule of Capture” Case has Power to Limit Marcellus Drilling). The issue, in brief, is that the Superior Court decision disallows using an age-old principle called the “rule of capture” when it comes to shale drilling and fracking. It opens the door to a myriad of frivolous lawsuits claiming that a fracture, a crack created during fracking, is draining gas from a neighbor’s property without justly compensating the neighbor for the gas. Southwestern successfully argued in a lower court that the odd crack here and there that may slip under a neighbor’s property is permissible. The landowner appealed to Superior Court and three judges heard the case. Two of them voted to overturn the lower court decision in favor of Southwestern and sent the case back to a lower court where the landowners (the Briggs) now have to prove Southwestern trespassed and work out how much gas they believe was “taken.” Southwestern has asked the full Superior Court–all 20 judges–to hear the case again. No word yet on whether that will happen. We have, from the beginning, considered the Briggs decision to be an existential threat to the Marcellus industry in PA. In a recent Bloomberg article, some experts believe the threat has the potential to spread beyond PA. Below we explain how might happen, and provide some historical perspective on the rule of capture…
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    EPA Launches Study to Dispose Frack Wastewater in Lakes, Rivers

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week announced it has launched a study into the possibility of treating oil and gas wastewater and (gasp) releasing the cleaned-up wastewater into lakes and rivers, instead of injecting it back down holes in the ground. The EPA is seeking “input” from everyone–the industry and Big Green–to help guide their research efforts. The truth is wastewater from oil and gas wells is far less toxic than the stuff leaching out of landfills and the waste from chemical plants. But you never hear that said out loud by Big Green supporters. We’ve personally spoken with people at several companies that recycle and clean shale wastewater who say such cleanup is easy compared to cleaning up other types of wastewater. Why shouldn’t the EPA look to at least study it–and perhaps even encourage it?…
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    Anti-Fossil Fuel NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman Resigns!

    Former NY AG Eric Schneiderman

    One of the plagues we’ve had to endure in the Empire State is a totally out-of-control, mad drunk with an abuse of legal power, Attorney General Eric Schniederman. There isn’t a shale pipeline or drilling project in New York that Schneiderman hasn’t harassed. Apparently the oil and gas industry isn’t the only thing he harasses. Following a bombshell story in the ultra liberal The New Yorker magazine that accuses Schneiderman of rough sex and slapping woman around, he abruptly resigned as of today. Schneiderman’s resignation has nothing to do with the Marcellus/Utica, but his departure is cause for celebration in New York. Schneiderman was one of the ring leaders in a cabal attempting to shake down Exxon Mobil and other oil companies for billions of dollars, accusing them of “knowing” that oil causes mythical man-made global warming and is harming the environment. The fossil fuel projects in NY that Schneiderman opposed are legion–too many to count. No one in the industry will shed any tears over his departure now that Schnedierman has now been “exposed” (pun intended), hoist with his own petard. One example from the bombshell story: An ex-girlfriend (originally from Sri Lanka) told the New Yorker that Schneiderman, that paragon of ultra-liberal values, called her his “brown slave” and ordered him to call him “Master.” And if she didn’t? He slapped her, hard, until she did…
    Read More “Anti-Fossil Fuel NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman Resigns!”

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    PA Ethics Commission Persecutes Wolf Aide Favorable to NatGas

    Yesenia Bane

    You know we’re not fans of PA Gov. Wolf and his administration. We think he’s been a disaster for the state, in many ways. However, a member of his administration, Yesenia Bane (deputy chief of staff), has been unfairly targeted simply because her husband worked for a firm that did business with the Marcellus industry, and because she herself (with abundant knowledge of the industry) assisted Wolf by attending industry-sponsored events. Bane had the nerve to represent Wolf to the industry, attending events to act as liaison, learning about industry concerns, and conveying Wolf’s thoughts to the industry. And for that she’s accused of crossing an ethical line–accused by a radical Big Green supporter from the Philly area by the name of Caroline Hughes–a woman whose connections to Big Green should be investigated. Hughes filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania State Ethics Commission against Bane late last year (see Antis Target PA Gov Wolf Aide as Payback, Husband Works for EQT). The complaint is a ginned up allegation that Bane “was regularly involved in meetings and travel related to her husband’s natural gas industry clients.” The so-called evidence comes from a copy of Bane’s travel schedule in 2016, obtained by Big Green mouthpiece StateImpact Pennsylvania. The new news is that the Ethics Commission has launched a full-blown investigation–we call it a persecution–of Bane, for simply doing her job…
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    M-U Region Adding 43% of All New Gas-Fired Electric in 2018

    Yesterday the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) issued a report saying it predicts 32 gigawatts (GW) of new electric generating capacity to come online this year, in 2018. Of that 32 GW, 21 GW (or 66%) will come from new natural gas-fired plants. And of that 21 GW of new gas-fired generation, Pennsylvania alone will generate 5.2 GW, and Maryland and Virginia will each generate 1.9 GW. Put another way, 9 GW out of 21 GW (or 43%) of all new demand for natural gas for power plants is happening right here in the Marcellus/Utica region. As we have observed on many occasions, power generation is a very important source of new demand for abundant and cheap Marcellus/Utica gas…
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    FERC Rejects Rehearing Request from Antis re MVP, ACP Projects

    Last September a group of 57 gentry landowners in Virginia and West Virginia, backed by an out-of-state Big Green group, sued the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in an attempt to gut the 80-year old Natural Gas Act that gives FERC the right to grant eminent domain for pipeline projects (see VA, WV Landowners Sue FERC re Pipelines, Seek to Gut Natural Gas Act). Specifically, the colluding landowners oppose Dominion’s $5 billion, 594-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina, and EQT’s $3.5 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline project, a 303-mile pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA. The frivolous lawsuit, titled BOLD ALLIANCE, et al. v. FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION, et al., was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which was the wrong court. Only FERC has jurisdiction over the projects and decisions about whether or not they can get built. If a supposedly aggrieved party disagrees with FERC’s decisions, they must first file for a rehearing, and if FERC still refuses, THEN the supposedly aggrieved party can file a lawsuit ONLY with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The suers, Big Green group Bold Alliance, filed for a rehearing with FERC. Bold Alliance tried to sidestep the law by moving forward with a lawsuit prematurely. However, the really big no-no is that they filed in U.S. District Court for DC, NOT the Court of Appeals for DC. Big difference. Here’s “the rest of the story”…last Friday FERC rejected Bold Alliance’s request for a rehearing for both MVP and ACP. So we expect the next step is that Bold Alliance will now file an appeal with the correct court, the DC Court of Appeals…
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    TransCanada Asks FERC to Expand Capacity on New England Pipe

    TransCanada is attempting to do what so far, no one else has been able to accomplish: Increase flows of Marcellus/Utica (and perhaps other basin) gas into New England. The way they’re doing it is via the Portland Natural Gas Transmission System (PNGTS), a 295-mile pipeline that spans New England from the Canadian border to pipeline connections in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts. No, TransCanada is not proposing to build any new pipeline as part of their plan. In fact there is no construction of any kind for phases I and II in what TransCanada is calling its Portland XPress Project (PXP). Phase I, which TransCanada filed on April 20, asked FERC for permission to begin flowing an extra 39.8 million cubic feet (MMcf) of natural gas from Pittsburg, NH, to Westbrook, ME, and to increase the flow from and to Canada. In Phase II, which was filed yesterday, TransCanada asked FERC for permission to flow an extra 11.3 MMcf from Westbrook, ME, to Dracut, MA. When the filing for Phase III comes along, they will ask to build a new compressor station, among other bits and bobs. New England and Atlantic Canada desperately need the gas, so there’s no reason why FERC would deny these reasonable requests. Perhaps TransCanada can succeed where Kinder Morgan’s TGP Northeast Energy Direct and Spectra Energy’s Access Northeast projects failed, and boldly go where no pipeline has gone before…
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    Snap: Va. Dems Total Crack with Reality – Call Pipelines “Death Rattle”

    A rather juvenile, kindergartenish attitude appears to be taking root in the Democrat Party–at least in the Old Dominion. Dems there have decided that wind and solar, which provide something like 2.9% of all electric generation in the country, should just take over now and that we should stop building any/all pipelines that flow evil, nasty, “yesterday’s energy” called fossil fuels. And on that self-deluding basis, a group of Dems from Roanoke and across the state signed a (blithering idiot) letter to Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam demanding that he just stop both the Mountain Valley Pipeline and Atlantic Coast Pipeline projects in Virginia–federal projects. Of course the Dems are not really THAT stupid. This is a sleazy political calculation–playing to the nutjob base that elects them. States don’t have the right to overrule the federal government. The last time Virginia tried to overrule the federal government was in 1860, and you know how that turned out…
    Read More “Snap: Va. Dems Total Crack with Reality – Call Pipelines “Death Rattle””

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    WV DEP Lifts Block on Rover Pipeline Construction

    The vast majority of Rover Pipeline is done, and most of it is now up and running (see FERC Allows Rover Pipeline Startup in Michigan, Close to 100% Done). But there are a few spots here and there where small sections are still not complete. One of those is in West Virginia. In March, the WV Dept. of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) slapped Rover with a “cease and desist” order, stopping all construction of Rover in the state, because of inspections that found 14 violations of water pollution regulations (see WV DEP Orders Rover Pipe to Stop Construction for Violations). The violations occurred in Doddridge, Tyler and Wetzel counties. Violations ran the range of leaving trash behind at construction sites to improper perimeter controls (no erosion devices installed) to failure to clean up the roads they used. The good news is that last Wednesday, WVDEP told Rover they can now resume construction…
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    Grandma Red Comes Down from Tree After Judge Orders $1K/Day Fine

    Theresa “Red” Terry (whom we call Grandma Red) and her daughter Minor Terry finally came down from the trees where they were perched since April 2 in an illegal attempt to block Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) from cutting the trees. They came down on Saturday after a federal judge said if they stayed past midnight Saturday, they would each be fined $1,000 per day. The money would go to MVP. Red said, “Mountain Valley has taken enough from us…There wasn’t a lot more I could do up there besides show my ass and give them money.” As we previously reported, a number of Virginia lawmakers expressed their support of the Terrys and their flagrant disregard of the law (see Virginia Democrat Lawmakers Side with Lawbreakers in MVP Protest). A crowd of 100 or so gathered on Saturday, complete with six packs of beer, to watch the spectacle of Grandma Red coming down to earth. A sycophantic press was there to fawn all over Red and her daughter…
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    PennEnvironment Wants Fossil Fuel-Powered (i.e. Electric) Buses

    Last Thursday the radical Big Green group PennEnvironment released a “study” that claims PA should move to adopt electric buses, instead of all other alternatives (like compressed natural gas) because electric buses are (supposedly) more environmentally friendly. We understand the argument about replacing diesel-powered engines to lower the amount of nasty stuff that enters the air. But PennEnvironment’s argument to use electric buses is as much about reducing mythical global warming as it is reducing diesel emissions. And here’s the thing PennEnvironment doesn’t tell you (and what their Big Green supporters are too dull to figure out themselves): electricity comes from somewhere. It’s not magic. It’s produced. In PA, as of January 2018, 54% of all electricity is produced either by coal or natural gas-fired plants. Another 40% is produced by nuclear plants. How much electricity is produced in PA by all those gigantic windmills you see when sailing down the Pennsylvania Turnpike, along with solar? A measly 2.9%. So how “clean” are electric buses, really? Put another way, the majority of what powers electric buses is good old fossil fuels. Does PennEnvironment know they’re advocating for more fossil fuel use? Meanwhile, the Wolf administration (surprisingly) continues to invest in CNG buses, which is the smart thing to do…
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    Canadian Lowball Shipping Works, Grabs Market Share from U.S.

    TransCanada, one of Canada’s leading midstream/pipeline companies, cooked up a deal in 2016 to pipe natural gas from Canada’s West Coast to the East Coast in order to fend off cheap supplies of Marcellus/Utica gas that will flow into Canada from the NEXUS and Rover pipelines (see TransCanada Pipe Drops Price 42% to Compete with Marcellus/Utica). TransCanada dropped their pipeline price by 46% to lure drillers by (theoretically) making it less expensive to get gas from Western Canada, some 2,400 miles away, than from the Marcellus, just 400 miles away. Following a couple of open seasons and stiff regulatory hurdles, the plan was adopted and went into service last November (see TransCanada Pipe Begins Lowball Shipping to Compete with Marc/Utica). In February of this year, TransCanada announced a $1.9 billion plan to expand its Western Canadian pipeline system in a bid to gather up and send even more Western Canadian gas to the East Coast (see TransCanada Spending $1.9B to Bring More Canadian Gas to Northeast). Looks like TransCanada’s gamble paid off. According to records from the U.S. Dept. of Energy, Canada is using more of their own homegrown gas and less gas from the U.S….
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    Sunoco’s ME1 Pipe Restarts, ME2 Pipe Pays Another $355K in Fines

    On March 3, the Mariner East 1 (ME1) natural gas liquids (NGL) pipeline was suddenly switched off by order of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) after a sinkhole opened up under the pipeline in Chester County, exposing some of the bare steel to the open air (see PA PUC Shuts Down Mariner 1 Pipeline Due to Mariner 2 Sinkhole). Sunoco Logistics Partners, the owner of ME1, is building a new set of pipelines called Mariner East 2 (ME2) close to the existing ME1 pipeline. Construction work in the area on ME2 led to the sinkhole that exposed ME1. The PUC asked Sunoco to drill holes and pour concrete in them to firm up ME1, which Sunoco did (see PA PUC Asks Sunoco to Drill Holes, Pour Concrete to Firm Up ME1). A full two months after ordering ME1 turned off, costing Sunoco (and Range Resources) millions of dollars in lost revenue, the PUC told Sunoco they could restart ME1. As of today, propane and ethane have resumed flowing through ME1. But what The Almighty State grants with one hand, it takes away with the other. Although Sunoco paid a massive $12.6 million fine in February to the Dept. of Environmental Protection related to ME2 construction misadventures (see Sunoco LP Pays PA DEP $12.6M to Resume ME2 Pipeline Construction), yesterday the DEP assessed Sunoco *another* $355,622 penalty for more ME2 misadventures–what DEP calls “violations of the Clean Streams Law”…
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    Shale Industry Outlines Case Against Latest PA Severance Tax Plan

    As we reported earlier this week, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, who has been lauded as the most liberal governor in America, once again pushed for a Marcellus-killing severance tax (see Broken Record: Wolf, Dems & RINOs Float 4% Severance Tax). Since Wolf stood flanked by two Republican and two Democrat lawmakers earlier this week in announcing a pair of new severance tax bills, mainstream media has continuously run the headline of a “bipartisan” effort. What they don’t tell you is that the two RINOs who stood with Wolf are just about the only ones who support this lunacy. As must happen with each renewed effort by Wolf to steal money from the industry to hand it over to teacher unions in Philadelphia (which IS the purpose of the severance tax, we are not engaging in hyperbole), the industry must launch a counter-offensive. The shale industry, in remaining vigilant, has published a number of comments and columns to set the record straight. We must tell the truth about Wolf’s proposed severance tax. Stepping up the plate to do so is the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC), the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA), and the American Petroleum Institute of PA (API-PA). Here, in their own words, is the response to Wolf’s “four year bad idea”…
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