PA PUC Votes Thursday to “Ratify” Shutdown of ME1 Following Sinkholes
Last week MDN reported that due to underground horizontal direction drilling (HDD) in Chester County, PA for the Mariner East 2 (ME2) Pipeline project, a third sinkhole had developed. ME2 is being built close to the existing Mariner East 1 (ME1) pipeline. The sinkhole exposed a portion of the ME1 pipeline to the open air, which is why the head of the state Public Utility Commission (PUC) temporarily shut down the propane and ethane flowing through ME1 (see PA PUC Shuts Down Mariner 1 Pipeline Due to Mariner 2 Sinkhole). The shutdown is for 10-14 days, which sent ME1 customers Range Resources an CNX Resources scrambling to find alternate ways to ship their ethane and propane (see Range, CNX Look for Alternatives to ME1 Pipe Following Shutdown). Tomorrow the PUC will meet and as part of that meeting, they will vote to ratify the action of PUC Chairwoman Gladys Brown in issuing last week’s emergency shutdown order…
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Big Green groups opposed to Dominion Energy’s $6.5 billion (up from $5 billion due to delays) Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina are about out of options in their holy mission to stop the project. They’ve tried multiple lawsuits, protests, bullying state environmental agencies–the whole bag of nasty tricks. And yet ACP is now under construction. What’s left to try to stop it? The Southern Environmental Law Center and Appalachian Mountain Advocates, on behalf of a mishmash of second tier radical groups, have filed a “hail Mary” request with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to stop construction of ACP until a lawsuit sitting before the Fourth Circuit questioning the validity of the permits granted for the project is played out. In other words, back to the tried-and-true playbook: delay, delay, delay–until eventually you deny…
We bet you didn’t know that a bloated, inefficient government bureaucracy like the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) can cut down on the amount of time it takes them to review permits necessary in the drilling process (like erosion and stream crossing permits)–just by changing the paperwork. That’s the claim the DEP is making. Yesterday the DEP released new paperwork–new forms to fill out–for Chapter 105 General Permit Registrations relating to water obstructions and encroachments. These new forms “will improve the quality of General Permit registration requests, eliminate unnecessary redundancies, and reduce review time frames.” Yeah, and we have a bridge in Brooklyn we’d like to sell ya…
As we reported last week, this week the PA House of Representatives was due to host a hearing on a slate of bills aimed at fixing not only the slowmo way the state Dept. of Environmental Protection approves permits, but also roll back some of the egregious regulatory overreach in PA (see 
Yesterday the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management, posted draft rules for changing well spacing for both conventional and Utica Shale wells. The new rules, which the public can comment on now (comments due by April 10th), will establish new minimum distances horizontal shale wells may be drilled from the boundaries of drilling units and new minimum distances from other horizontal wells. In our quick read of the proposed regs, it looks like shale wells must be drilled at least 400 feet from the drilling unit boundary line. There is no required minimum between shale wells drilled on the same pad as part of the same drilling unit. Below are the proposed regs from ODNR…
With much fanfare, yesterday a press event was held in Columbus, OH to make an official announcement of what we already know: that South Korea’s Daelim Chemical, a subsidiary of Daelim Industrial, is now a partner with PTT Global Chemical in the Belmont County ethane cracker project. We previously brought you that news on Feb. 1 (see 
Yesterday our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issued our favorite monthly report, the Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The DPR is the EIA’s best guess, based on expert data crunchers, as to how much each of the U.S.’s seven major shale plays will produce for both oil and natural gas in the coming month. The numbers continue to be mind-blowing–hitting new all-time highs that take your breath away. Last month EIA estimated the Marcellus/Utica (called Appalachia in the report) would produce a new high of 27.15 billion cubic feet (Bcf) per day of natural gas, which would be 321 million cubic feet (MMcf) (nearly 1/3 of a Bcf) higher than the month before. The actual number for February turned out to be 27.56. That is, EIA underestimated the number! This month, which is an estimate for all of March, EIA says M-U natgas production will go up ANOTHER 359 MMcf (over 1/3 of a Bcf)! The Permian, an oil play that produces “associated natural gas” along with oil, is estimated to go up another 233 MMcf/d. Yikes! The new total natgas production from all seven major shale plays is estimated to be 66.119 Bcf/d in March. Last year this time output was 55.2 Bcf/d. Mind blowing!…
Last week MDN told you about a couple of rabid antis who climbed trees in Jefferson National Forest and have perched themselves in homemade tree stands in an attempt to block tree cutting for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (see 
Did you know that once upon a time, around 100 million years ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth, that mom earth had no permanent polar ice caps, and that the amount of greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide, CO2) in the atmosphere was 10 times (i.e. 1000%) higher than it is today? And yet, somehow, life survived. Who knew? Contrary to the scaremongering balderdash being pedaled today, the amount of CO2 we humans pump in the atmosphere today by burning fossil fuels is puny compared to what volcanoes used to pump into the atmosphere eons ago. Humans today are pikers–bush league–compared to the volcanoes of old when it comes to warming up mother earth. That’s what we learned in reading a newly published study on the link between the formation of today’s shale oil and gas deposits and ash from long-ago volcanoes. “Nutrient-rich ash from an enormous flare-up of volcanic eruptions toward the end of the dinosaurs’ reign kicked off a chain of events that led to the formation of shale gas and oil fields from Texas to Montana.” So says “Volcanic ash as a driver of enhanced organic carbon burial in the Cretaceous”–a new study just published in the journal Nature…
While everyone was focused on the passage of a co-tenancy bill in West Virginia (see 
Seems like we increasingly see the word “microgrid” popping up. What, exactly, is a microgrid? Microgrids are small electric generating plants, most often powered by natural gas. They usually produce a few megawatts of electricity and are often used for “peaking”–which means they are used during times of high electricity demand. During times of high demand these small microgrids kick on and produce electricity to help meet the demand (see 
It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything from the so-called “more than 1,000” protesters willing to get themselves arrested in Lancaster County in their holy mission to stop the Williams Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline. As of last November, the unofficial tally we could determine is that 45 people who belong to Lancaster Against Pipelines (LAP) have gotten themselves arrested for illegal actions in attempting to stop the pipeline (see 
A third sinkhole related to Mariner East 2 pipeline work and the uncovering (and subsequent shutdown) of the Mariner East 1 pipeline has some folks in Chester County, PA stirred up and rather grumpy (see 
We spotted an article appearing on the Forbes magazine website that has a chart that stopped us cold in our tracks. The article was written by Jude Clemente, one of our favorite contributors to the Forbes website. He includes three charts in the article to update folks who have an interest in the natural gas space (the article is titled