Court Rejects NY DEC Attempt to Stop Short Power Plant Pipeline
The Andrew Cuomo-corrupted New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is now out of options in its quest to block a tiny, 7.8-mile pipeline that would connect the Millennium Pipeline to a gas-fired electric generating plant under construction in Orange County, NY. Yesterday the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals denied a petition by the DEC asking the court to vacate two orders by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) allowing the pipeline to continue construction. Which means construction on the pipeline has restarted and will almost certainly be completed within a month. The plant the pipeline will feed, Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) Valley Energy Center, is wrapping up construction. Recently antis had a cow when they saw steam coming from the plant, part of the commissioning process (see Antis Apoplectic at Sight of Steam Coming from NY Power Plant). Before the new plant can go online, it needs fuel, which is why the Millennium project is so important. Now that the 2nd Circuit has rejected its petition, the DEC says it is still “reviewing its options” with respect to “next steps.” Frankly, there are no options and no next steps. The Cuomo-corrupted DEC has lost…
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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 
The Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources (ODNR) has just issued production numbers for the fourth quarter of 2017. Production was up for both natural gas AND oil, as it was in the third quarter (see 
MDN reported yesterday that due to underground horizontal direction drilling (HDD) in Chester County, PA (near Philadelphia) for the Mariner East 2 (ME2) Pipeline project, a third sinkhole had developed (see 
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has done a complete 180 degree turn around with respect to signing a co-tenancy bill. As we previously reported, the co-tenancy bill was passed first by the House, and then the Senate (see 
We spoke too soon. In a story MDN published yesterday, we said that Big Green propagandist mouthpiece PBS StateImpact Pennsylvania was the only “news” outlet reporting on “yellow smoke” released as part of the commissioning process for the Lackawanna Energy Center, a Marcellus gas-fired electric plant being built near Scranton (see 
Anti fossil fuel nutters have been on a holy mission to stop a 3.5-mile, 8″ pipeline from being installed under the Potomac River since last summer (see 