Eagle’s Nest Latest Wrinkle in Building 7.8 Mile Pipe to NY Power Plant
A bald eagle’s nest built in a pine tree near where a tiny 7.8 mile pipeline is supposed to pass in Orange County, NY is the latest wrinkle that threatens to stop the pipeline in the ongoing soap opera that is corrupt New York State. The pipeline is a short spur, an offshoot, from the nearby Millennium Pipeline. It will feed the Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) gas-fired electric generation plant currently under construction in Wawayanda. The CPV plant is due to be completed early next year. According to Millennium, if they don’t start construction (tree clearing) TODAY, Dec. 6, there is no way to get the pipeline done in time to feed the plant–and that may well drive CPV’s project into bankruptcy. The eagle’s nest is being used as an excuse by New York (and rabid antis) to try and block the pipeline from getting built. Here’s the latest episode in this ongoing soap opera…
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THE Delaware Riverkeeper herself is back with more of her overlord’s money to file yet another frivolous lawsuit against a pipeline project in New York State. In August 2016, Millennium filed an application for what it calls its Eastern System Upgrade (see 
Invenergy is currently building a state-of-the-art, combined cycle 1,480 megawatt Marcellus-fired electric generating plant in Jessup, PA, just outside Scranton. Construction on the plant–called the Lackawanna Energy Center–has been under way for well over a year now. Some 1,200 people are currently working at the site. MDN previously reported that Cabot Oil & Gas with their prolific Susquehanna County production will feed the plant (see 
A Harrison County, OH landowner signed a lease back in 2006 granting a driller “broad rights” to extract oil and gas on and beyond his property. The lease was signed for $1 plus royalty payments. Obviously the landowner (frankly, nobody) at the time had any idea the Utica Shale miracle would happen just a few years later. The lease signed by the landowner was, in retrospect, a bad one. But that doesn’t excuse the landowner from living up to the obligations under that lease, which the landowner has learned the hard way. The lease was sold to Eclipse Resources and Eclipse wanted to, under the terms of the lease, drill new wells which would not only drain that landowner’s property (136 acres), but also drill under neighboring properties where Eclipse also owned the lease rights. That is, the well would be located on the landowner’s property but access gas under other properties–yielding royalties to others but not the landowner. The landowner objected to new wells on his property without a new lease (can’t blame him). However, first a district court and now the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decided for Eclipse against the landowner. Below is a summary of Eclipse Res. Ohio, LLC v. Madzia, followed by a copy of the full decision from the Sixth Circuit…
In June, radical anti-drillers from the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation won a case at the PA Supreme Court by the skin of their teeth (
Yesterday America’s natural gas and oil industry announced “a landmark partnership”–called the Environmental Partnership–to “accelerate improvements to environmental performance in operations across the country.” How will they do that? The first area of focus will be to reduce methane and volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions. The Environmental Partnership includes 26 natural gas and oil producers, including several major Marcellus/Utica drillers (Chesapeake Energy, Cabot Oil & Gas, Chevron and Southwestern Energy). The list of 26 produce a “significant portion” of American energy resources–we’d peg it at around 80% of all production. The participating companies (full list below) will begin implementing the voluntary program starting January 1, 2018. Did you get that? It’s VOLUNTARY. Yet they will do it and they will voluntarily hold themselves and each other accountable–because they are good corporate citizens and (gasp) actually care about the environment. They don’t need the jackboot of government to force them to do it. Here’s how profoundly biased mainstream media reports it: Oil Firms Pledge to Plug Methane Leaks in Bid to Burnish Image (Bloomberg News). Yep, according to the anti-everything people, these companies are only doing it to “burnish” their image. They don’t really care about the environment. They’re evil, nasty fossil fuel companies (icky). MDN readers know differently. These companies are respectable, providing jobs and investment in local communities AND protecting the environment in those same communities–where they live. The other side? Groups like the Sierra Club destroy jobs in the name of “protecting” Mom Earth…
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) is picking on Cabot Oil & Gas–or more properly, shaking them down for some cash. Yesterday the DEP announced it had reached an “agreement” with Cabot whereby Cabot will pay the DEP $99,000 “for air quality violations related to equipment at natural gas wells throughout Susquehanna County.” But that’s not all, Cabot failed to file some paperwork–a far more egregious violation for the DEP: “Cabot failed to submit complete compliance demonstration reports for 20 gas wells.” Bad, bad Cabot. Here’s news of the DEP’s latest shakedown of a company that has (so far) invested over $4.6 billion in a single northeast PA county…
Summit Midstream Partners was drilling underneath a road and a creek in Belmont County, OH on Oct. 19 to install a pipeline when they experienced an “inadvertent return” (i.e. leak) of drilling mud into the creek. If you’ve read MDN for any length of time, you will have read about other such instances by other companies. Because we constantly have new readers, we post the following explanation, which will sound like a broken record for long-time readers: Drilling mud is bentonite, a form of non-toxic clay also used to make kitty litter, cosmetics and toothpaste–among many, many other consumer products. The only threat posed by a spill of bentonite is that enough of it spills to clog the gills of fish or smother little critters like salamanders. That’s it. Think about taking half a dozen bags of kitty litter to a creek nearby and dumping them all in. It’s nothing. No pollution. We’d certainly rather not have any such accidents–but the reality is, they sometimes happen. That’s why non-toxic bentonite is used. The Ohio EPA stepped in and cited/fined Summit for the spill. Fair enough. But that’s not what this story is about. This story is about a family that lives near the spill. They hated Summit’s “loud” drilling before the spill, and now are using Summit’s spill and cleanup work (some of it happening in their front yard) as an excuse to sue Summit, hoping to score big bucks. Good luck with that…
Around 63,000 gallons of treated brine (naturally occurring, very “salty” water that comes out of a well long after it’s drilled) spilled in an accident at an Inflection Energy well pad in Eldred Township, Lycoming County, PA in mid-November (see 
The mighty Rover Pipeline project marches on toward 100% completion, even though the Ohio EPA is doing its best to stop it (see 
We are STILL shaking our head in disbelief at the news from early November that China has signed a “memorandum of understanding” (MOU) to invest $83.7 billion (with a “b”) in a single U.S. state–West Virginia (see 
In October MDN told you about 23 radicalized protesters who tried to block access to equipment being used to construct the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline in Lancaster County, PA–on property owned by a sect of Catholic nuns whom we call Sisters of the Corn (see 
What’s in the water in Kentucky? Seems to be a state full of anti-drilling, anti-pipeline nutters. Kentucky has been responsible for killing at least one pipeline, the Bluegrass Pipeline that would have flowed Marcellus/Utica NGLs (natural gas liquids) all the way to the Gulf Coast (see 
The number crunchers have been crunching away at our favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And what have they found in crunching shale-related numbers? The Marcellus/Utica (i.e. the Appalachian region) is a monster. In 2012 the M-U produced a cumulative 7.8 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas production. Now, in 2017, it’s producing 23.7 Bcf/d. That’s triple the volume in just five years! No other shale play comes close. When you look at the EIA chart (below) you easily see that Appalachia, the Marcellus/Utica, is THE big kahuna of shale plays…
This news is a bit dated, but still important. Crestwood Equity (used to be called Crestwood Midstream) won an important court victory in September regarding its plan to build an LPG (liquefied petroleum gas, or propane) storage facility in depleted salt caverns in New York. In 2009 Inergy filed a request to convert a depleted salt cavern along the shore of Seneca Lake (in Schuyler County, NY, near Watkins Glen) into a propane/natural gas storage facility. Inergy was later bought by and merged into Crestwood Midstream, and Crestwood Midstream later renamed itself Crestwood Equity Partners. The New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has been sitting on its hands from the beginning, refusing to grant the necessary permits to allow the facility to open. Earlier this year Crestwood scaled back its plans, dropping natgas storage but keeping LPG storage (see 
Although Shell’s mighty $6 billion ethane cracker chemical complex won’t be completed until around 2020, Shell is not waiting with respect to recruiting talent to operate the plant. Shell recently launched a page on their main website dedicated to recruiting people for cracker plant jobs (