Russian LNG Coming to Boston to Alleviate NatGas Shortage?!
This is so wrong on so many levels. Our blood pressure went through the roof when we spotted a story that a shipload of Russian-produced LNG (liquefied natural gas) is almost certainly coming to Boston and will be delivered on Jan. 22nd. We suspect it may be an illegal shipment. Here’s what happened. The LNG tanker Christophe de Margerie loaded a shipment of LNG at Russia’s Yamal LNG plant–in the Russian Arctic–delivering it to the UK at the Isle of Grain terminal in Kent. The LNG was offloaded and stored, but not pumped into the UK grid. Instead, officials said the LNG would be resold to a higher paying customer. A few days later the tanker Gaselys loaded LNG from the same terminal in Kent. While those who own the shipment won’t say, it’s almost certain the LNG they loaded was the very same LNG unloaded a few days prior–from Russia. Gaselys is coming to America–to unload the Russian LNG in Boston, because New England is natural gas starved at the moment due to the ongoing cold snap. Why not just bypass the unloading/reloading process and ship direct to the U.S.? Because the U.S. slapped the Yamal LNG plant with sanctions following Russia’s moves against the Ukraine. It’s illegal to receive gas produced from that plant. So the people involved “whitewashed” the gas by unloading in Kent, and then pretending they’ve reloaded different gas molecules from the same facility. It’s a farce. Fake. Fraud. The gas coming to Boston is Russian gas. The reason New England needs gas so bad is because of their elected leaders, like Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren–both of whom adamantly oppose new natural gas pipeline projects in their state that would deliver cheap Marcellus/Utica gas to the region. Massachusetts residents should rise up against Healey and Warren for their actions which now mean New England is paying our ENEMIES for natural gas. How screwed up is that?…
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A new shale wastewater treatment facility that works in tandem with a local sewage treatment plant may be on the way in Coudersport (Potter County), PA. Epiphany Water Solutions, via a subsidiary company called Epiphany Allegheny, filed for a permit to build a centralized water treatment facility in Coudersport in July 2017. The initial application with the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) was deemed “incomplete”–so Epiphany filed again and this time the application was complete. The DEP will hold a Jan. 16 public hearing in Coudersport to gain local resident’s input on the facility. This is not the first we’ve heard of Epiphany. They were one of four winners of the Ben Franklin Institute’s Fifth Annual Shale Gas Innovation Contest in 2016 (see 
Last year the pressure was intense to pass a severance tax in Pennsylvania to help fill a budget gap. The severance tax issue in PA is a political football–a promise made by current Gov. Tom Wolf to pay off teacher’s unions in Philadelphia for voting him into office. During the budget machinations, traitorous Republicans in the PA Senate caved to pressure and in July passed a budget bill that hikes taxes on lots of things, including a severance tax (see 
At the beginning of each new year the West Virginia legislature meets for a 60-day session. This year the session runs from Jan. 10 to Mar. 10. For the previous maybe 6-7 years, the shale industry has pushed for some sort of forced pooling legislation. Each year those bills, as close they sometimes got, were defeated. This year the industry is staying well away from saying anything about “forced pooling.” Last time around (in 2017) we came close with something MDN calls forced pooling lite–a bill that would have allowed for co-tenancy and joint development. That bill was eventually defeated (see 
From time to time MDN mentions condensate. What, exactly, is condensate? We’ve seen it described as a “light” form of crude oil. Condensate is an important component of what comes out of wells drilled in southwestern Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Condensate can be sold for a higher price that plain old natural gas molecules. As we’ve often written, when you sink a hole in the ground looking for one hydrocarbon, like oil or gas, you get other hydrocarbons out of the ground along with it. Natural gas (methane) comes out of holes drilled looking for oil, and the reverse. And just about all of the holes drilled get some form of natural gas liquids–including ethane, pentane, butane and propane. So where does condensate sit in the constellation of hydrocarbons? Is it closer to crude oil? Or closer to natural gas and NGLs? Two ships collided in the East China Sea over the weekend–one of them loaded with condensate. The ship exploded and all 32 souls on that ship died in the blaze or are lost at sea. So Reuters posted an article to explain just what the heck condensate is. We found the article useful for our own understanding, and thought you might too…
What if a landowner leased his or her land decades ago and a driller drilled a conventional natural gas well on the property, and that well has produced commercial volumes of natural gas for years–and still does. And what if the lease gives that driller the right to drill (or not drill) in any given rock lawyer. And what if that driller is content to simply let that conventional well keep producing and not drill further down, into the now commercially viable Utica (or Marcellus) shale layer? Does the landowner, whose land is located where the Utica/Marcellus exists, have any case for taking back the rights to the deeper shale layers the conventional driller refuses to go after? That’s a case that went all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court in March of last year (see 
The news that the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has suspended all construction work on the Mariner East 2 Pipeline project until further notice continues to reverberate (see 
A lot of the talk and chatter this week has been about the spike in the price of natural gas (see today’s lead story, NatGas Trading in NYC Hits $175/Mcf – Highest Ever Recorded!). The other hot topic of the week is the decision by the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) to temporarily suspend all construction work on the Mariner East 2 (ME2) Pipeline. What antis in the Philadelphia area don’t realize is that ME2 is vital to their own region and their own pocketbooks. Yesterday we brought you one take on why Philly residents are missing the boat in opposing ME2 (see 
Yesterday we brought you the news that CONE Midstream has been renamed to CNX Midstream, and that CNX Resources is now the sole owner of the entire gathering pipeline system (see 
A relatively small number of landowners in West Virginia is using a novel legal argument to try and stop Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) from beginning construction. MVP is a $3.5 billion, 303-mile natural gas pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a final approval for the project in October (see 
The difference between the Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) and Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) with respect to the issue of shale drilling is striking. The SRBC wisely knows it is not charged with regulating oil and gas drilling within their borders. They are charged with (and do a great job of) managing the water resources within the basin. On the other hand, the DRBC is populated with ultra-liberals who disregard Constitutional law and have taken it on themselves to simply ban shale drilling within their basin. A court case is now playing out that will slap the DRBC back into its proper role. The DRBC claims the water that flows through the basin provides drinking water for 15 million people, including New York City. The SRBC provides drinking water for 4.1 million people. If fracking really does “harm” the environment–specifically water resources–you would think with thousands of Marcellus wells drilled in the SRBC area something would have shown up long ago. But it has not–which exposes the lies being used to try and stop fracking in the DRBC area. In December Penn State University’s Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research entered the lion’s den–by giving a presentation and answering questions at a meeting of the Upper Delaware Council, held in Narrowsburg, NY. David Yoxtheimer from MCOR compared the SRBC to the DRBC and used science to debunk many of the wild claims heard in DRBC’s efforts to ban fracking. While Yoxtheimer’s presentation was by-the-book and based on science (he’s not a combative guy), there’s no missing the fact that he obliterated the anti-fracking arguments put forth by the DRBC…
The current cold snap and resulting high prices for natural gas in New York City and Boston are happening for one simple reason: lack of pipelines. In particular, as we pointed out yesterday, much of the blame can be laid at the feet of New York’s corrupt governor, Andrew Cuomo (see 
We suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. The Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) has caved to intense pressure from a cabal of Big Green groups and has told Sunoco Logistics Partners to suspend all work on the $2.5 billion Mariner East 2 (ME2) NGL pipline–from one side of the state to the other. Just yesterday MDN told you about the mounting pressure on the DEP to halt ME2 work, particularly work on underground horizontal directional drilling (see 
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection suspended all work on the Mariner East 2 NGL Pipeline project (see today’s lead story, PA DEP Caves to Big Green Pressure, Stops All Work on ME2 Pipeline). The project has been vigorously opposed by antis in the greater Philadelphia area from the beginning. Their opposition stems from a deeper philosophical preference to end the use of fossil fuels. Last September, MDN editor Jim Willis had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Garland Thompson at the Shale Insight event in Pittsburgh. Garland, who lives in Philly, has written for the Career Communications Group of publications, including US Black Engineer & Information Technology, Hispanic Engineer & IT, and their siblings Woman of Color and Science Spectrum, for many years. He’s covered the shale revolution for those publications since 2008–before MDN began writing about it! Jim had an interesting conversation with Garland, about the need to educate folks, particularly the folks in the greater Philly area, about the benefits of pipelines. Springboarding on yesterday’s news, Garland has written a great opinion piece pointing out that opposition to the Mariner East pipelines (plural) is misguided and shortsighted. Garland builds a case for why everyone in the Philly region should want to see these important projects get built…