FERC Open Meetings Restart on Sept 20, Some Votes Coming Sooner
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) sent an important signal last week: the agency is open for business and they won’t wait until the first public meeting (Sept. 20th) to begin voting on important pipeline projects. That’s our take after reading a notice posted by FERC, and after reading statements made by a FERC spokesperson. Which is good news for the many pipeline projects currently in limbo. A quorum of voting members was reestablished last week when both Neil Chatterjee and Robert Powelson were sworn in (see FERC Quorum Restored; New Chairman; List of Stalled Pipe Projects). There are now three (of five) commissioners appointed and working–enough to cast votes on important/big/”controversial” pipeline projects. Typically such votes are cast in an open and public meeting, held monthly. The next such meeting will be held Sept. 20th, according to a FERC announcement. However, the same announcement hints that voting will go on now, ahead of the public meeting, and projects can (likely will) get approved now, ahead of the monthly public meeting…
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Every now again we go on a rant about the hypocrisy, indeed the stupidity, of those who claim we can just stop using fossil fuels altogether–now–and switch to so-called renewables. If we only had the political will. According to the fantasizers, solar and wind and hydro and other non-fossil fuel sources could eliminate the need for fossil fuels. But what they fail to understand or grasp or admit (or perhaps all three), is that without fossil fuels they would not have clothes, houses, cell phones, vehicles for transportation and a host of other modern conveniences. Frankly, without fossil fuel extraction, we would immediately be plunged back into the Stone Ages–with cruel, very short, lifespans. Antis fail to recognize the key role fossil fuels play in our everyday lives. Our ongoing prediction, which will be proved long after we’ve exited this world, is that fossil fuels are here for at least the next 100 years. We spotted a local letter to the editor from a numskull spouting this “fossil fuels will kill us all” meme, and on the same day, an article by the always-excellent David Blackmon, writing for Forbes, which outlines many of the ways life would change without fossil fuels. Together these two pieces show the stark contrast between those who think, and those who don’t…
MDN has been tracking the prices paid by Shell to landowners to run an ethane pipeline under their land to feed the might cracker plant the company is just now beginning to build in Beaver County, PA. Why? So landowners in Beaver (and other locations) have a useful metric for judging the offers they receive. To be fair, a company that wants to run a local gathering pipeline across someone’s land will pay a lot less than Shell is willing to pay–given you can’t move the cracker plant. Interstate pipelines will likely pay something less too. But still, we find it interesting and useful to know what Shell is up to in Beaver. We don’t have a lot of data points, yet. In June, we learned that Shell paid roughly $75 per foot for 3,138 linear feet of pipeline space in Greene Township (see 
The CORNballs of Ohio are not happy campers in their quest to try and shut down the $2 billion, 255-mile NEXUS interstate natural gas pipeline that will run from Ohio through Michigan and eventually to the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada. CORN stands for Coalition to Reroute NEXUS. CORNballs is what we affectionately call the group–as a way of pointing out their nutty real purpose, which is to try and shut the NEXUS project down. Their aim has nothing to do with “rerouting” and everything to do with shutting it down. In May 2017, the CORNballs revealed their true colors when they filed a lawsuit in federal court in Akron, OH (see 
We’re starting to see more and more news about natural gas-fired microgrids, used for “peaking”. Microgrids are small electric generating plants, most often powered by natural gas. They usually produce a few megawatts of electricity. The concept of “peaking” means that during times of high electricity demand, these small microgrids kick on and produce electricity to help meet the demand. Although New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo doesn’t want fracking in the Empire State, he’s in the midst of paying for 11 microgrids throughout the state–all of them using natural gas, mostly fracked gas from Pennsylvania (see 
It looks like the trouble Vienna Investments tried to make for Clean Energy Future in wanting to build a second natural gas-fired electric generating plant in the same office park where the first is being built (near a building owned by Vienna) has amounted to nothing. Bupkis. The Ohio Power Siting Board (OPSB) held a public hearing at the local high school in July, to accept public comments on the second power plant (see 
MDN has covered the ongoing budget debate in Pennsylvania for months. The PA Senate and House are controlled by Republican majorities–but not necessarily conservative majorities. The Republicans fell into a trap set by the Democrats. They passed a ~$32 billion budget with only enough revenue to pay for $30 billion–meaning there’s a $2 billion gap that needs to be filled. Instead of doing the adult thing–cut spending–they decided to allow more spending and figure out how to pay for it “later on.” Later on came, and of course pressure intensified to punish a single industry–natural gas–in order to make up the shortfall. At the end of July MDN brought you the sad news that Republicans in the Senate sold out and voted for a severance tax (see 
Everyone wants to know where the price of natural gas will go in the future. Ask one analyst, and he/she will tell you it’s going lower. Another? Staying where it is–for a long time. And yet another will tell you the price just HAS to go higher. Of course “the price” of natural gas is not just one price. Most people refer to the benchmark Henry Hub price, used for trading futures contracts on the NYMEX exchange. All other prices where gas is bought and sold are somehow compared to or even connected with the price of gas at the Henry Hub. We spotted a speculative post on the Seeking Alpha investor’s website from someone we often read, Andrew Hecht, muses that he thinks the price of natgas is heading higher. He makes a convincing case. We boil it down and simplify it to this: an increase in LNG exports, of which we wrote about yesterday (see US Exports Now 2.4% of NatGas Production, Heading for 11% in 2019 //marcellusdrilling.com/2017/08/us-exports-now-2-4-of-natgas-production-heading-for-11-in-2019/), plus scads of new natgas-fired electric plants coming online, which we write about all the time, plus a cold snap across the country, but particularly in the northeast, would necessarily drive natural gas prices at the Henry Hub and other locations MUCH higher. Is he right?…
Those opposing two major Energy Transfer projects–Rover Pipeline and Mariner East 2–will not be happy with the good news coming from ET this week. The company issued its second quarter update and held a conference call yesterday. During the call we learned that Phase 1 of Rover, a $3.7 billion, 711-mile Rover Pipeline project that will run from PA, WV and eastern OH through OH into Michigan and eventually into Canada, is “substantially complete” with Phase 1A expected to be done next week and online asap. Phase 1A stretches from Cadiz to Defiance, which is most of Ohio. Phase 1B is a short segment from Seneca to Cadiz, and once ET gets clearance from FERC to drill horizontally under Captina Creek, it will only take them about 40 days to complete Phase 1B. If ET can convince FERC to allow them to restart more horizontal directional drilling (HDD) work, Phase 2 will be done soon as well–and the entire project will be up and running by the end of the year. More good news for Rover: The temporary ban on HDD work for Rover in two West Virginia counties that began two weeks ago has now been lifted by the WV Dept. of Environmental Protection. As for ET’s Mariner East 2 (ME2) pipeline project that stretches across Pennsylvania, 80% of the pipeline has been strung, more than 70% is welded and over half has been lowered in and covered up. As we reported yesterday and again today, ET subsidiary Sunoco Logistics Partners (building ME2) has brokered a deal with several radical environmental groups that will slow the project down some, but slow and done is better than no progress at all. Here’s an update on the good news about Rover and ME2…
Yesterday MDN brought you the news that Sunoco Logistics Partners had cut a deal with the devil, meaning three radical Big Green groups, to slow down but eventually complete work on the Mariner East 2 natural gas liquids (NGL) pipeline project in Pennsylvania (see 
In May, MDN told you that virulent anti-drillers in Youngstown, OH, puppets of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), have once again circulated a petition to put a so-called Community Bill of Rights ballot measure on the ballot this November (see 
We wonder if the residents of Massachusetts, which is hellbent on blocking ANY new natural gas pipeline–local or interstate–know that since the year 2000 some 200,000 Massachusetts households have switched to/added natural gas for heating and other uses. We also wonder if Mass. residents know that the the Brayton Point coal plant in Somerset, a plant that closed two months ago, provided enough power to keep the lights on for 1.5 million Mass. residents. Or that the sole surviving nuclear power plant in Plymouth, the Pilgrim nuclear plant, is closing in two years. And that 11 more electric generating plants (coal-fired) in the region are in danger of closing over the next few years. It doesn’t take a lot of brain power to predict (a) electric rates will go even higher for New England residents, people already paying 4x what other areas of the country pay for electricity, and (b) at some point there just won’t be enough electricity, meaning brownouts and blackouts. Singing kumbaya and fantasizing that wind mills and solar panels (which make up less than 3% of our national electric supply) will ride in to save the day is dangerously stupid. Stephen Dodge, executive director of the Massachusetts Petroleum Council, makes a convincing case for more natural gas via pipelines in New England…
A sharp MDN reader recently brought to our attention some exciting news. The only export facility currently in operation is Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass facility. In July Sabine Pass (in southwestern Louisiana, right on the border with Texas) exported 2.19 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of American-produced natural gas to other countries. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that in May (most recent month available) the entire production of natural gas in the U.S. was 89.5 Bcf/d. When you run the math, you find that Cheniere alone, with that one facility, exported 2.4% of all U.S. natgas production. The EIA published an article yesterday (below) that predicts the U.S. will become a net exporter of natural gas–exporting more than we import–THIS YEAR. EIA also predicts by the end of 2019 we will be exporting 9.5 Bcf/d of natural gas. If overall production stays about the same, which is a pretty safe guess, that means we will be exporting 10.6% of the natgas we produce, to other countries. Amazing! Of course, production may increase as prices increase, so that 10.6% may be under 10%. But you get the idea. With just LNG exports alone an important new market is opening up over the next two years for our shale gas. One of those export facilities coming online (later this year) is Cove Point, Maryland, which will be exporting Marcellus/Utica gas…
It’s about time. Cabot Oil & Gas is tired of being sued, and slandered, by people like Dimock resident Ray Kemble and his ambulance-chasing lawyers. So Cabot has sued back–for $5 million. Kemble lives in Dimock Township, in Susquehanna County, PA. Kemble and other families claimed Cabot’s drilling in the area (nearly 10 years ago) caused problems with their water wells–a claim strongly refuted by Cabot. Cabot settled with most of the landowners, including Kemble.