NG Asks Judge to Toss Case Blocking Virtual Pipeline in NY
NG Advantage wants to build a “virtual pipeline” operation in ultra-liberal Broome County, NY, in a suburb of Binghamton. The location NG picked, after considering up to six locations in the region, was selected because of it’s proximity to major highways, proximity to the Millennium Pipeline, and availability of high-power electric lines. A virtual pipeline is nothing more than a compressor plant (series of compressor plants) that grabs gas from a pipeline, in this case the Millennium, and compresses it and loads it onto special tractor trailers that then deliver the gas to industrial customers like manufacturing plants, hospitals, and even small regional systems servicing homes. The location NG selected, in the Town of Fenton (within spitting distance of Hillcrest and Port Dickinson) was approved by the Town of Fenton after a detailed review. The area they selected is zoned industrial and is, in fact, a former dump site. However, residents from nearby neighborhoods (Hillcrest and Port Dick) were not aware of the project (so they claim) and when construction began to clear the dump site, and residents learned what was going to be built at the site, some of them demanded court action to oppose it. So far we’ve had two court cases asking county-level court (called “Supreme Court” in NY) to stop the project, which it temporarily did (see Court Halts Work on Broome Co. Virtual Pipeline, Residents Sound Off). MDN editor Jim Willis attended a meeting by NG Advantage held for area residents and he has to say the company is bending backward, forward, sideways, upside-down, back flipping–and in general doing anything and everything they can–to prove to residents that a few trucks an hour hauling natural gas is not the horror they have been led to believe it will be. But in an all-too-familiar pattern, the residents’ minds are made up and nothing short of shutting the project down will be acceptable. And so the fight now goes to court. Last week NG responded to the temporary restraining order, asking the judge to toss it out so they can get back to building the facility. If for some reason NG is blocked, the company will be out $23 million…
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Here’s not something you read every day, especially in Lebanon County, PA where local media seems only too interested in covering negative stories about pipelines: “What I have heard has all been positive – that the workers were willing to go beyond anything that might be expected of them and do little special things for the landowners.” That statement is from a town official in Lebanon County, talking about Mariner East 2 pipeline construction workers who are busy in the Lebanon County installing the first of two ME2 pipelines. Of course, not everyone is happy. But then, not everyone is always happy with anything–even a sunshiny day! Here’s what’s happening in Lebanon County with ME2…
While the construction of the Mariner East 2 natural gas liquids (NGL) pipelines in Lebanon and Lancaster Counties appears to be sailing along with very few issues (see today’s companion story), the project did hit a small bump in the road in nearby Chester County, PA. A dozen families reported their water wells became cloudy–or lost pressure–after underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) by Sunoco Logistics Partners in attempting to install pipes underground in places where digging trenches will not work. The company put up five families in local hotels for several nights. Sunoco also provided bottled water for all of the affected families. The working theory is that bentonite clay (i.e. drilling mud) is the source of the cloudiness. Fortunately, bentonite is non-toxic and used to manufacture many products, including toothpaste and kitty litter. The incident, while troubling and inconvenient for the families involved, has not set back the project–at all. Drilling and construction of the pipeline resumed on Saturday…
In April MDN told you that the Virginia Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ) had succumbed to political pressure from the MANY lib Dems in the state that oppose benign pipeline projects, like the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) and Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), and changed their minds about the process they will use in issuing water quality certifications under Section 401 of the federal Clean Water Act (see 
Here’s a story of some Catholic nuns who have forsaken their vow to serve Christ, and instead have taken up a vow to serve radical environmentalism–which is apparently their new religion. A group of nuns in Lancaster County, PA invited the radical group Lancaster Against Pipelines (whose organizer participated in the illegal blockage of the Dakota Access Pipeline) to build a “prayer chapel” in the middle of a cornfield that belongs to the Adorers of the Blood of Christ (as they are called). The chapel is meant to stand in the way of Williams’ Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline, slated to go through that field. The so-called prayer chapel is little more than a few portable benches and a pop-up shelter like the one you would use when camping–just about big enough to cover a gas grill and leave enough room for two or three people to stand under it. The “prayer chapel” is obviously a statement thing. Knowing it will get torn down at some point, the sisters and their radical friends didn’t want to waste a lot of money on the project. Essentially this is a setup for a photo op when the bulldozers come through. It’s truly a shame to see how those who have dedicated themselves to the work of Jesus Christ have been co-opted and distracted from their far higher, and much better, calling. Unfortunately, the nuns are rank hypocrites. They themselves use–and promote the use of–natural gas for their own ministry on the very same parcel of property…
Phase I of the 711-mile Rover Pipeline project that will run from PA, WV and eastern OH through OH into Michigan and eventually into Canada is supposed to be completed by July 2017, while Phase II is supposed to be done by November 2017. Will Phase I be done by the end of this month? We sure wouldn’t want to take that bet, but we suppose there’s still a slim chance. While building the $3.7 billion pipeline project, Energy Transfer (or more correctly its contractors) hit some snags, including spilling 2 million gallons of non-toxic drilling mud near the Tuscarawas River (see 
Earlier this week MDN told you the news that corporate raider Jana Partners, along with the Cohen family (of Atlas Energy fame), are colluding to try and stop the merger/sale of Rice Energy to EQT (see 
When EQT and Rice Energy announced a deal in June for EQT to buyout and merge in Rice to create the largest natgas-producing company in the U.S., it seemed like a match made in heaven (see 
In February MDN reported that Marathon Petroleum had begun to build a 49-mile condensate pipeline, called HALI–the Harpster to Lima Pipeline (see 
Totally biased, Big Green-backed mouthpiece StateImpact Pennsylvania, funded in part by taxpayers via PBS (a travesty), as well as funded in part by anti-drilling organizations like the Heinz Endowments and the William Penn Foundation (which appear to control StateImpact’s “reporting”), is targeting a PR agency because the agency has the audacity to do good work for Sunoco Logistics and the Mariner East 2 Pipeline project. You see, in liberal anti-drilling land, it’s OK for antis to smear and lie and fabricate all sorts of falsehoods about pipeline projects–but it’s not OK for the object of those smears (i.e. Sunoco LP) to fight back and to present its side of the issue. As soon as you fight back and tell your side of the story, you’re “targeting” innocent people, you’re attempting to bully the little guy. You’re mean. You’re pedaling fossil fuel death. That’s how it works in Big Green land. A recent article on StateImpact PA attempts a smear job on PR agency Bravo Group because Bravo has the gonads to say this on their website: “We’re helping Sunoco Logistics build public and policyholder support for its Mariner East projects, an infrastructure investment of more than $3 billion. The goal: secure regulatory approvals, neutralize opposition and develop the Mariner East projects on budget and without capital losses.” The “neutralize opposition” phrase in particular set off the anti-pipeline crazies, so StateImpact created an entire story focused on that phrase. You know you’re being effective when they attack you with a smear campaign…
Something that we find to be an outrage is not even getting a passing acknowledgment by mainstream media: most of the climate data collected and pedaled by NASA, NOAA and UK’s Met Office is (our word) falsified. Let us explain. When collecting data, there will be times that a given data point (say a temperature reading) seems incorrect. Usually scientists will discard such “outlier” data, or make adjustments to compensate–so the outlier data doesn’t throw off what would otherwise be accurate. Climate scientists often apply “adjustments” to surface temperature thermometers (i.e. change the readings) to account for “biases” in the data. A new peer-reviewed study titled “On the Validity of NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU Global Average Surface Temperature Data & The Validity of EPA’s CO2 Endangerment Finding” (full copy below) takes a close look at the adjustments made by NOAA, NASA and the UK in their global average surface temperature (GAST) datasets–and concludes the adjustments nearly always revise temps up. That is, the researchers are showing bias themselves. It is this revised (we call it falsified) data that is then used to proclaim the past three years are the warmest on record in the modern era. The peer-reviewed study, which was done by former rocket scientists, former EPA employees, economists, weather scientists and others, finds the “cyclical pattern in the earlier reported data has very nearly been ‘adjusted’ out of temperature readings taken from weather stations, buoys, ships and other sources.” That is, the warmers who work at NASA, NOAA and in the UK didn’t like the numbers they were getting (they didn’t like reality), so they put their finger on the scale and changed the result. It’s a lie. And now it’s exposed for the world to see…
Here on MDN we talk a lot about big interstate natural gas pipelines–like Rover and NEXUS, Atlantic Sunrise and Atlantic Coast. But we don’t talk so much about the tiny (in diameter) gas pipelines that connect to people’s homes. In oil and gas industry parlance, those pipelines belong to the “downstream”–or the end users of natural gas. From time to time we’ve covered stories about NiSource and other utilities spending big money to replace aging local distribution pipelines (see 
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you are tempted to treat everything as a nail (Abraham Maslow, 1966). Such is it with radical anti-drillers who recently won a case at the PA Supreme Court by the skin of their teeth. The case dealt with the narrow issue of how PA can spend revenue raised by leasing and allowing drilling for oil and gas under state-owned land (see