Bought & Paid For “Research” Says 2 Marcellus Pipelines Not Needed
Two Democrat-run anti-fossil fuel organizations–the Southern Environmental Law Center and Appalachian Mountain Advocates–pooled their donated money together and went out to find a consulting firm with the veneer of respectability that could be bought off to produce a faux “report” slamming two much-needed pipelines. They found an easy mark in Synapse Energy Economics, headquartered in ultra-liberal Massachusetts. The “report” Synapse produced says neither Dominion’s $5 billion, 594-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (a natural gas pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina), nor EQT’s $3.5 billion, 301-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA) are needed. The sham report, titled “Are the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline Necessary?” (full copy below) is getting picked up by lazy (or propagandist) mainstream news organizations and reported as real news. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s a joke…
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Although there’s less new drilling for oil and gas (at least there’s less if you believe press reports), and although DUCs (drilled but uncompleted wells) are decreasing, overall production in the lower 48 states is actually increasing. IHS Markit says natgas production in August increased month over month for the second month in a row–something that hasn’t happened in a year. Markit says the main reason is an increase in production in the northeast–specifically an increase in production in the Utica Shale. However, there were also increases in other plays. Here’s the full update…
Using natural gas may literally save your life. Researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) recently conducted research using the country of Turkey because that country has made a big shift over the past couple of decades, moving away from other forms of energy and to natural gas. The researchers looked at mortality rates for adults and the elderly and found that mortality rates for both groups dropped, dramatically, over that period. Why? How? Good questions. Because the air is now cleaner thanks to an increase in natgas use, there has been a decrease in pollution linked and a correlating decrease in lung and heart disease deaths among adults and the elderly. It’s in the report. Of course people living longer because of natural gas isn’t good news for anti-fossil fuel nutters…
Macquarie Infrastructure has filed an application to build a new natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Chesapeake, Virginia, the state’s third most populous city, located near Norfolk. The facility, called Matex Virginia Power, would produce 1,400 megawatts of electricity by using three gas combustion turbines and one steam turbine. It’s not (yet) known how the new plant will get its gas, although Dominion’s planned $5 billion, 550-mile long Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project is scheduled to have a branch going to Chesapeake. It’s not much of a stretch to think that ACP will feed this new plant, bringing Marcellus/Utica gas from the north to the plant. Here’s the good news, followed by reaction from environmental Nazis that oppose it…
What happens when you put a virulent anti-driller in charge of a state’s forestry service, a state that previously had a small, safe, healthy program to allow some shale drilling, giving taxpayers a break with a source of new revenue? Of course the anti-driller immediately tries to quash any more new drilling efforts. And that’s just what has happened with former PennFuture president and current Secretary of the PA Dept. of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), Cindy Dunn. We called for her firing back in June when she was caught using–we’d say misappropriating–taxpayer money to send her staff to Big Green reeducation events (see 
In June 2014 MDN broke the news that Moxie Energy was in the hunt to begin a third new Marcellus gas-powered electric plant project in Pennsylvania, near Wilkes-Barre (see 
The drama surrounding Williams and whether or not the company will sell itself continues. Energy Transfer Equity’s (ETE) billionaire CEO Kelsy Warren propositioned Williams for over six months before going public with his overtures last year (see 
For the past few days MDN has chronicled what we’ve named a royalties civil war happening between Pennsylvania landowners and the Marcellus drilling industry in the state–two groups usually on the same side. The war revolves around royalty checks–and how meager they are (see 
David Hill is a geologist and a driller located in Ohio (David R. Hill Inc.). At a recent Coffee and Commerce meeting sponsored by the Cambridge Area Chamber of Commerce, Hill offered his insights into when oil drilling may return to Guernsey County and eastern Ohio. As MDN recently reported, much of the focus on drilling in the Utica has lately turned to dry gas, or methane only (see 
Yesterday MDN reported the story that Dominion Transmission has decided to lock out union members from working at their jobs in Dominion installations over a contract dispute (see