WV Supreme Court: Mountain Valley Pipe Can’t Survey w/o Permission
The Mountain Valley Pipeline is a $3.5 billion, 301-mile pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA. The project, which filed an official application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in October 2015, is being built by EQT, NextEra Energy and several other partners (see Mountain Valley Pipeline Files FERC Appl, Now Just Matter of Time). In order to build the pipeline, you first have to survey the route. Landowners in both West Virginia and Virginia have resisted, forcing the project to go to court to try and force recalcitrant landowners to allow a survey. In April 2015 Mountain Valley sued WV landowners (see Mountain Valley Pipeline Sues 103 WV Landowners for Survey Access). In March 2016, Mountain Valley won a lawsuit in Virginia (see Mountain Valley Pipeline Wins Right to Survey in VA w/o Permission). However, the WV lawsuit has ground on with appeals. Finally it reached the WV Supreme Court and yesterday the court ruled–in favor of landowners, disallowing survey access for the project (see a copy of the 31-page opinion below). Which is interesting. This decision sets up a potential Constitutional crises…
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You may recall that TransCanada, one of Canada’s leading midstream/pipeline companies, cooked up a deal to pipe natural gas from Canada’s West Coast to the East Coast in order to fend off cheap supplies of Marcellus/Utica gas that will flow into Canada when/if the NEXUS and Rover pipelines get built (see 
On Monday Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced PA taxpayers are forking over $5 million to Steamfitters Local 449 union for use in their Butler Training Facility project. The union training facility trains welders. The Shell ethane cracker plant, when it gets built, will need a LOT of welders. Right now the facility graduates 170 new welders a year. With the grant money, they will expand it to train and graduate 270 welders a year…
The New Jersey Division of the Rate Counsel (NJDRC) is a state government agency responsible for representing the interests of residents, businesses and other rate payers in dealing with regulated public utilities and insurance firms. In September the NJDRC filed a so-called analysis with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) slamming the need and cost recovery plan for the PennEast Pipeline–a $1 billion, 118-mile, primarily 36-inch pipeline that will get built from Dallas (Luzerne County), PA to Transco’s pipeline interconnection near Pennington (Mercer County), NJ. PennEast responded to the NJDRC’s analysis with an independent report written by Concentric Energy Advisors, rippping to shreds the arguments put forward by NJDRC (see 
We have to state up front that we are fans of Google’s services. We love the Chrome browser and Chrome OS, Android (for phones), Gmail for email, Google Drive…the list goes on and on. But at the same time, we detest the far-left, in-bed-with-Big-Green-groups leadership of Google. And we don’t like some of their initiatives–including their creepy snooping into every aspect of our lives. We spotted a story about Google’s roaming Street View cars that ride along our roads snapping pictures. Snapping pics isn’t enough for Googlers. In Pittsburgh they’ve added methane sniffers to help detect elevated levels of (they say) global warming causing methane escaping into the atmosphere, like a fugitive. Supposedly the methane sniffers will help People’s Natural Gas (which we suspect was bullied by Google) to identify where People’s 50 year-old natgas pipeline network is experiencing leaks. Look, we’re all for finding and fixing gas leaks–don’t get us wrong. But the motivation here is not the safety of the residents of Pittsburgh. It’s to bow down and worship at the altar of the Global Warming gods. Quick! There goes the Google car–turn off the gas grill…it might mistake your backyard barbecue for a gas leak! All joking aside, what will Google strap onto those cars next? Maybe they’ll snap a pic of a fat customer walking into McDonalds and send it to his friends to shame him. Or maybe they’ll snap a pic of (gasp) someone walking into a Donald Trump campaign office–sending it to that person’s boss. Yeah, that’ll fix ’em. It was no surprise to learn that PA Gov. Wolf also butted in on the Google methane sniffing action, along with the radical anti-drilling Environmental Defense Fund and PA Dept. of Environmental Protection…
Undoing the damage caused by the Obama Administration over the past eight years is going to take time. When President Trump assumes office on January 20, 2017 (can’t come soon enough!), he will put in motion regulatory relief and tax policies that will create new jobs for the 94 million Americans now out of work (a staggering number that doesn’t get reported by biased mainstream media). However, those policies will take time to implement. If jobs are the #1 priority for Donald Trump, how can he deliver relief in the short term, starting on Day One? According to the retired president of the Association of Washington (State) Business, Don Brunell, Trump should turn to fossil fuels. Brunell suggests a quick solution to more jobs: more fracking…
As we pointed out last week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)–which is supposed to be an organization of, well, engineers–has gone hard-left political, no doubt under the direction of Lord Obama (see 
Yesterday MDN’s favorite government agency, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), issued our favorite monthly report–the Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The DPR is the EIA’s best guess, based on expert data crunchers, as to how much each of the U.S.’s seven major shale plays will produce for both oil and natural gas in the coming month. Last month was a bit of a surprise, with the Marcellus reversing the trend and producing more gas than it did the month before (see 
In March we highlighted the issue of abandoned oil and natural gas wells in Pennsylvania (see 
For a number of years we’ve had our eye on Fairmont Brine Processing, headquartered in Fairmont, WV. We originally started writing about the company in 2010 when it was AOP Clearwater (see 
The big Texas law firm Bracewell, which until earlier this year was Bracewell & Giuliani (Rudy left in January), has put together an helpful analysis of what changes we can expect under a President Trump Administration. Although they tackle a number of areas, we were interested to read their predictions for what will be happening with energy and the environment under President Trump. What’s in store for pipelines? Obama’s Clean Power Plan? EPA’s onerous regulations? The Bracewell legal beagles haul out their crystal ball and give us a glimpse…
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe recently approved changes to environmental regulations that requires “mandatory disclosure of fracking chemicals, baseline water testing and monitoring, and spill prevention and response planning.” While leftie Big Green groups love the new rules, the drilling industry is working to ensure trade secrets (exact combinations of chemicals) can’t be discovered by using Freedom of Information Act laws. The big news, for MDN, is that with the enactment of these new rules (see a copy below), it appears shale fracking is a huge step closer to happening in the Old Dominion…