Rabid Anti-Fossil Fuelers Object to Duke-Piedmont Merger
When will anti-fossil fuel madness that seems to spread like the Zika virus begin to subside? Anti-fossil fuel madness is just as destructive as Zika for those it infects. Take the case of the proposed merger/buyout of Piedmont Natural Gas by utility powerhouse Duke Energy for $6.7 billion (see Duke Energy Buys Piedmont NatGas for $6.7B, Marcellus Connection). Rabid anti-fossil fuelers object to the deal because, well, because they’re idiots and they don’t want a single molecule more of natgas used to power electric plants–even though it’s cleaner than coal and even though without electricity these ignoramuses wouldn’t be able to exist. Why? Because natgas is a hated fossil fuel and burning fossil fuels, according to the nuttiest of the nutters, is catastrophically heating up ol’ Mom Earth. Therefore Duke shouldn’t buy Piedmont. That’s the twisted thinking process going on in their heads…
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A pair of companies operating in the Marcellus Shale announced late last week that they are laying off a collective 175 jobs in West Virginia between them . Energy Corporation of America (ECA), which ranked 20th for most production in the Marcellus Shale in 2015 according to NGI’s 
FirstEnergy is one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric systems, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and New York. FirstEnergy loves the shale industry. In April, MDN reported that FirstEnergy’s construction crews had begun erecting steel poles for a new 18-mile high voltage power line that will run through Harrison and Doddridge counties in WV (see 
A year ago MDN told you about a new gathering pipeline project in Butler County, PA. Rex Energy contracted with Stonehenge Energy Resources to build a gathering system in Butler County (see 
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania has sided with landowners in a dispute with Shell’s shale drilling arm, called SWEPI (Shell Western Exploration Production Inc.). SWEPI signed a lease with two landowners who own a collective 1,036 acres in Lycoming County. SWEPI promised a $4,000 per acre signing bonus, but a few months after signing SWEPI decided they didn’t want the acreage after all and tried to cancel the lease and the bonus payment. The judge ordered SWEPI to pay $2,072,000 to each of the two landowner families…
Some interesting Marcellus-related items were included in the recently adopted Pennsylvania state budget that have largely flown under the radar. There are also a few things that weren’t in the budget bill–previously intended to be part of it–that didn’t survive the process. At the top of the list is lack of a severance tax. But right behind that (for us) is that a gross receipts tax on natural gas use, which we thought would be part of the final deal, was not. As MDN previously reported, a gross receipts tax taxes end users of natural gas, in essence targeting low-income households (see 
Fairmount Santrol, an Ohio-based sand producer that sells sand as a proppant for use in Utica and Marcellus Shale drilling, released their preliminary second quarter 2016 results last week. Although the company expects to lose between $91-$93 million for the quarter (compared to a profit of $14.1 million a year ago), things are not all bad. Yes, it’s been tough for Fairmount and other companies in the oil and gas industry. Really tough. But Fairmount’s CEO Jenniffer Deckard, said this: “…we are also encouraged by the early signs of improvement we are seeing in the proppant market.” In other words, a crack of light is peeking through the door and we’re beginning to see the great slowdown in drilling come to an end…
Last Friday MDN brought you the really big news that Sunoco Logistics Partners had won a major appeals court case that recognizes them as a public utility in Pennsylvania with the right to use eminent domain to build the Mariner East 2 NGL pipeline (see 
It’s hard to believe something as simple and uncomplicated and safe has a storage tank for liquefied natural gas (LNG) could be controversial. But if you irrationally believe all fossil fuels are evil, you’re against such a storage tank. That’s the battle now shaping up in Somerset, Massachusetts. Spectra Energy is looking to build “two giant storage tanks full of liquefied natural gas” at a site in town , near Walker Street. The town administrator is in favor because Spectra will pay the town $10 million in lieu of taxes. But anti-fossil fuel nutters are rising up to oppose the project–even though they do so using the very fossil fuels the abhor every single day of their pathetic lives–being wholly dependent on fossil fuels for their very existence…