FERC Alters PennEast Hearing Process to Reduce Antis’ Bleating
We’ve sat through our fair share of public hearings and open houses for pipelines–from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) hearings to state agency hearings to open houses sponsored by midstream companies (see Vicariously Attend FERC Scoping Hearing on Constitution Pipeline). The script is always the same. Anti-fossil fuel freaks show up and perform before the cameras and microphones. That’s what they are there to do–engage in a circus act. When they are denied such an opportunity, they complain (see Williams’ Smart Open House in Lebanon County Confounds Antis). FERC hearings are always the same–show up and sign up to speak, with 3 or 4-minute allotments for each speaker. And speakers are taken in the order in which they signed in. Those in the audience who are for or against typically applaud or issue boos and insults. We have often said FERC personnel should get hazard pay for sitting through 4-hour marathons of this nonsense. FERC has wised up. They held a public hearing last night in the Bethlehem, PA area for the proposed PennEast Pipeline project. Instead of a public forum, FERC set two private rooms with a stenographer in each. FERC recorded comments two-at-a-time, in private. And they saved themselves all of the theatrics by anti-drilling trolls. And of course, that didn’t sit well with the antis. Most of the antis who spoke were reading from cue cards prepared for them by THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum. The antis are so dumb they can’t even form their own thoughts about why they are against the project! Too funny…
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Last December Pennsylvania’s felony-indicted Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, brought a lawsuit against Chesapeake Energy, Anadarko and Williams accusing them of, among other things, royalty fraud (see 
All the way back in February MDN brought you exclusive news that Shell had begun approaching landowners in Beaver County to get them to sign easements for two ethane pipelines to feed the mighty cracker plant they plan to build in the county (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. The EIA projects natural gas production cumulatively across all shale plays will once again fall in September–the seventh consecutive month it will have fallen. However, as was the case in last month’s report, the Utica stands alone and against the trend by showing an increase in production month over month. Last month the EIA predicted the Utica would increase production by 5 million cubic feet per day, or MMcf/d (see 
“Everyone” thought that with low prices for oil and gas, and companies not able to turn a profit and heading into bankruptcy, that there would be a flurry of mergers and acquisitions in the oil and gas industry. “Everyone” was wrong. According to the just-released “Oil & Gas Mergers and Acquisitions Report – Mid-year 2016” from powerhouse consulting firm Deloitte (full copy below), M&A activity in the o&g industry is at its lowest point in years. The number of deals in the first half of 2016 was 198, an “extremely low” number compared to what it has been in past years. Where were the highest number of M&As? The number one shale play where deals were done was the Permian Basin–an extremely oil-rich shale layer in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico. The number two shale play where deals were done was, yep, the Marcellus Shale. Here’s the low down…
There is a new development in the case of an illegal ban on injection wells passed by Highland Township in Elk County, PA. In 2013 the radical leftist PA-based group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) convinced ignoramuses in Highland Township to pass a so-called Community Bill of Rights. Seneca Resources, a driller with leases and an active drilling program in Elk, had planned to drill an injection well on their own property to dispose of their own flowback and produced water. The CELDF-inspired ordinance Highland Twp prevented it, and Seneca threatened to sue the town (see 
Brooke County, WV makes it four for four in denying Statoil’s request to refund tax overpayments made by the company. Statoil, based in Norway, is a big player in the West Virginia Marcellus Shale. Statoil paid property taxes to Brooke, Marshall, Ohio and Wetzel counties (all in WV) in 2015 and later found, during an audit/review, that they had overpaid those counties. They overpaid Brooke by $1.8 million, Ohio by $2.9 million, Wetzel by $1.6 million and Marshall by $342,000. We previously reported on Marshall’s refusal to refund the money (see 
It has been a loooooong road to adopting new drilling regulations in Pennsylvania–for both conventional and unconventional (shale) oil and gas drilling. The process is rumored to have begun during the Jurassic Period, when dinosaurs were still dying to produce current oil and natural gas supplies, picking up steam following the 2012 Act 13 legislation that called for an update to drilling regs (under then Gov. Tom Corbett). More recently, with the prospect of starting the process over again for both shale and conventional regs, Gov. Tom Wolf cut a deal to accept “half a loaf”–accept new regs for the shale industry and start over again with conventional drilling regs (see 
In July MDN reported that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has approved Eastern Shore Natural Gas’ (ESNG) System Reliability Project (see 
Indisputable fact #1: With the increased use of natural gas to generate electricity, the air is getting cleaner. That has been proven by both private and government studies. Indisputable fact #2: With the increased use of natural gas to generate electricity, less carbon dioxide is emitted (for those who believe in the fairy tale of man-made global warming). If you’re a warmer, you ought to love natgas use in electric plants for those two reasons alone. However, so twisted is the thinking of radical anti-fossil fuelers, they can’t bring themselves to endorse natural gas because it’s an evil, hated, awful fossil fuel. And so otherwise smart people become idiots–like those who belong to Pennsylvanians Against Fracking (PAF). The PAF gang is harassing the state Dept. of Environment Protection because the DEP has approved either the conversion of coal to natgas, or the building of new natgas power plants some 42 times since January 2014. The PAF gang are smart enough to realize more natgas-fired power plants leads to more drilling (and fracking) and their irrational philosophy dictates they must oppose it…
Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed “fast Eddie” Rendell made an off-the-cuff remark at a bull session at the Democrat National Convention last month that far-left media types tried to twist. He said, “I made a mistake in the rush to get the economic part of fracking delivered to Pennsylvania. We didn’t regulate well construction and…frack water as well as we should.” So-called reporters at propaganda outlets like StateImpact Pennsylvania immediately jumped on that and declared Rendell admitted to making a mistake, and getting it wrong, with fracking in the Keystone State (see 
The one great, huge, towering problem that anti-drillers have is that there is no scientific evidence that supports their wild claims that fracking contaminates water–which is their favorite lie to spread. When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) arrived at the same conclusion–that fracking doesn’t pollute water–after four years of studying it, that really took the wind out of the sails of rabid fossil fuel haters (see 
How do you deal with people who are bullies and refuse to compromise? Answer: You defeat them and don’t give an inch in doing so. Crestwood Equity Partners (used to be Crestwood Midstream) bought a project years ago called Finger Lakes LPG–a proposed liquefied petroleum gas (i.e. propane) storage facility along the shoreline of Seneca Lake in beautiful Upstate New York. Seneca is one of the Finger Lakes. The facility would be built in a former, now depleted, salt mining operation. Salt mining was far more dangerous for the environment than a proposed underground propane storage facility would ever be–but you didn’t hear a peep about the salt mining operation from nutty environmentalists at the time. We’ve endlessly covered the antics of people like Sandra Steingraber–a professional anti-fracking agitator paid and on the staff of Ithaca College (funded by the Park Foundation). Steingraber opposes the Finger Lakes LPG facility because she has a visceral (and irrational) hatred for all fossil fuels–even though her house is heated with them, the school she “works” at is heated with them, the vehicle she drives is powered by them, etc. ad nauseum. Steingraber and dozens of others have been arrested a number of times for blocking the entrance to the facility. In a bid to compromise and address the concerns of Steingraber and others, Crestwood has, in our opinion, made a mistake. On Monday Crestwood sent a letter to the completely dysfunctional NY Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) offering to scale back the LPG storage project–removing rail and truck shipments in and out of the facility–one of the major objections by Steingraber and other ninny nannies opposing the project. So what does the anti group “Gas Free Seneca” say to Crestwood’s gracious offer to meet them more than half way? They figuratively spit in the face of Crestwood. They demand the facility never get built. That’s the actions of bullies and profoundly unreasonable (not able to be reasoned with) people. Which is why we say, they must be totally, utterly, and completely defeated…