Radical Enviro Groups File Appeal to Stop AIM Pipeline in NY/CT
A group of radical environmental groups including Riverkeeper Inc., Sierra Club and Food & Water Watch (Big Green groups) have joined a federal appeal (i.e. are suing) to stop Spectra Energy from building their Alogonquin Incremental Market (AIM) Project, a project to expand the capacity of the Algonquin Gas Transmission system to flow more Marcellus/Utica gas to northeast markets. Most of the project is 20 miles of new pipeline in the Hudson Valley area of New York. In March New York’s spineless Gov. Andrew Cuomo asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to stop work on AIM near a nuclear power plant (see Gov. Cuomo Asks FERC to Halt Algonquin Pipeline Near Nuke Plant). Within a few days FERC said NO (see FERC Denies NY Request to Stop Work on Pipeline Near Nuke Plant). That didn’t make the anti-fossil fuel nutters happy at all. They thought they had a real winner by painting nightmare scenarios of the AIM pipeline blowing up and taking a nuclear plant with it. Their scare tactics didn’t work–so they’ve fallen back to the tried and true: ask a liberal judge to stop it…
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In the natural gas world there are two seasons: winter (when you use natural gas) and summer (when you “inject” or store natural gas). The “winter strip” goes from November to March, and the “summer strip” runs from April through October. Storage levels are a key factor in the pricing of natural gas. Economics 101: the price for commodities like natgas is purely a function of supply and demand. If you have more supply than demand, the price goes down. In the northeast part of the country we just came through the mildest (temperature-wise) winter in a generation. We used a lot less natgas than we normally would. That means the gas sitting in storage didn’t get drawn down nearly as much as it usually does. That’s what you would expect, and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has confirmed it. We ended the winter heating season at the end of March with “record high levels” of natgas sitting in storage. And now we begin the process of storing more. If all other factors remain equal–meaning there’s no new or sudden increase in demand this summer–it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how record high storage levels will affect the price. Here’s the EIA with their latest on storage…
Pennsylvania State Rep. Martin Causer (R-Turtlepoint) testified before the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture in Washington, DC on Wednesday, April 13. Causer was there to tell the House Agriculture Committee that new pipelines are desperately needed in the farm country he represents. We have a copy of Rep. Causer’s masterful testimony below…
More trouble may be ahead for drillers in the Marcellus, Utica and beyond. Fitch Ratings has just released a report that says the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC)–a federal agency–is set to downgrade the ratings of loans for many exploration and production (E&P) companies that are considered “high yield” (HY). If the outstanding loans these companies have (and most of them, if not all of them, have outstanding loans), the downgrade means it will be much more difficult for drillers to get their hands on new money. And if they can somehow get their hands on new money, it’s going to cost them a lot more to do it, i.e. higher interest rates. Word on the street is that banks are feeling the pressure from the Federal Reserve and the OCC and will “reduce most energy company credit lines by roughly 20-40 percent this month.” Ouch. Banks have pretty much quit financing coal projects. According to one source, “Crude oil and natural gas productions may not be far behind.” Here’s the low down…
Yesterday MDN brought you a copy of a fascinating new study published by the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA). The new study is titled “North American Midstream Infrastructure Through 2035: Leaning into the Headwinds” (see 
MDN is strongly in favor of property rights. “You don’t tell me I can’t allow drilling a shale well or a pipeline–and I don’t tell you that you must allow it.” That’s always been our guiding philosophy. It pains us when pipeline companies use eminent domain to force landowners to allow a pipeline to be built. Having said that, it’s a pipeline! It’s underground. Farmers can plant crops over top of it after it’s in the ground. After a few years, you’re hard pressed to even tell where the pipeline is buried! We say if there’s widespread opposition to pipelines in a given community, don’t bother building it there. However, if there’s a handful of holdout landowners (often driven by global warming insanity), eminent domain may be justified. Life is complex. These issues are complex. Again, forcefully using eminent domain against any landowner–even the stupid anti-drilling ones–pains us. We don’t like it. But eminent domain is part of our laws, created to benefit wider society. We spotted an article about some Massachusetts landowners who equate opposing Kinder Morgan’s Northeast Energy Direct pipeline with being patriotic, like the patriots from the original Boston Harbor Tea Party revolt. We had to laugh…
NGLs, or natural gas liquids, are the “other” hydrocarbons that come out of the ground along with methane, or natural gas. The most common NGLs that come out of Marcellus and Utica boreholes in southwestern PA, eastern OH and northern WV are ethane, propane and butane. Ever so gradually new markets are opening up to sell NGLs. Right now for many drillers in the region ethane, the most common NGL, actually costs drillers to dispose of. It is an expense. But ethane could be used to feed cracker plants and so much more! Pipelines are beginning to cart NGLs to other regions like Canada, the Gulf Coast and (now) to the Philadelphia area where the NGLs can either be used in petrochemical plants or exported to be used in petchem plants overseas. But what if drillers had a way of storing NGLs until they could get access to pipelines or rail or new petchem plants to use it? That’s the premise behind a brand new startup called Mountaineer NGL Storage. Started by a group of industry veterans and backed with big money from Goldman Sachs, Mountaineer NGL Storage is developing a new underground storage facility in Monroe County, Ohio, near Clarington, along the Ohio River. Yesterday the company announced a non-binding open season for drillers who want to reserve storage capacity in the new facility when it goes live sometime in 2018…
Please bow your head in a moment of silence for the 70,000 fallen. Who? More like what. In June 2014 crews were working to frack a Utica Shale well at a Statoil drill pad in Monroe County, OH when hydraulic tubing (not to be confused with fracking) from some of the equipment caught fire. The fire quickly spread to 20 trucks lined up at the pad, burning the trucks (some of them exploding) and creating thick, black smoke that billowed for hours (see 
Yesterday the Pennsylvania State House and Senate energy committees voted to disapprove the state Dept. of Environmental Protection’s proposed new Article 78 and 78a drilling rules. In February when the Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board (EQB) approved the new regulations after those regs were vigorously opposed by conventional drillers in the state, the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA) blasted the decision calling the DEP “deceptive” (see 
Last week MDN brought you news that mainstream media has all but ignored, in hopes of burying it: Cabot Oil & Gas has filed a legal motion to appeal the OJ jury decision to award two landowner families in Dimock, PA $4.24 million (see