Energy Services | Industrywide Issues | Kentucky | Kinder Morgan | Pipelines | Tennessee Gas Pipeline
Kinder Morgan Sabotages Itself with Some Kentucky Landowners
In June MDN updated you on Kinder Morgan’s plans to repurpose part of the existing Tennessee Gas Pipeline that currently runs south to north, reversing the flow to send natural gas liquids (NGLs) southward (see KM’s SECOND Binding Open Season for Utica/Marcellus NGL Pipeline). One of the biggest pockets of resistance are landowners in Kentucky. One such landowner/farmer, who has had five pipelines crisscross his property over the years, relates a story about talking with a pipeline rep a few years ago who essentially threatened to bury him in lawsuits. We don’t like hearing these kinds of stories…
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Pennsylvania landowners Andrew and Sally Dewing signed a 10-year lease for 493 acres of land in Bradford County, PA with Central Appalachian Petroleum in April 2001. The lease was later sold to a consortium including Abarta Oil & Gas Co., Talisman Energy USA and Range Resources. The terms of the lease require rent payments of $5 per acre per year ($2,465) for each year when their property has not be drilled on or under. After not receiving payments on time in 2010, the Dewings served the drillers notice of nonpayment. Eventually the three partners figured out who was supposed to pay and made the payment–but because the payment was late (more than 60 days late), the Dewings claimed the lease was terminated under the original terms of the lease. To make a long story short, Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled last Friday that no, the terms of the lease do not allow the Dewings to get out of the lease because the payment was late…
Kinder Morgan has just released a study that they commissioned (paid for), but researched by the independent ICF International. The study, titled “New England Energy Market Outlook: Demand for Natural Gas Capacity and Impact of the Northeast Energy Direct Project” (full copy below), finds that New Englanders would have saved $3.7 billion in wholesale electricity costs during the 2013-2014 ‘Polar Vortex’ winter had the proposed Northeast Energy Direct Project (NED) been in service at the time. The study also finds the additional gas capacity that NED would provide will generate $2.1 billion to $2.8 billion in annual savings going forward for New England electric consumers, under normal weather conditions. Plus there are many other benefits (aside from cost savings) from building NED, including lower air pollution throughout New England…
Ohio and 15 other states sued the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to stop implementation of Obama’s draconian coal and natural gas-killing Clean Power Plan while their larger lawsuit challenging the entire CPP winds its way through court (see 
Grant Township in Indiana County, PA has a problem: They’ve hired a potty mouth lawyer to represent them who has a HUGE conflict of interest. Grant’s town attorney is also the lawyer for (and executive director of) the litigious and extreme left-wing group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), a group committed to ending the use of fossil fuels. We’ve written plenty about the antics of the CELDF, including their lawsuit on behalf of an ecosystem (see 
Natural gas customers in Philadelphia could have had all of the outdated and unsafe pipes belonging to the aging Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW) pipeline network replaced within 5-10 years, paid for by UIL Holdings Corporation, a Connecticut-based gas and electric utility holding company that offered to buy PGW in a deal brokered by Democrat Mayor Michael Nutter. But the corrupt Philadelphia City Council torpedoed the deal (see 
A researcher with the California Institute of Technology has taken a close look at what would happen if five major universities–Harvard, Yale, MIT, Columbia and NYU–heeded the siren call of anti-fossil fuel nutters to divest their considerable endowments from holding any fossil fuel-related stocks. Just those five universities would lose a combined $200 million of value in their stock portfolios should they divest from fossil fuel stocks. Such efforts have been going on for some time. Not long ago Syracuse University divested all fossil fuel stocks, which will lead to losses in their endowment fund (see 
The NEXUS Gas Transmission pipeline, a $1.5-$2.0 billion natural gas pipeline that will carry Utica and Marcellus Shale gas spanning 11 counties in Ohio, 3 counties in Michigan, and eventually connect to the Dawn Energy Hub in Canada, has had to take some Ohio landowners to court simply to gain access to their property survey for potential routes. Sometimes county judges rule against NEXUS (see 
Last week the CEO of Thailand chemical giant PTT Global flew to Belmont County, OH to announce his company is spending $100 million over the next 9-12 months on preliminary work to build an ethane cracker plant in the county (see 
Midstream giant Williams and drilling giant Chesapeake Energy are cuddling a little bit closer in the Ohio Utica Shale. Williams announced today they have signed an agreement with Chesapeake to run gathering pipelines in a new area of the dry gas Utica for Chesapeake in return for signing a contract that binds Chessy to using Williams until 2035. Williams was already gathering natural gas for Chessy on 140,000 acres of Utica Shale land in Ohio. This agreement extends the time on that 140,000 acres by adding another 20 years, and adds another 50,000 acres to the mix…
Oilfield service giant Baker Hughes released their venerable monthly rotary rig count report today for August 2015. The numbers worldwide improved–the international rig count for August was 1,137, up 19 from the 1,118 counted in July. Looking specifically at the U.S., onshore (mostly shale) rig counts climbed from 835 in July to 849 in August, up 14. It does indeed seem as if we’ve turned a corner. This is the second month in a row that U.S. land-based rigs increased month over month (see 
More than 3 1/2 years ago (in January 2012) MDN told you about a plan in West Virginia to use a process patented by Union Carbide in the 1970s to build an ethane cracker plant on the cheap–much less than the typical “world scale” crackers announced by Shell, Odebrecht and others since that time (see