NFG’s Marcellus Pipeline from NWPA to NY Hits Resistence
National Fuel Gas (NFG), the Buffalo-based utility giant with both a drilling subsidiary (Seneca Resources) and a midstream/pipeline subsidiary (Empire Pipeline) filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in March for a pipeline project they call Northern Access 2016. The $451 million project includes building 97 miles of new pipeline along a power line corridor from northwestern Pennsylvania up to Erie County, NY. The project also calls for 3 miles of new pipeline further up, in Niagara County, along with a new compressor station in the Town of Pendleton. We have a full description below for all of the new construction, modifications and add-ons that are part of the Access Northeast 2016 project. The pipeline, when complete, will flow Marcellus Shale natural gas from Pennsylvania northward to New York and on into Canada. Although NFG has bent backwards, forwards and has contorted itself into just about every yoga position there is to accommodate residents around Pendleton, nearby residents are still opposed to NFG building a new compressor station anywhere near them…
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Ivan and Kathy Dubrasky are anti-drillers located in Pulaski Township (Lawrence County), PA, just across the border from Ohio and close to Youngstown. They recently hosted a tiny anti-drilling rally at their property (see 
Shell continues to act as if it has already made the decision to build a $2-$3 billion ethane cracker plant complex in Beaver County, PA, even though they continue to refuse to say they’ve made a decision. What’s our evidence? In June Shell finally purchased the land where the cracker will be built, the former Horsehead zinc smelter property in Potter that will be the primary location of the cracker plant IF it gets built (see 
A Pennsylvania Democrat in Republican clothing, Gene DiGirolamo (“Republican” House member from the Philadelphia area), along with a hard-left Democrat, Steve Stroman (director of Penn’s Woods Conservation Advocates), have penned a “bipartisan” column in the Harrisburg Patriot-News on how a “principled” and “reasonable” severance tax compromise will create education nirvana in Pennsylvania. The column is so shot full of lies we can’t even begin to count them. This is pure propaganda from two lefties who want to tax and spend PA into the ground once again, as it existed under Ed Rendell before Tom Corbett fixed it by cutting excessive and out-of-control education spending. Our pair of lefties say just a piddly little 3.2% severance tax will be all that’s required–even though until now nothing less than 5% (actually it turns out to be 17.3%, see 
A very old and trite but true saying: Q: How do you know when a politician, like NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is lying? A: When he opens his mouth. Our illustrious man-child governor was in Syracuse yesterday to drop off a bag of money with $50 million, and an impertinent reporter had the gall to ask His Lordship about the secession rally held in Chenango County on Sunday (see 
Last October MDN told you about an exciting project from Boardwalk Pipeline Partners’ Texas Gas Transmission pipeline that will reverse the flow from the Louisiana Gulf Coast all the way to Ohio (see 
Weeping. Wailing. Gnashing of teeth. Ripping clothes and sitting in sackcloth and ashes. That’s some of the reaction from lunatic anti-fossil fuelers in Massachusetts after the Mass. Dept. of Public Utilities (DPU) approved long-term contracts for three utilities–Berkshire Gas, National Grid and Columbia Gas–to buy natural gas supplies from the hated, evil Kinder Morgan Northeast Energy Direct pipeline. That is, the three utilities will buy more gas from Kinder IF the pipeline ever gets built. We’re still a long way from backhoes digging up ground to lay new pipeline, but we’ve just taken a big step forward with this decision by the DPU. What’s next for the loons of Mass? Yep–you guessed it. They’re planning to take the DPU to court…
Compressor stations in Ohio, needed to flow natural gas through numerous new pipelines being built, require a permit from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in order to get built. The Ohio EPA considers each application independently, a laborious and long process. In an effort to streamline that process, the Ohio EPA is accepting comments during a “pre-comment” period from now until September 18 on a plan to issue general permits for compressor stations. A general permit is, essentially, a cookie cutter approach. If midstream companies agree to the provisions in the general permit, they will use certain types of equipment and certain standards, allowing the permit process to speed along much faster. Once the pre-comment (in essence, give us your feedback) period is over, the EPA will issue draft “final” general permits for full public comment, which will run for 30 days…
Democrats in Pennsylvania, in their desperation to sink a money well into Marcellus drillers to fund Big Education and teachers’ unions, have gotten even nuttier than they usually are. So nutty, we’re laughing out loud–at them. Representative Patty Kim (D-Dauphin), someone whose constituents voted for her to go to Harrisburg to get work done, has decided she would rather dance than do the hard work she was sent to Harrisburg to do. Kim’s eight year-old daughter told her mom about the Nae Nae after returning home from summer camp. It gave Kim her latest “brilliant” idea. What’s the Nae Nae? It’s a dance routine, apparently. So Kim, hoping to make a viral Youtube video, enlisted six other legislators, all of them hardened Democrats in favor of a Marcellus-killing severance tax, to dance the Nae Nae with her, on camera, making asses of themselves (watch it below). The message at the end of the video requests viewers to ask their legislators to support a Marcellus-killing severance tax. Kim used $1,000 of her own campaign funds, funds given to her by contributors who thought she was a serious candidate, to make this silly video. At one point the video also films children in a dance routine. What a shame to trick innocent children into supporting your own twisted political agenda. But that’s how Dems operate–brainwash ’em early and often…
A dozen aging protesters (some of them former hippies) paced back and forth with apparently with nothing better to do, in front of an office building in Pittsfield, Massachusetts where Kinder Morgan has a small office. The protesters were there to demand that New Englanders continue to pay 4x what everyone else across the country pays for electricity, and to protest in favor of rolling blackouts in New England when electricity supplies dip because of high demand and lack of generating capacity, and to protest the availability of abundant, cheap, and clean-burning natural gas to heat their homes. Yep, they are stark, raving mad–and taken seriously by the liberal media in Massachusetts which covers this tiny minority of wackos as if they represent “everybody” in New England. The protesters, in their own words, told reporters why they oppose Kinder Morgan’s Northeast Energy Direct pipeline that will bring cheap, abundant and clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas to Massachusetts and other New England states: because they hate all fossil fuels, including clean-burning natural gas…
Yet another delay for Kinder Morgan’s proposed Northeast Energy Direct project–an extension of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline from the shale fields of northeastern Pennsylvania through New York, into Massachusetts, then New Hampshire before ending near Boston. It is a $6 billion project with 177 miles of new (greenfield) pipeline construction meant to alleviate the severe shortage of natural gas in New England. Last Friday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the government agency in charge of permissioning the project, issued a memo stating they have extended the deadline for public comment on the plan. A new deadline has not yet been decided. The delay delights anti-fossil fuelers…
This story is amusing–PA Democrat infighting over the composition of the PA Gov. Tom Wolf’s Pipeline Infrastructure Task Force. You’ll recall we brought you Wolf’s announcement that the PennFuture Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection, John Quigley, would head a new task force to oversee (i.e. slow down) the development of local shale gas gathering pipelines (see 
With fewer new wells being drilled in Pennsylvania, and more inspectors added to the roles at the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), as you might expect, there have been more inspections of existing/older gas and oil wells. In fact, the DEP has conducted 1,700 more inspections over the first seven months of 2015 than they did in 2014. The oil and gas division of the DEP has added 25 new employees in the past 12 months–even though drilling activity has gone down. Typical government boondoggle. You can’t hire people and give them nothing to do. Well, you can, but that doesn’t look good for a new governor. So the DEP has hauled out the magnifying glass to look under every rock on the well pad. And what have they found? Despite 16% more inspections of shale operations this year, the total number of violations has gone down–from 283 violations for the first seven months of 2014, to 205 violations for the first seven months in 2015. However, violations for conventional drillers over the same period have gone up…
The Philadelphia-based anti-fossil fuel group Clean Air Council has announced through their media/public relations mouthpiece (the taxpayer-funded PBS StateImpact Pennsylvania) that they’ve launched yet another frivolous lawsuit–this time against Sunoco Logistics and their Mariner East 2 pipeline plan. Clean Air Council has launched so many lawsuits against the oil and gas industry we’ve lost count of the number. The Clean Air Council, once called The Delaware Valley Citizens’ Council for Clean Air, is a non-profit (i.e. non-taxed) group engaging in political activity in violation of their non-profit charter–yet government officials ignore those violations. The Clean Air Council, without standing, filed a lawsuit in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas (the lowest trial court, essentially what other states call county court), charging that Sunoco Logistics, contrary to decades of accepted recognition as a public utility in Pennsylvania, is not actually a public utility and therefore cannot assert eminent domain against a few holdout landowners who refuse to allow the Mariner East 2 pipeline to be placed next to the existing Mariner East 1 pipeline already crossing their land…