Massachusetts Senator Conducts Faux NED Pipeline Scoping Hearing
In a shameless act of political pandering, the president of the Massachusetts State Senate, Stan Rosenberg (Democrat), ran his own version of a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) scoping hearing. Such hearings, while meant to elicit useful information about where a pipeline should, and should not, run, usually devolve into freak shows by anti-drilling zealots who parade and preen before the cameras and microphones–making fools of themselves. We’ve seen it many times before. So Rosenberg, apparently not satisfied that there’s not a FERC hearing every week where anti-drilling zealots in Mass. can gripe and moan and complain, set up his own faux session. He “listened” to some 60 people complain about the proposed Kinder Morgan Northeast Energy Direct pipeline. Stan says he’s going to hand deliver transcriptions of the entire sordid affair to FERC, personally…
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Both Kinder Morgan and Spectra Energy are in a tough fight to build pipelines from the Marcellus into New England. One of the competing visions for how to get more natural gas to residents, businesses and electric generating plants that so desperately need natural gas is to import it through the Everett, MA LNG import terminal. That’s where GDF Suez, the American name for the French multinational electric utility company Engie, imports natural gas. We told you about GDF Suez’s self interested last year (see 
A year ago OPEC, composed of a group of America’s enemies, decided they would try to bankrupt the American shale energy industry by pumping as much oil as they could, driving the price of oil and natural gas into the subbasement. Good for consumers! Not so good for oil and gas drillers and the energy industry at large. Now that OPEC’s strategy, led by Saudi Arabia, has not worked, OPEC is ready to start talking with American shale producers to see if they can trick us into joining them in circumventing the free market. They want us to cooperate with them to restrict oil and gas output and drive prices back up. We sincerely hope America shale producers don’t do it. We need to bankrupt the Middle Eastern countries that have waged a war of terrorism on us for years. Tell them to pound sand–they certainly have enough of it…
We have a troubling development to report about the future of drilling in West Virginia–something that has happened largely under the radar, until now. More than 200 residents in WV (likely those who don’t own the mineral rights under their land) began filing “scores” of “nuisance” lawsuits over the past couple of years against Antero Resources and Hall Drilling, in places like Doddridge County. The lawsuits claim excessive traffic, odors and noise from nearby drilling make it “impossible” for them to enjoy their homes. Each lawsuit has its own unique circumstances and should be handled separately–one size does not fit all. The troubling development is that all of these lawsuits (dozens? hundreds?) have been rolled up into one mega lawsuit that sits before the WV Mass Litigation Panel…
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 
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…
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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 
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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 
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